Everything Matters

Everything Matters
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Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Pre-Settlement Comanches

Pre-Settlement Comanches

The Tabernacle

            When folks say “Indian” in Eastland County, they typically mean “Comanche”. Alameda became a territory of the Comanche Nation at 2:17 p.m., November 11, 1740 (I made the date and time up, but the year is thought to be close).
            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 (I agree). They acknowledge that Anglo settlers invaded these Indians’ buffalo hunting grounds, destroying their mode of survival (I agree). They believe that Spaniards and later Anglos brought fatal diseases that wiped out Comanche Nation populations, much like germ warfare (I agree, though this part was accidental). The Comanches’ forcible exile to desolate “throw away” land reservations on the Clear Fork of the 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 during from around 1740 until 1874. They took control of this territory away from Wacos and/or Caddos (who also probably invaded the land of whatever civilization predated them). Even 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 trying to make their lives better. They were only viewed as an invasion force by whoever was there first. Displacement of whoever came before is a central theme to both civilizations’ arrival on the shores of Mansker Lake, at the epicenter of this valley.
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 area,
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 until at least 1849.
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. with Santa Anna and Neighbors in 1847 on horseback. The Owl was received by Sam Houston in the marble halls of the Senate. He saw American government buildings, thousands of American citizens in towns and cities along the way. He saw American armies, cannons, the vast nation that was hungry to move west in his direction. Old Owl recognized the future. He had to know that his practice role as peace chief was the Comanche’s best hope for survival.
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’s settlers retreated to Blair’s Fort for a time. Besieged settlers at Blair’s Fort retreated to Fort Shirley or Stephenville as well. Wagon loads of anxious Anglo pioneers fled to the towns of Stephenville, Weatherford and 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 ordered the surviving Comanches arrested, hoping to use them as hostages until all white captives held by the tribe were returned.
            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. The only known concentration of Comanche artifacts seems to be at the epoch-crossing Fulcrum Camp. This valley camp is watched over by an east facing cliff. It is
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. I have reviewed Rip Ford’s original memoirs from that visit. There are no better clues hidden in its pages. Hopefully someday, a comprehensive history of the Comanche reign in the 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 east of Ranger. He writes on October 20, 1837:
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.
October 21, 1837. We left camp after breakfast, taking what was left of our bear-meat along with us, and steered our usual course due north, and about 12 o’clock we struck the Leon River, opposite the mouth of Armstrong’s Creek. The country passed over today was very broken, and but little land on our route is fit for cultivation. We saw a small drove of buffalo, but our hunters did not get a shot at them, and the country where we found them was so broken we could not chase them on horseback. One of our men who had stopped behind awhile for some purpose, when he came up and reported that he had seen an Indian
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 where we struck it is a small rapid stream [this was October], shut in on both sides by high rocky hills. We crossed over to the northern side and “nooned” in a grove of pecans. These trees are full of the finest nuts we had ever seen – very large and their hulls so thin we could easily crack them with our fingers. Before we left, we gathered a pallet-full of them and strapped it on one of our pack mules.
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....
            October 22, 1837. After an early breakfast we saddled up and traveled as fast as the broken and rock state of the ground would permit....By noon we had only made 15 miles....
           

            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 to our south. In April 1844 and June 1845, Old Owl was contacted along the 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, locally called Plants Creek, which empties into the 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 headwaters the next year, or if this camp was a large, second camp existing at the same time as the one recorded by Ford on the 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, 1849:
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’s Indian Mountain, just southwest of Gorman. This site is about 15 miles from Alameda. The story goes that one day in the 1920’s a farmer was plowing his field, below Indian Mountain. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an Indian, in full feathered regalia, standing outside the fence. The farmer walked over. The Comanche had come to pay his last respects to fallen comrades (the last battle at this site was said to be in the 1870s). Later visits by Comanche warriors to this site reoccured several times through the years, it’s said.
            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

Lake area a prime theater of operations for Old Owl’s hunters. Whether The Owl

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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