Pre-Settlement Comanches
The Tabernacle
When
folks say “Indian” in Eastland
County Alameda
became a territory of the Comanche Nation at 2:17 p.m. , November
11, 17 40
The
recorded history of the Comanche epoch in Texas , written from an Anglo point of view,
is surprisingly robust. This account limits itself to events that occurred near
or directly impacted the Alameda
– Cheaney Box.
Modern coffee shop
opinion supports the Comanches’ right to live along the Leon River Valley Brazos , then later to Oklahoma killed their chance to continue on
a proud path of triumph stretching back thousands of years. This is all
incontrovertible, based upon the evidence.
The comprehensive
truth of what happened around Alameda
from 1740 – 1874 confirms all of this. Taking both sides into consideration,
the full truth is more
complicated, however Settlers
eventually took the valley away from the Comanches “the people”, using the
strategies both (intentional and accidental) outlined above.
Ironically, the
Comanche’s spirit theology of The Land reflects more accurately what actually
happened. The People belonged to the land, not the land to the People. Anglo
settlers saw that world in reverse – this
land is mine..NOT yours.
The Comanche
exercised military/political control over the Leon River Valley Alameda ’s Clovis Man was
an immigrant, coming across the Bering Strait ,
walking from northwestern North America to
this place. No people were truly “from here”. No people were truly native. Only
The Land endures.
There were (and
are) thousands of well-meaning Comanches – men, women and children. Good people
– people you’d enjoy talking to, learning more about, being friends with. There
also were (and are) thousands of well-meaning folks of European ancestry. Most
of these people, you’d enjoy spending time with.
Both peoples
expanded into the Leon
River Valley Mansker Lake
Both group’s
motivations are colored by racial and ethno-historical prejudices written into
each account. I found many stories specific to the Mansker Lake
written from Anglo settler points
of view. Sadly, I found no Comanche accounts, specific to the same area, though
their stories from other locales exist.
There are
instances of Comanches and German settlers getting along near Fredricksberg to
the south, and sporadically in other settings. The western-moving American
Frontier and the-southern-moving, borderless nomadic culture of the Comanche
Nation, made eventual conflict inevitable. Unspeakable atrocities were
committed by both sides. Treaties were made and broken (usually by Texians and
Americans). Leaders from both sides could not always keep their brothers in
line.
Peace had a chance
while Old Owl and Sam Houston were alive. That flicker of opportunity came
briefly back to life when Robert Simpson Neighbors was Indian agent. Two of
these three men fell in the line of duty, one assassinated by enemy disease,
the other by a bullet in the back.
Old Owl is the key
to understanding the Comanche in Alameda
– Cheaney prior to the 1859 arrival of its first white settlers. Old Owl was the Penatuhkah’s civil peace chief, a co-chief
to the Comanches’ powerful War Chieftain Santa Anna. Old Owl’s camp was the
Comanche headquarters on the Leon
River
Rip Ford describes Old Owl:
The Comanches arrived under their principal chief,
Mopochocupee – the Owl. Prince Owl was quite a respectable looking savage. He
had none of the swagger so ostentatiously displayed by bastard Rangers, and
self-styled frontier celebrities, who throw crowds into spasms of
astonishment and admiration by reciting the daring deeds
they never performed. His Highness was ready to accept anything in the shape of
a present from an old tooth-brush to a cloth coat.
When I visited the Comanche Nation in Lawton , I was told that the “real decision
maker” was often hidden behind the scenes, protected in case of treachery from
assassination or capture. The “chiefs” that were in contact with military
authorities, were sometimes only the mouthpiece of these “shadow” leaders. It’s
impossible to know if Old Owl was the true Comanche decision maker, but his
recorded actions and words indicate wisdom and a true leader’s heart for his
people. He was respected by Rip Ford, Sam Houston and Robert Simpson Neighbors.
Old Owl visited Washington D.C.
Old Owl’s
realization had to be hard on him. The Comanches had single-handedly forced the
mighty Spaniards from Texas .
They had ousted or enslaved every other Indian tribe they encountered. If the
Comanche was ever defeated in a war prior to the Texian/American era, this
defeat is not recorded.
