The Captured

by Scott Zesch

  6. Sidney Lanier, “San Antonio de Bexar,” in Charles R. Anderson (ed.), The Centennial Edition of the Works of Sidney Lanier (10 Vols.; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1945), VI, 202–46.

  7. Anderson (ed.), Centennial Edition, VIII, 289.

  8. San Antonio Daily Express, Jan. 9, 1873, 3.

  9. Deposition of Herman Lehmann, Indian depredation claim of W. S. Glenn, Record Group 123, Case No. 1893, NARA; J.M. Haworth to Enoch Hoag, May 14, 1873, Microfilm Roll M234/378, NARA-SW; Jonathan H. Jones, A Condensed History of the Apache and Comanche Indian Tribes [Indianology] (1899; reprint, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1976), 123; Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870–1879, ed. J. Marvin Hunter (1927; reprint, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 116–17.

  10. U.S. House of Representatives, Exec. Doc. No. 257, 43d Cong., 1st Sess., 27. 11.

  11. Reprinted in the Wichita City Eagle, Dec. 26, 1872, 2.

  12. G. W. Cox, Pioneer Sketches ([Saint Jo, Tex.:] Montague County Historical Committee, 1958), 12.

  13. I examined the criminal records of Bexar County, Texas, for the period 1873–1876 without finding any mention of Adolph Korn. However, the records that still exist are far from complete. Furthermore, unless Adolph’s offenses were serious, they would not necessarily have been entered on the books.

  14. Boerne Star, Sept. 20, 1973 (reprint of 1934 letter from Mrs. Peter Lex).

  CHAPTER 10: RESISTING THE RESERVATION

  1. San Antonio Weekly Express, Dec. 27, 1877, 4.

  2. Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (1937; 3d ed., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), 188.

  3. Sources on Ishatai’s uprising and the Adobe Walls fight include: G. Derek West, “The Battle of Adobe Walls (1874),” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review, XXXVI (1963), 1–36; J’Nell Pate, “The Battles of Adobe Walls,” Great Plains Journal, XVI (fall 1976), 3–44; and Amarillo Daily News, Apr. 26, 1939, 1, 13 (interviews with two Comanche eyewitnesses, Yellowfish and John Timbo). Information about Rudolph Fischer’s participation in the battle comes from: R. E. Moody to Robert H. Bostman, Jan. 10, 1938, Indian Pioneer History Collection, OHS, LXXI, 394; Lottie Fisher to Arthur Lawrence, Sept. 14, 1958, Arthur Lawrence Collection, MGP; Hugh D. Corwin, Comanche and Kiowa Captives in Oklahoma and Texas (Guthrie, Okla.: Cooperative Publishing Co., 1959), 170; and Josephine Wapp to the author, Feb. 27, 2001.

  4. William T. Hagan, United States—Comanche Relations: The Reservation Years (1976; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 124. In 1933 a Comanche named Howard White Wolf confirmed that after the Quahadas’ surrender, about twenty warriors and their families broke away and fled to “No Man’s Land” (possibly the Llano Estacado of northwest Texas), where some of them died of thirst. Comanche Field Notes, Waldo Rudolph Wedel and Mildred Mott Wedel Papers, Box 109, SINAA. When the runaways returned to the reservation in 1877, Colonel Mackenzie reported that they consisted of “twenty-one [Comanche] men and their families.” R. S. Mackenzie to Assistant Adjutant General, Dept. of the Missouri, Sept. 6, 1877, Box D62.137.118, FSMA. E.L. Clark, an agency interpreter at the time, described a “band of about 40 Comanches.” Commissioner of Indian Affairs to James F. Randlett, July 24, 1901, “Section X—Comanche Indians—Captives—Herman Lehmann” (vertical file), OHS. However, Quanah Parker recalled that this group included “about six (6) families of Apaches” (including one of Herman Lehmann’s captors, Chiwat [Chebahtah]). Affidavit of Quanah Parker, Aug. 26, 1901, Microfilm Roll KA1, OHS. Herman Lehmann referred to his group of warriors as the “famous fifteen,” which may be the most accurate count of the adult Comanche men living away from the reservation. Jonathan H. Jones, A Condensed History of the Apache and Comanche Indian Tribes [Indianology] (1899; reprint, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1976), 183.

