The Great Comanche Raid
Perhaps one of the most significant events in US history took place way back in March of 1840.
It ignited thirty years of brutal, unrelenting, guerrilla warfare in America’s southeast, and the subsequent effect on the national psyche lies somewhere between immeasurable and astronomical.
It is a tale of desperation, hope, greed and revenge, all steeped in the incomprehensible manmade horrors of the Old West.
This is the story – of the Great Comanche Raid.
In early 1840, times were tough for the tribe of Native Americans known as the Comanche.
Several years of war with their rival Apache, as well as a catastrophic outbreak of smallpox, had severely weakened the numerous Comanche warbands. Another year of fighting might see their people wiped from the earth, so instead, they sued for peace.
Three Comanche emissaries rode out to the newly Texan city of San Antonio to meet with city officials, and were told that if the Comanche returned a dozen Anglo-American captives unharmed, then peace would be forthcoming.
The emissaries agreed to return with the captives in just over three weeks, but it was a promise they couldn’t keep.
Throughout their history, the Comanche were never a single, unified people.
Despite being united by language, there were at least twelve different sub-divisions of the tribe operating almost entirely independent of one another, as well as up to thirty-five independent warbands with shifting loyalties to the larger groups.
On top of that, the Comanche differed from their fellow Native Americans, in that there was no official power structure within their warbands. If a young Comanche warrior was skilled and charismatic enough, he could defy the wishes of his tribal elders, then lead a raid against just about whoever the hell he wanted...
...and the Comanche were prolific raiders.
The word ‘Comanche’ is taken from a Ute word meaning “he who attacks me all the time”, and it was through this culture of war and raiding that they acquired so many prisoners in the first place. Yet their division presented the peace emissaries with a huge problem.
Because the Anglo-American captives were spread out among the different groups and warbands, convincing each to give them up proved impossible. Relinquishing a captive meant losing a valuable source of slave labor, meaning their captors wanted ample compensated in exchange for their release.
In end, the emissaries were only able to negotiate the release of a single American prisoner within the allotted timeframe.
On March 19th, the day of the Texan’s deadline, a Comanche delegation of twelve chiefs and fifty-three warriors returned to San Antonio.
They had come dressed for the occasion. Some wore long braids woven with coyote fur, and decorated with brightly colored feathers. Others wore huge, Buffalo horn headdresses with their faces painted a garish, sanguine red. It made for a magnificent sight, but it was one the residents of San Antionio found terrifyingly intimidating.
When the Comanche met with Texan officials, one of the warriors dismounted, then dragged a filthy, frail young girl from the back of his horse.
Sixteen-year-old Matilda Lockhart had been captured two years earlier while working on her cousin’s farm, and her return was supposed to be a cause for celebration. But when the emaciated, mutilated girl was revealed to a waiting crowd, her appearance had the opposite effect.
Mary Maverick, the woman who helped nurse Matilda back to health, said that she was “utterly degraded, and could not hold up her head again. Her head, arms, and face were full of bruises and sores, and we were horrified to discover that her nose had been burned off. All the fleshy end [was] gone, and a great scab had formed, with both nostrils 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 her sleep by sticking a chunk of fire to her flesh, especially to her nose”.
Texan authorities were quick to question Matilda on the health of her fellow captives.
She confirmed that at least a dozen of them were still alive, including four of her relatives, and claimed the various warbands would only release them if larger compensation was offered.
This slightly contradicts the explanation of the Comanche peace delegates, who rightfully blamed the lack of unity among their people. Only one warband had agreed to release a prisoner, and while the others were open to negotiations, no agreement had been reached thus far. It was only then that the Comanche revealed the price for each captive’s release, and it constituted a huge amount of food, medicine, ammunition and blankets.
While some argue that this was a simple miscommunication, Texan authorities viewed it as a slap in the face. In their eyes, the Comanche had brazenly defied the terms of their agreement, and they sought to detain the peace delegates until the remaining American captives were released.
The Comanche were led to a one-story building next to the town’s jail, known as the Council House.
Here, the warriors and their chieftains sat on the floor, as was their custom, while the Texans sat on chairs. A translator was then told to inform the Comanche that they were under arrest, but to the Texans' surprise, he refused.
The visibly anxious translator claimed that, if he did so, the Comanche would attempt to fight their way out. The Texans responded by placing several armed militia members in the room, before reissuing their order to the translator.
He did as they asked, then promptly fled.
Upon learning that they were detained, the Comanche began to reach for their weapons. The Texan militiamen replied by levelling their shotguns and muskets, while warning the warriors against belligerence; but their caution fell on deaf ears.
At once, the Comanche rushed their would-be captors with knives and tomahawks drawn. The militiamen opened fire, wounding and killing several with their opening salvo, but they were quickly overwhelmed.
In the blood drenched chaos of close quarters fighting, the Texans didn’t stand a chance.