From 1859 until
1872, the Comanche guerillas won most of the battles along the Leon River
Valley Mansker Lake Fort
Shirley Fort
Worth fearing for their lives. Many went back east,
never to return.
The band of Comanches then operating
in Central Texas were the Penatuhkahs, the Honey-Eaters. There were instances
of peace between the Comanche Nation and white settlers. The Council House Battle of 1840 effectively ended Comanche
trust in Texians forever, however (their mistrust was reconfirmed repeatedly).
Thirteen
Comanche chiefs were killed when fighting broke out at the Council House peace
council in San Antonio .
Republic of Texas President Mirabeau Lamar
Most of the thirteen slain chiefs
were Penatuhkah. Buffalo Hump assumed Penatuhkah leadership, mounting several
retaliatory strikes, but his forces were defeated at Plum Creek. Santa Anna
rose to fill the role of Warrior Chief. The rise of Peace Chief Old Owl may
have been contemporaneous to this time period. The Penatuhkahs became bitter
enemies of Texians.
Arrowheads
thought to be Comanche are scattered all over the Leon River Valley
timbered along its winding waters,
though a wide, grassy area for teepees, grazing and community was available. A
nearby peak could connect its smoke signals to Caddo Peak and the Santa Anna
Peaks to the southwest; to Ranger Station Peak to the north (then north to
Gunsight Mountain or east to South Gordon Peak); and also to Desdemona’s
Jameson Peak, then south to Comyn Peak and then Round Mountain in Brown County.
Smoke signals from
this Fulcrum Camp site would have gotten reception from all four directions of
the compass, and yet the campsite sits low topographically, protected from the
weather, and enemy surprise.
I
feel a certain kinship with some of the narrators of this story – I call them
storytellers. Some are alive, most are not – at least in the conventional
sense. And yet, along the trail, they were with me, speaking stories through
their actions, or in some cases only leaving clues. I can offer no other
explanation.
I
have from time to time felt led by Old Owl, his Indian name Mopochocupee. In
1849, RIP Ford documents his camp “on the headwaters of the Leon .” A much
later book by Kenneth Neighbours suggests that this ‘headwaters’ location might
have been where Armstrong Creek hits the Leon River Alameda
– Cheaney Box will be written. As of this writing, the clues still hold their
breathy, waiting patiently in the woods.
The first Anglo
traveler through our parts that I can positively identify was Big Foot Wallace. He passed slightly to our east, then may have turned west,
coming up Bear Canyon October 20, 18 37
We
took our course again, which was about due north and, crossing a range of
mountains at a place called “Walkers Pass”, we traveled over a rough broken
country to the South Leon Creek, a distance, I suppose of 15 or 16 miles, where
we “nooned.” We saw some fresh buffalo signs on the way and our old hunters began
to whet their bills for fat steaks, marrow-bones, and “humps,” but as yet we
have seen none of the animals.
We
found the grass very fine on the bottoms of this creek, and have concluded to
lay over until tomorrow, and give our horses a chance to recover, as they have
had but poor grazing for the last 48 hours.
We
had been in camp but a little while, when one of the boys found a “bee tree”
which we cut down, and took from it at least five gallons of honey. In the
evening I went out hunting, but saw no game to shoot at. On my way back to camp
I stopped to rest for a few minutes in a little canon that lay between two
rocky hills covered with thick chaparral. After a while, my attention was
attracted by a noise in the bushes and looking around I saw a large bear coming
directly towards me. I sat perfectly still, and he did not notice me, but came
slowly along, now and then stopping to turn over a stick or rock, in search, I
suppose, of insects.
When
within twenty feet of me I took sight of his fore-shoulders and fired, and he
fell dead in his tracks. This was my first bear. He was very fat and would have
weighed, I suppose, three hundred pounds. I went back to camp, which was not
more than half a mile off, and returning with two of the men to assist me, we butchered
him and packing the meat on a horse, we soon had some of it roasting before our
fires. What a feast we had that night on “bear-meat and Honey!” If the mess of
pottage that Esau sold his birthright for was as good as bear meat and honey,
and he had a good appetite, I believe the poor fellow was excusable.
In
the night we saw a long line of light to the westward of us, and supposed the
Indians had fired the prairie. The night was pleasant and warm.
following on our
trail, but he was a “scary” sort of fellow and we thought his story doubtful.
