Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
He asked the commissioners to allow the harvests to be gathered before the crisis began. The Texans refused. Generals Kelsey Douglas and Edward Burleson of the Texas militia and regular army advanced with large forces into the pine woods. Their orders were to drive the Indians out.
The Cherokees, who had tried to live like white men, tried to fight like white men. They met the Texans in a regular battle line, on July 15, 1839. Two days later they were in complete rout. Bowles was dead, killed brutally and unnecessarily.
Kelsey Douglas did not stop with the Cherokees. He recommended that the entire Indian rat's nest be burnt out, and all the villages and corn of the associated east Texas tribes be destroyed. By July 25, the Delawares, Shawnees, Caddoans, Kickapoos, Creeks, Muscogees, Biloxies, and Seminoles had all been harried across the Arkansas line. Only two tribes, the Coshatties and Alabamas, small and inoffensive, were allowed to remain, and these were removed to less fertile lands, on what was to be Texas's only permanent Indian reservation.
Some Cherokees under The Egg and Chief Bowles's son, John, tried to find refuge in Mexico. Burleson pursued this band to the Colorado with Tonkawa scouts. Here the band was attacked; its leaders were slain, and all the Indian equipage and livestock brought back.
This expulsion removed all Indians from the settled portions of the state, and opened up thousands of square miles for white settlement. At this time the Wacos and other Wichita tribes further west were beyond the colonization line; caught between Comanches and Texans, they seemed cowed.
Meanwhile, the war along the general line from present Belton to Austin to San Antonio was being waged brutally in the west. This was true "Indian" warfare, skirmish and raid, escape and attack. Companies of Rangers carried the fight to the Penateka Comanches with varying success. President Lamar had established the Texas capital at Austin, which was then fully within Comanche country; in fact, parties of mounted Indians on the surrounding hills above the valley of the Colorado watched the settlement being built. Lamar used the fact that Austin was in the geographical center of Texas as his excuse, but an underlying motive was to pull the settlers west. Lamar thought beyond Indians; he even had the far Pacific in mind.
The Penatekas were a formidable foe, as Bird's fate proved. But war, as Texans now waged it, became a trying sport. On January 9, 1840, three Penateka chieftains rode into San Antonio. They came boldly; San Antonio had long been "their" town, according to Comanche boast. Colonel Henry Karnes, a redheaded Ranger commander, met them for a parley.
The chiefs told Karnes that the tribes had agreed to ask the Texans for a peace. Karnes consented, but only on condition the Comanches returned all white prisoners, of which there were now about 200 in Indian hands. The Comanches promised to return again in twenty days.
Karnes wrote General Albert Sidney Johnston that he had no faith in Comanche promises, and he had not made prisoners of the three chiefs because they were too few to "guarantee the future." He recommended that commissioners be sent to San Antonio to meet with the Comanches, but that many troops also be sent, and that if the tribes did not return the promised white prisoners, those Indians who came to San Antonio should be held as hostages. Above all, Karnes urged that whoever was sent be able to act with decision and dispatch, with no dilly-dallying. Johnston accepted these recommendations in full, and sent three companies of the 1st Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Fisher marching to Bexar. Fisher was ordered to seize the Indians if they did not fulfill their promise to return all whites.
The three commissioners appointed to treat with the Indians were all soldiers: Fisher himself, the Texas Adjutant General, and Acting Secretary of War. The terms to be given the Comanches were: they must stay within certain boundaries to the west; they must recognize that Texas had the right to occupy "vacant" land, and settlers were not to be interfered with; they must not henceforth enter any white settlement.
On March 19, 1840, sixty-five Indians rode in—men, women, and children, led by twelve chiefs and the great civil chieftain, Muguara, or Mukwah-rah, the Spirit Talker. The Comanches were brightly attired and painted for council. But they came with only two captives, a sixteen-year-old white girl and a Mexican boy, who did not count.