  5. The date of the battle was derived from Capt. Dan Roberts’s earliest report, which states that on August 20 he “struck the trail of a party of Indians” and “after following them four days” overtook them on the Staked Plains about 150 miles northwest of Camp Los Moras, where he “had a round with them.” D.W. Roberts to J. B. Jones, Aug. 26, 1875, Adjutant General, Ranger Records, Box 401-1158, TSA. Roberts indicated in a subsequent report that the fight occurred on August 7, 1875. Dorman H. Winfrey and James M. Day (eds.), The Indian Papers of Texas and the Southwest, 1825–1916 (5 Vols.; Austin: The Pemberton Press, 1966), IV, 445–46. Ranger James Gillett later said that the battle occurred on August 25, 1875. San Antonio Evening News, Nov. 6, 1924, 1.

  6. Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870–1879, ed. J. Marvin Hunter (1927; reprint, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 111. This dialogue was recorded by another ranger in the party, Thomas P. Gillespie, who attributed it to Seiker. Two other ranger accounts indicated that Gillett was the first to discover that Lehmann was white, and that he prevented Seiker from killing Lehmann. Dan W. Roberts, Rangers and Sovereignty (1914; reprint, Austin: State House Press, 1987), 73; and James B. Gillett, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 1875 to 1881 (1921; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), 43. Herman, however, later identified Gillett as the ranger who fired the pistol at him. San Antonio Evening News, Nov. 6, 1924, 1.

  7. Herman Lehmann gave at least four accounts of the battle between his group of Apaches and the Texas Rangers on the Staked Plains: Jones, Condensed History, 45–50; Frontier Times, XXXI (July, Aug., Sept. 1954), 260–62; “Shelton Glenn [sic; Willis Skelton Glenn] Buffalo Hunt Manuscript,” Microfilm Roll MF6, UTEP; and Lehmann, Nine Years, 96–105. Three of the Texas Rangers who participated in the battle also recorded their recollections of it: Lehmann, Nine Years, 106–12 (reprint of account of Thomas P. Gillespie, written in 1907); Roberts, Rangers and Sovereignty, 67–75; and Gillett, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, 33–45.

  8. The date is approximate. After his fight with the Texas Rangers on August 24, 1875, Herman Lehmann returned to his people in New Mexico. He indicated that his Apache group remained in camp that winter, then resumed raiding in Texas the following spring. When Herman described his life as a hermit after his separation from the Apaches, he noted, “I was then in my sixteenth year.” Lehmann, Nine Years, 139. If his recollection of his age was correct, then he left the Apaches after the spring raids started in 1876 but sometime prior to his seventeenth birthday on June 5, 1876.

  9. Although most of Herman’s stories remained consistent in the various retellings, his explanations for why he left the Apaches differed considerably. In both versions of his autobiography, he claimed that the Apache medicine man had murdered his adoptive father, Carnoviste, during a drunken brawl, and that he killed the shaman in revenge. Jones, Condensed History, 131; Lehmann, Nine Years, 126. In a 1906 interview, Herman indicated that the man he killed was Genava, the petty chief whom Herman’s mother had wounded during the second raid on their farm and who always persecuted him after that. In this version, the “hated chief” flew into a rage when Herman let some of his horses stray, and Herman killed him in the confrontation that followed. Frontier Times, XXXI (July, Aug., Sept. 1954), 262–64. Willis Skelton Glenn, who knew Herman in Oklahoma, reported that the man Herman killed was a Comanche who was a member of a party that was attacking the Apaches. According to Glenn, Carnoviste was killed during this skirmish, and Ete warned Herman to flee because “it was customary to kill all that belonged to a warrior at his death.” Glenn, “Buffalo Hunt Manuscript.”