We
passed a singular chain of high bald hills today. Looking at them from a
distance we almost fancied we were approaching a considerable city, so much did
they resemble houses, steeples, etc. They were entirely destitute of timber.
The
Leon River
In
the evening we continued our route up Armstrong’s Creek, and struck camp a
little after sundown near one of its headsprings. The valley along the creek is
very beautiful and the soil rich. Our hunter today killed a fat buffalo cow on
the way, and we butchered her and packed the meat into the camp. That was the
first buffalo meat I ever tasted, and I thought it better even than bear meat.
The flesh of an old bull however, I have found out since is coarse, tough, and stringy,
but the hump is always good, and so are the “marrow-bones” and tongue.
Just
after we had camped, one of our men named Thompson, while staking out his horse
was bitten on the hand by a rattlesnake. It was a small one,
however, and he
suffered but little from the effects of the bite. We scarified the wound with a
penknife and applied some sod to it and next morning he was well enough to
travel. I do not think the bite of the rattlesnake is as often fatal as people
generally suppose...
Night
clear and cool – cool enough to make it very pleasant to sleep by our fires.
Toward midnight we had
an alarm that aroused all hands very suddenly. The sentry on post fired his gun
off accidentally, and we supposed, of course that the Indians were upon us. We
were all up and ready with our guns by the time the sentinel came in and told
us it was a false alarm. I was so completely roused up by the excitement and
bustle that I did not get to sleep for more than an hour afterward. The little
breeze that rustled among the leaves and dead grass the early part of the night
had died away, and a dead silence had settled over all. Not a sound could be
heard, except the howling of a solitary “cayote” far off among the hills, and
the nipping of our animals as they cropped the rank grass that grew around us.
The silence was oppressive, and when one of the men muttered in his sleep or
one of the animals coughed or snorted, it was an actual relief....
From an Alameda point of view, this memoir tells us
that in 1837 there were buffalo close by, and that there were no Indians then
encamped where Armstrong Creek hits the Leon River Colorado
and San Saba Rivers. In 1848, Neighbors, John
McLennan, Jim Shaw, and Old Owl arrived at the Tenawish and Nocona Indian camp
on Lewis Creek Brazos near the modern
town of Seymour .
“Neighbors found in the camp about two hundred and fifty Comanche lodges, fifty
Tonkawa lodges, and ten Wichita lodges. The great chief Pah-ah-yuca, head chief
of the Tenawish and Noconas, arrived in the evening, bringing with him the
hostile Tenawish, Nocona, and Kotsoteka chiefs, in order to put an end to the
hostilities.”
It is not known if
this Seymour
camp later moved to the Leon
River Leon .
In any case, in 1849 Robert Simpson Neighbors wanted to lay out a trail to the
upper Rio Grande
through El Paso .
Neighbors left San Antonio ,
and passed through Austin .
Dr. John S. Ford (“Rip” Ford) joined his expedition. They went to a Torrey
Trading House near Waco
and spent several days getting ready. Neighbors hired Penatuhkah
Buffalo Hump as his guide. They left the North Bosque Settlement, March 23, 18 49
Preliminaries
were arranged without trouble. The expedition set out before the middle of
March. It was a motley crowd. The Americans were Major Neighbors, Doc Sullivan,
A. D. Neal, and the writer [Rip Ford]. Captain Jim Shaw, a
Deleware, was
interpreter. The other Indians were: Joe Ellis and Tom Coshattee, Shawnees ; Patrick Goin, a
Choctow, and John Harry, a Delaware .
A band of Comanches traveled with us too.
One
morning Buffalo Hump awoke the camp with a medicine song. Ford said, “It
stirred up recollections of boyhood – the calling of higs – the plaintive notes
of a solitary bull frog – the bellowing of a small bull, and all that sort of
noises. Anon the awful melody of the sonorous gong was reproduced; the next
moment the mournful howl of the hungry wolf saluted the ear, which gradually
softened into something like the gobble of a turkey. It might have been a choice asortment [sic]
of Comanche airs gotten up to amuse and do honor to the Supervising Agent, but
it failed to solace his white companions.
The performance commenced about an hour before daylight and did little
to soothe the slumbers of the morning”.