Some accidentally shot each other in the confusion, while the battle-hardened Comanche warriors simply cut them to ribbons. They moved like lightning, slashing and stabbing and screeching their war cries.
The Texans were dead in seconds.
Outside the Council House, the remaining Comanche heard the blood curdling cries coming from inside, and descended into a panic.
Many believed the Texans had set a trap for them, and began firing arrows at just about anyone who came into view. At least one unarmed civilian was killed when an arrow cleaved its way into their skull. They died where they lay, with the smell of gun smoke in their nostrils, and Comanche war cries in their ears.
Once they had cleared a path of escape, the Comanche began to flee, but were pursued by a number of militia reinforcements. The militiamen’s fire was wild, and a number of Texan civilians were killed in the crossfire. On the other hand, the Comanche’s arrows were as precise as they were deadly.
By the time a Comanche warrior was around twelve to thirteen years old, they were such skilled archers that they were able to shoot horseflies out of the air at short ranges. What’s more, a highly efficient method of shooting meant a young Comanche could fire off three arrows in little over one and a half seconds. Compare that to the thirty second reload time of 19th century muskets, or the limited capacity of relatively cumbersome revolvers, which were considered to be the cutting edge of military technology.
Take the example of a Texan officer by the name of Lieutenant Dunnington.
At the outbreak of hostilities, Dunnington pulled his pistol, and aimed it at the head of a Comanche female. She was able to shoot an arrow with such force, that it passed through Dunnington’s chest, and buried itself in the wall behind him, all before Dunnington could even pull the trigger.
The stunned officer was able to reply in turn, and blew the woman’s brains out before collapsing to the ground. His final words, having mistook the woman for a younger male warrior, were “I killed him, but I believe he’s killed me too”.
By the late afternoon, when the Comanches found themselves completely outnumbered, and hopelessly surrounded, the decision was made to surrender to the Texans. Thirty-five of their number had been killed in the fighting, while the remaining twenty-nine were taken to the town jail as prisoners. Yet their capture had come at a heavy cost.
Seven Texans had been killed outright, including a judge and the town sheriff, with dozens of others being treated for serious injuries.
These injuries were treated in part by a German surgeon by the name of Dr Weidman, who’s story is so fascinatingly horrifying that it’s worthy of note.
Weidman happened to be in San Antionio on the orders of Tsar Nicolas the First of Russia, who had assigned him the task of studying the relatively new Republic of Texas.
As thanks for his services, the San Antionio authorities offered Weidman ample financial compensation, but he proposed a considerably more gruesome form of requital. Instead of the money, Weidman requested the bodies of two slain Comanche warriors, with the intention of returning them to Europe for study.
His wish was granted, and two days later, he boiled the bodies in a highly toxic chemical bath, to strip away the flesh and organs, and secure the preserved skeletons. Then, to dispose of the foul-smelling liquid remains of the two Comanches, Dr Weidman decided pour the mess into San Antionio’s only supply of drinking water, causing untold suffering to the unsuspecting townsfolk.
Dr Weidman went from hero to villain in little over forty-eight hours, and once his heinous act of pollution was discovered, he was promptly chased out of town.
Meanwhile, back at the town’s jail, a single Comanche prisoner was released in the condition he relay a message to the rest of his people.
If all fifteen American prisoners were released unharmed within twelve days, the surviving Comanche peace delegates would be allowed to live. If not, they would be executed.
Exactly one week later, a Texan woman by the name of Mrs. Webster stumbled into San Antonio with her three-year-old child in tow. Some reports state that Mrs. Webster had escaped from nineteen months of Comanche captivity, but if she made it to San Antionio alive, it’s only because her captors allowed her to.
She was questioned on the fate of her fellow captives, but was unaware of their condition.
Days went by, with no sign of the Comanche or their prisoners. Then finally, on the day of the deadline, another band of Comanches rode into San Antonio with three Texan captives in tow.
One of them was a young boy named Booker, son of the previously freed Mrs. Webster. He too was asked what the condition of the remaining captives was. The story he told was beyond horrifying.
When word of the Council House shootout reached the Comanches, they were enraged. The wives of the slain warriors demanded vengeance, and when it was granted to them, the methods of torture they conjured up were the stuff of nightmares.
One Texan captive was slowly roasted to death over an open fire. Another was slowly dismembered, with the Comanches cauterizing the amputations to prevent blood loss, and prolong their victim’s suffering. Booker Webster had also heard of another captive Texan, who was beaten, bound, then laid next to an ant hill. The Comanche then sliced off the prisoner’s eyelids, then watched as the ants devoured the soft tissue of their unprotected eyeballs.
Other methods of torture employed by the Comanche involved the use of hot coals. Victims sometimes had white-hot pieces of firewood stuffed into their mouths, or were tied down before it was heaped on top of their stomachs and genitals.