  10. It is impossible to determine exactly when Herman joined the Comanches. The only clue he provided as to the time of year was that “the cold was so intense that I knew I would freeze to death before morning.” Frontier Times, XXXI (July, Aug., Sept. 1954), 268. Herman probably became affiliated with the Comanches in the latter part of 1876, or early 1877 at the latest.

  11. The meaning of Herman’s Comanche name is uncertain. Willis Skelton Glenn, a buffalo hunter who knew Herman in the early 1900s, said that Montechema meant “Our Child in Common.�
� Glenn, “Buffalo Hunt Manuscript.” Vance Tahmahkera, a grandson of Quanah Parker, suggested that Montechema might be a variant of maatuseni (or maatusinai), which translates as “Onto Someone or Something in Different Ways.” Sandi Tahmahkera to Esther Lehmann, Aug. 30, 1994, in the possession of Lehmann descendants; Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee, Taa Numu Tekwapu?ha Tuboopu (Our Comanche Dictionary) (Lawton: Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee, 2003), 16, 52. Tahmahkera thought the name could have referred to Herman’s skill and cleverness in fighting for both the Apaches and the Comanches using various techniques.

  12. The earliest sources on the battle of Yellow House Canyon include Galveston Weekly News, Apr. 9, 1877, 3, 6, and The New York Times, May 30, 1877, 1. Eye witness testimony is found in the depositions of Willis S. Glenn, James W. Dobbs, and Herman Lehmann, Indian depredation claim of W. S. Glenn, Record Group 123, Case Nos. 1892 and 1893, NARA; Rex Strickland (ed.), “The Recollections of W. S. Glenn, Buffalo Hunter,” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review, XXII (1949), 15–64; and Lubbock Evening Journal, Sept. 10, 1958, Section II, 2 (Herman Lehmann’s comments). Secondary sources include: William C. Griggs, “The Battle of Yellowhouse Canyon in 1877,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book, LI (1975), 37–50; and Sharon Cunningham, “Yellow House Canyon Fight: Buffalo Hunters vs. Plains Indians,” Wild West, June 2003, 46–52.

  13. The dialogue in this section, as recalled by Herman Lehmann, was recorded in Jones, Condensed History, 183–85.

  14. R. S. Mackenzie to Assistant Adjutant General, Dept. of the Missouri, Aug. 21, 1877, and Sept. 6, 1877, Box D62.137.118, FSMA; J. M. Haworth to William Nicholson, Aug. 26, 1877, Microfilm Roll M234/382, NARA-SW.

  15. Michael D. Pierce, The Most Promising Young Officer: A Life of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 168.

  16. William Nicholson to James M. Haworth, June 28, 1877, Microfilm Roll KA42, OHS.

  17. When a lawyer in Fredericksburg later wrote to thank Congressman Gustav Schleicher for his help in arranging Rudolph’s return, he added a thinly veiled criticism of Haworth’s inaction: “I do not believe [Gottlieb Fischer’s] boy would have been sent away from the Indians, had the father not have gone after him. I have learned that this young man had been at Ft. Sill, on the reservation, for two or three years, and no attention paid to it.” J. F. Estell to Gustav Schleicher, Dec. 23, 1877, Microfilm Roll M234/384, NARA-SW.

  18. The Comanches claimed that Rudolph Fischer was already married by 1871. Lawrie Tatum to Enoch Hoag, Mar. 11, 1871, Microfilm Roll M234/377, NARA-SW. At the time of his recovery, he was said to have had two children. San Antonio Daily Express, Aug. 31, 1877, 2. However, neither Fischer family records nor the Mormon genealogy database, www.familysearch.com, indicates that Rudolph had a wife or child prior to 1879. Kenn Knopp, “The Fischer/Fisher Family Tree,” copy in the author’s possession.

  19. San Antonio Daily Express, Sept. 6, 1877, 4.

  20. Galveston Weekly News, Sept. 17, 1877, 1; Frontier Echo [Jacksboro, Tex.], Sept. 21, 1877, 2.

  21. J. W. Davidson to Engelbert Krauskopf, Apr. 12, 1878, Box D62.137.118, FSMA.

  22. Jones, Condensed History, 233.

  23. J. W. Davidson to Assistant Adjutant General, Apr. 14, 1878, Box D62.137.118, FSMA.

  24. P. L. Hunt to Engelbert Krauskopf, June 16, 1879, Microfilm Roll KA8, OHS.

  25. Census Office, Department of the Interior, Report on Indians Taxed and Indians Not Taxed in the United States (Except Alaska) at the Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894), 637–38.