Old Owl
led the expedition into his camp “on the headwaters of the Leon ” on the
fourth day:
About forty or fifty children who were in the
creek bathing ran for the wigwams crying “pav-o-ti-vo, pav-o-ti-vo”, white man,
white man, as loud as they could…We encamped near the Indians; numerous
delegations of children came to look at us and our trappings. The squaws also
evinced curiosity; many of them had never seen an American. We had time to
examine the wigwams and to learn something of every day life among the
Comanches…A deaf and dumb
woman attracted our attention. She was the only person we
saw laboring under these defects among several
thousands [author italics] of Indians. A very old woman was frequently in
our camp. The Comanches said she had seen more than a hundred summers. She
appeared to have things her own way: found fault, lectured, and scolded like
other old feminines. She had the appearance of a skeleton moving around with
skin on it…It was decided that Buffalo Hump should be our guide. He managed to
get most of his pay in advance. Mopochocupee separated from us. Buffalo Hump’s
band was traveling south of west and rather down the country old Owl stayed
behind.
I’m not
convinced that the “Upper Leon Headwaters near an intersecting creek” site that
Rip Ford speaks of is in fact where Armstrong Creek hits the Leon . I’ve been
to this site. The intersection looks little different than most of the Leon in
Eastland County, farther north there were archeological findings of a large
camp on the west side of the Armstrong Creek site found, but little on the east
side, as Ford reports.
A campsite
farther north, inside the Alameda
– Cheaney Box makes more sense. Based upon the cited “several thousands”
population of Old Owl’s Leon River camp, our topography better fits the
descriptions and repeated archeological findings at this location make the
Alameda – Cheaney site a much stronger suspect.
If the
expedition’s turn “south of west” back toward the Colorado River had been from
this alternate Alameda – Cheaney site, the expedition could’ve followed the
anecdotal Spanish Trail, said to lead away from within four
miles of this site (if this Spanish Trail truly existed, it was probably
originally an Indian trail).
Tragedy
engulfed this Comanche “township” after the Neighbors expedition departed the
Leon River Camp, from which the camp never probably recovered:
Shortly
after Major Neighbors left them in 1849 a scourge of cholera carried away three
hundred souls within a few weeks’ time. The faithful Old Owl and the
intelligent Santa Anna were numbered with the dead. These losses demoralized
the southern branch of the tribe, and henceforth disintegration worked
rapidly…As soon as they recovered from the cholera scourge, the Penatekas held
a general council and tried to select a head-chief to succeed Old Owl. One
account says a chief named Sanaco was chosen, but Buffalo Hump and Katumse,
another chief, visited Fredericksburg
to report that the honor had gone to Buffalo Hump. The title was an empty one,
from this time on the Penetekas themselves agreed that they had no common
leader. There was no one among them who could take the place of Santa Anna and
Old Owl.
I guess
now would be the time to relate the story of Comanche County Indian Mountain Alameda .
The story goes that one day in the 1920’s a farmer was plowing his field, below
Indian Mountain
Though
anecdotal, given the high honor and clear-eyed theology behind Comanche beliefs
about death, I have to believe Comanche oral tradition kept up with the
locations of many of their warriors’ final resting places. That geographic
information, if it truly exists, is still hidden far across a ripped apart
cultural divide, not yet fully healed. One hopes that in the future Old Owl’s
final resting place may be located, safeguarded and honored as an early leader
and patron of Alameda and Cheaney’s history, in addition to being one of the
Penatuhkah’s wisest leaders.
The Owl
uniquely understood what was happening to his world, and tried to ease his people
peacefully from one epoch to the next. One wonders what might have happened if
The Owl and Santa Anna had survived until 1859, when Alameda’s settlers began
to arrive.
The
exact location of Old Owl’s camp is unknown. It is clear that at most it was
a short ride away from the Alameda – Cheaney Box. Neighbors’ description
matches a
location inside this box. Even if
the site is at the Armstrong Creek location, supporting a
population of at least 3,000 Comanche citizens
would have made the rich Mansker
camped here, or merely hunted
here, this wise, unassuming sage walked this place. Old
Owl’s peaceful spirit sleeps
inside the Leon River Valley
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