As you can imagine, the news horrified the Texans, who flat out refused to release their own Comanche prisoners. They were later moved from the city jail to a US Army encampment at the head of the San Antonio River, but escaped in dribs and drabs over the years that followed.
In the aftermath of the Council House shootout, and their chiefs’ permanent detention by Texan officials, the Comanche hungered for revenge.
The war chief of the Penateka warband, a man named Buffalo Hump, began riding between neighboring Comanche groups to converse with their warriors. At each stop, he made the case for a unified act of vengeance; a single, brutal riposte that would avenge their fallen and captured brethren.
Over the course of that summer, the young war chief gathered up a raiding party of between four and five hundred Comanche warriors, and they began raiding the smaller settlements between Austin and San Antonio. With each raid, the war party grew stonger and stronger, until finally they were ready for much larger game.
On August 6th of 1840, citizens of the fledgling settlement of Victoria awoke to a harrowing sight.
Almost six hundred heavily armed Comanche warriors, resplendent in their martial finery, whooped their war cries as they galloped towards Victoria. They’d been caught completely unprepared, and they paid for their lack of diligence in blood.
The Comanche swept through the town, slaughtering as they went, and when the opportunity presented itself, they scalped their fallen victims with glee. The quick and the fortunate were able to barricade themselves inside homes and businesses, while those with rifles took pot shots at the Comanche from windows and balconies.
The warriors killed around two dozen civilians, looted numerous stores and warehouses, then vanished almost as quickly as they’d appeared.
Two days later, the Comanches arrived at the small port of Linnville, northeast of modern-day Port Lavaca.
Thanks to the advanced warning from Victoria, the vast majority of Linnville’s citizens were able to escape unharmed. They simply boarded the boats docked in the town’s harbor, and sailed out to a distance the Comanche were unwilling to pursue them. Yet his meant they were forced to watch as their homes were smashed, soiled and looted by the vengeful warriors, who carted off the modern-day equivalent of $9,000,000 worth of goods.
Over the course of the next few hours, the jubilant warriors relished their moment of victory. They dressed themselves in a colorful cavalcade of Texan clothes, drank themselves legless on looted hooch, and took a horrifying amount of pleasure in torturing their captives to death.
Only six of Victoria’s citizens had been unable to escape in time, one of whom was a man named Hugh Oran Watts, who had delayed his escape to retrieve a family heirloom.
Hugh’d probably heard stories of the Comanche’s brutality, yet it’s likely he didn’t know exactly what that entailed. But thanks to a serious error of judgement, he received a full and comprehensive education on what it meant to be a Comanche prisoner.
It was standard practice for Comanche warriors, as well as other Great Plans tribes, to inflict unspeakable horrors on those they defeated in battle. But this was not a moral decision, and those who employed such barbarity cannot truly be described as evil.
You see, in a society where courage was prized above all, being tortured to death offered a warrior the opportunity to prove himself worthy of the title. To die with fortitude was a thing of great honor, and since he would be shown no mercy, he would show none in return.
It’s not clear how Hugh Watts died on the day of the Linnville raid, but it’s safe to say that it would've been agonizingly slow, and unimaginably painful.
At the time, Linnville was the second largest port in Texas, and capturing such a large town was a momentous occasion for many of the Comanche warriors.
Yet opting to savor the moment proved to be their downfall.
One of the great military strengths of all Native American tribes was their incredible mobility, and the success of a raid rested not just on the speed and surprise of the attack, but also the urgency of the withdrawal. In sacking and burning Linnville, the Commanche had given the pursuing Texas Rangers enough time to coordinate their forces, and plan an attack.
Volunteer companies from all over east and central Texas converged on Linnville, and they eventually tracked the fleeing Comanches to a place called Plum Creek, not far from modern-day Lockhart. Around sixty Comanche warriors were killed in the first few minutes of the Ranger’s ambush, and the remainder were forced to flee with only what they could carry.
There’s no doubt that, thanks to the element of surprise, the pursuing Rangers could have run the bloodied warband down and slaughtered them; but as they rode through the Comanche campground, they made a startling discovery. Thousands of dollars in silver bullion was discovered in the packs of several mules. The rangers were faced with a choice, do their job, or succumb to their greed. They chose the latter.
Whether or not this was a deliberate ploy from the ever-cunning Comanche, it’s not for me to say. But the fact remains, the Ranger’s greed was the warband’s salvation, and thus marked the end of the Great Comanche Raid of 1840.
The cycle of violence would continue for decades afterwards, with hideous injustices, betrayals and atrocities committed by both sides.
The morality of westward expansion, and the philosophy of Manifest Destiny, will be debated and scrutinized until there’s no one felt to talk about them.
But when talk stops, and the sun sets over the land that’s yours and mine, we can take comfort in the relative peace and security that most of us enjoy today.
Because coexistence is always preferable to killing.