  CHAPTER 11: ONCE AND ALWAYS INDIANS

  1. Garland Perry and Kitti Focke, “A New Look at Nine Years Among the Indians,” in Herman Lehmann, Nine Years with the Indians, 1870–1879, ed. J. Marvin Hunter (3d ed.; San Antonio: Lebco Graphics, 1985), 286.

  2. William Modgling v. Malinda Modgling, Case No. 199, Mason County District Court, Minute Book 3, 586 (Oct. 6, 1890), Mason County Clerk’s Office, Mason, Texas.

  3. Eugene E. White to James W. Carson, May 19, 1888, Microfilm Roll KA16, OHS.

  4. The Canadian and American Mortgage and Trust Co. Ltd. v. Theodore A. Babb et al., Case No. 9399, 44th District Court, Dallas County, Texas (court papers in Dallas Public Library); Deed Records, Vol. 21, page 611, Wise County Clerk’s Office, Decatur, Texas.

  5. Both of Fischer’s wives were enumerated in his household in the Comanche census of 1895. The youngest child of Rudolph and Kahchacha, Helen Fisher Parker, was born in 1897. On July 27, 1901, Kahchacha married William Tivis, a Comanche who had studied at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and was active in reservation politics. Kenn Knopp, “The Fischer/Fisher Family Tree,” copy in the author’s possession; Barbara Goodin to the author, Mar. 28, 2004. Rudolph received annuities on behalf of his minor daughters by Kahchacha. A. C. Tonner to James F. Randlett, May 9, 1902, Microfilm Roll KA83, OHS. Rudolph and his family in Indian Territory anglicized the spelling of their German surname to “Fisher.”

  6. Deed Records, Vol. 7, pages 460–61, Gillespie County Clerk’s Office, Freder-icksburg, Texas.

  7. John S. Friend v. The United States and the Comanche Indians, Indian Depredation Claim No. 3379, 29 Ct. Cl. 425 (Oct. 29, 1894).

  8. U.S. House of Representatives, Report No. 1475, 54th Cong., 1st Sess.

  9. John H. Stephens to A. S. Stinnett, Nov. 28, 1911, reprinted in T. A. Babb, In the Bosom of the Comanches (1912; 2d ed., Dallas: Hargreaves Printing Co., 1923), 32.

  10. Clinton Smith to General and Special Claims Commissions, Dec. 18, 1929, and Donald S. Stormont to Clinton Smith, Jan. 2, 1930, in the possession of Smith descendants.

  11. John Collier to Charles D. Bates, Apr. 1, 1935, in the possession of Smith descendants.

  12. 49th Cong., 2d Sess., Ch. 119 (1887).

  13. The Comanches leased their allotments at annual rates varying from $0.25 to $3.00 per acre. William T. Hagan, United States—Comanche Relations: The Reservation Years (1976; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 272.

  14. Banc Babb Bell’s petition for adoption is documented in a long series of her correspondence with the Indian agency: Bianca Bell to Frank Baldwin, Aug. 6, 1897, and Sept. 14, 1897, Bianca Bell to James F. Randlett, Oct. 15, 1899, June 12, 1900, June 24, 1900, July 21, 1900, Aug. 6, 1900, and Dec. 17, 1900, Microfilm Roll KA1, OHS; Bianca Bell to James Randlett, Sept. 23, 1899, and Sept. 27, 1899, and Report of the General Council of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache tribes, Oct. 9, 10, and 11, 1899, Microfilm Roll KA48, OHS; James F. Randlett to Bianca Bell, Sept. 29, 1899, Microfilm Roll KA33, OHS; James F. Randlett to Bianca Bell, June 22, 1900, July 31, 1900, and Aug. 14, 1900, Microfilm Roll KA56, OHS; and James F. Randlett to Bianca Bell, Dec. 20, 1900, Microfilm Roll KA57, OHS. An oral account of Banc’s return to Indian Territory in 1897 is found in Mary Alice Mount Huff to Hazel H. Harelson, May 12, 1937, Indian Pioneer History Collection, OHS, XXX, 101–03.