The appearance of the girl, Matilda Lockhart, was to turn this day, as the spectator Mrs. Samuel Maverick wrote, into a "day of horrors." Mrs. Maverick helped bathe and dress Matilda, who told the white women she was "utterly degraded, and could not hold up her head again." Mrs. Maverick described her:
Her head, arms and face were full of bruises, and sores, and her nose actually burnt off to the bone—all the fleshy end gone, and a great scab formed on the end of the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh. She told a piteous tale of how dreadfully the Indians had beaten her, and how they would wake her from sleep by sticking a chunk of fire to her flesh, especially to her nose . . . her body had many scars from the fire.
The Lockhart girl was extremely intelligent. She had been with the Comanches two years and understood some of their tongue. She said the Indians planned to bring in the captives one by one, and bargain for each, this way figuring to get a higher price. She knew of thirteen more in her own camp.
Now, in the courthouse (called the Council House) in San Antonio, on the corner of Main Plaza and Market Street, Chief Muguara began to demand high prices for the remaining captives: ammunition, vermilion, blankets, and bangles. Meanwhile, a file of Texan soldiers surrounded the small, one-story, limestone building, Indian boys played outside, and a crowd of curious onlookers stood around. The Texas commissioners grimly asked why the other prisoners had not been delivered as promised. Muguara, bald and wrinkled, said they were with other tribes but could be bought. Then he said arrogantly: "How do you like that answer?"
Lamar's mustached captains liked it not at all. Fisher ordered a group of soldiers into the room; all three men were pale with fury at the appearance and story of the Lockhart girl. Through the interpreter, Muguara was told all the Indians would be imprisoned until the rest of the white captives arrived. Then, ransom would be talked. The interpreter at first refused to repeat this, saying the Comanches would fight. When he did convey the message, he turned and
fled from the room.
The Comanches responded with war screams. One went for the door and put his knife into the soldier who blocked his way. The Texas officers gave the order to open fire. Amid the crash of rifles, shrieks, and dense powder smoke, Comanches broke from the building and tried to flee to the river down the street. Indians, soldiers, and white onlookers were killed in a general melee and massacre. No Indian escaped; Muguara and all twelve chiefs died. Six Americans, including the Bexar sheriff and an officer, were killed and ten others wounded. Some of the Indian dead were women and children, but about 30 were caught and held.
A visiting judge was pierced and killed by an arrow as the young Indian boys outside the Council House joined the fight.
With the surviving Indians lodged in the calabozo or jail, a squaw was given a horse to ride to the Comanche camp. She was told that unless the Comanches brought in all white captives the prisoners in San Antonio would be killed. She was to have twelve days.
She never returned. A young white boy, who had been adopted into the tribe, told what occurred when this chief's wife reached the camp. The Penatekas went into a frenzy of despair—the losses were indeed hideous for any Comanche band. The women shrieked and howled and cut off fingers in mourning. The men gave the guttural moans for the dead. Horses were sacrificed for two days. Then, thirteen captives were roasted to death or killed in lingering, revolting ways.
From where the sun now stood, the Comanche nation was to observe no peace with Texas.
Three hundred Comanches rode near San Antonio. Chief Hears the Wolf (Isi-man-ica), with only one warrior, clattered into Main Plaza and circled it, screaming insults and challenges to battle. The plaza remained quiet; a voice from Black's Saloon, through an interpreter, informed the chief that the soldiers were at San José Mission—he could go there for a fight.
Hears the Wolf rode for San José. Here, Captain Read, in command during Fisher's illness, refused to fight, because the twelve-day truce still held. He invited Hears the Wolf to abide three days. But the Indians, too canny to charge riflemen behind walls and too mercurial to wait, thundered off. Read's sense of honor affronted Captain Lysander Wells and a considerable number of his command.
Wells used the term "coward"; the usual amenities were observed, and both officers perished in a pistol duel.
For some months the region around San Antonio lived in terror. The minutemen stood ready to ride at the sounding of the San Fernando Cathedral bell. Angry Comanches, who felt that they had been badly dealt with, infested the roads; no traveler was safe. But no major blow fell, and by midsummer it appeared the Indians were gone.
The Penatekas, Tanimas, Tenawas and other Southern Comanches had retired deep into Comanchería, to hold council with the High Plains Indians and Kiowas. They told their grievances against the Texan tribe. Hot-bloods from the associated bands, and the Kiowas, joined them.
Under the Comanche moon of August 1840, a huge band, numbering between 400 and 1,000 warriors, moved south. This array was led by Buffalo Hump, surviving war chief of the Penateka Comanches. They passed east of
San Antonio, near Gonzales, and struck deep into Anglo-Texas above the Nueces. They cut a swath of destruction, and sent men who saw them riding in all directions. On August 6, Buffalo Hump surrounded the old town of Victoria. He did something few Indian war leaders had ever done: he not only "treed" Victoria, Texas, but took it. The settlers, hastily banded together, held only one part of the town on August 7. Some fifteen people, including seven Negro slaves, were killed in Victoria as the Comanches rode howling through the streets. When they left, they drove a herd of nearly 2,000 horses ahead of them.
These horses, the Indians' gold, were to prove Buffalo Hump's undoing.
The marauders poured down Peach Creek, moving toward the Gulf in a great half-moon crescent. Militia companies turned out but could only hover on the Indian's trail and flanks. These troops were kept busy burying the dead. One corpse, the body of Parson Joel Ponton, was found with the soles of the feet sliced off; the Indians had dragged him along on the exquisitely tender stumps for miles before they took his scalp. All along the route houses went up in smoke and Texans died.
On August 8, Buffalo Hump arrived in Linnville, a little town on Lavaca Bay, which served as a seaport for San Antonio. Most of Linnville's citizens escaped by taking to boats. One, Judge John Hays, became so angry at the idea of Indians ransacking the town that he waded back to shore and stood shouting at the swarming horsemen, waving an empty shotgun. The Comanches rode around him; whether they respected courage or considered Hays mad was never understood.
The Indians spent all day pillaging and burning Linnville. Among their loot was two years' supply of merchandise consigned to Samuel Maverick and James Robinson. John Linn's warehouse was despoiled. Three whites and two Negroes, including the collector of customs, were killed here.
The toll for the Council House in San Antonio fight was considered even by Buffalo Hump; Comanche blood was well avenged. Now, carrying dozens of mule-loads of loot, many prisoners, and driving between 2,000 and 3,0000 stolen horses, the Comanches turned back. Sated, they rode for the high plateaus.
But dusty riders were pounding through the coastal prairie. Every male was turning out, from Lavaca, Gonzales, Victoria, and Cuero, and a hundred widely scattered farms. They were marshaled by the frontier captains, Tumlinson, Ben McCulloch, Matthew ("Old Paint") Caldwell, and Edward Burleson. A company pressed hard on the Indian trail, firing into them at times but lacking the strength to close and fight. Other riders ran for the Colorado settlements, seeking help. These reinforcements were to gather to intercept the Comanches at Plum Creek, approximately two miles from the later town of Lockhart.
At first, the retreating Comanches, with plenty of fresh horses, easily distanced their pursuit. But they bore too much loot. The mules slowed them, and the
caballado
or horse herd was unwieldy; it took many warriors to guard. If Buffalo Hump had cut back south of San Antonio he might have made it. Instead, arrogantly, he chose to ride northwest adjacent to the Colorado. Ahead of him, Ward, James Bird, John Moore and their companies gathered at Plum Creek. On August 11, General Felix Huston of the regular army arrived, and despite some protests by the frontiersmen, took command. On the 12th,
Burleson and a hundred men under Jones, Wallace, and Hardeman rode in. The Bastrop militia arrived.
Tonkawa scouts, under Chief Placido, reported the Comanches were slowly moving north, raising a great dust trail. They would soon reach the Big Prairie, not far from Plum Creek, which was a branch of the San Marcos.
The Texans dismounted and waited for the Indians in the brush that screened the creek. When the great Comanche cavalcade moved out on the prairie adjoining the stream, Huston, Burleson, and Caldwell rode from the brush at a walk, two great lines of horsemen slowly coming together.