  15. In 1878 an interpreter named E. L. Clark “took an enumeration of the band of about 40 Comanches (with whom Lehman [sic] was living) that surrendered to the military authorities.” Commissioner of Indian Affairs to James F. Randlett, July 24, 1901, “Section X—Comanche Indians—Captives—Herman Lehmann” (vertical file), OHS. However, by the time Lehmann made his application, Agent Randlett noted that “no such record for the year named [1878] can be found preserved among the Agency records.” James F. Randlett to commissioner of Indian Affairs, Aug. 5, 1901, Microfilm Roll KA61, OHS.

  16. Information on Herman Lehmann’s petition for adoption is drawn from voluminous correspondence with the Office of Indian Affairs: A. C. Tonner to James F. Randlett, Jan. 17, 1901, May 6, 1901, and Aug. 16, 1901, “Section X— Comanche Indians—Captives—Herman Lehmann” (vertical file), OHS; Herman Lehmann to James Randlett, Mar. 9, 1901, and Mar. 29, 1901, and affidavit of Quanah Parker, Aug. 26, 1901, Microfilm Roll KA1, OHS; James F. Randlett to Herman Lehmann, Mar. 16, 1901, Microfilm Roll KA59, OHS; affidavit of
Herman Lehmann, Apr. 15, 1901, James F. Randlett to commissioner of Indian Affairs, Apr. 13, 1901, and Apr. 16, 1901, and James F. Randlett to Herman Lehmann, May 13, 1901, Microfilm Roll KA60, OHS; A.C. Tonner to James F. Randlett, Sept. 30, 1901, Microfilm Roll KA62, OHS; endorsement, James Randlett, Oct. 21, 1901, Microfilm Roll KA61, OHS; A.J. Burton to James F. Randlett, May 16, 1902, Microfilm Roll KA42, OHS; and Herman Lehmann to U.S. Indian Agent, July 20, 1908, “Captives” vertical file, FSMA.

  17. 60th Cong., 1st Sess., Ch. 216, Section 28 (1908).

  CHAPTER 12: IN THE LIMELIGHT

  1. Leo Kelley, “The Daughter of Dawn: An Original Silent Film with an Oklahoma Indian Cast,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, LXXVII (fall 1999), 290–99.

  2. Ralph E. Friar and Natasha A. Friar, The Only Good Indian … The Hollywood Gospel (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1972), 304–05.

  3. Information about the 1924 Old Trail Drivers reunion was taken from: Frontier Times, Nov. 1924, 32, and Dec. 1924, 32; San Antonio Express, Nov. 2, 1924, 14A, Nov. 5, 1924, 6, Nov. 7, 1924, 10, and Nov. 9, 1924, 15; San Antonio Evening News, Nov. 6, 1924, 1, 2, 11, Nov. 7, 1924, 1, 2, and Nov. 8, 1924, 1, 2; San Antonio Light, Nov. 2, 1924, Part One, 9, Nov. 5, 1924, 1, Nov. 6, 1924, 16, Nov. 7, 1924, 24, and Nov. 10, 1924, 5; and New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 11, 1931, Magazine Section, 26.

  4. San Angelo Standard-Times, May 17, 2000 (reprint of column by Rick Smith).

  5. San Angelo Standard, May 14, 1926, 2.

  6. Sources on the making of Nine Years Among the Indians include: Frontier Times, Dec. 1924, 32, Feb. 1925, 8–9, and Sept. 1927, inside back cover (advertisement); John H. Jenkins, Basic Texas Books: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Works for a Research Library (1983; rev. ed., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1988), 336; and Gerda Lehmann Kothmann to the author, Feb. 20, 2001.