The Comanches' Gettysburg

Today marks the 175^th anniversary of the Texas Comanches’ “Gettysburg.”  The Battle of Plum Creek, fought right here near little Lockhart, where I live, was the beginning of the end for the most feared Native Americans of the southern plains. 

Like General Lee, the Comanche’s had great confidence in their abilities and their reputation. In their pride, like Lee, they simply reached too far from their secure home base in the hill country of Central Texas. 

Here is what the “Today In Texas History” daily e-mail message has to say about it:

“On this day in 1840, Gen. Felix Huston, Col. Edward Burleson, and others, including Ben McCulloch, fought a running battle with a large party of Comanche Indians. The battle of Plum Creek occurred as a result of the Council House Fight, in which a number of Comanche leaders were killed. Chief Buffalo Hump led a retaliatory attack down the Guadalupe valley east and south of Gonzales. 

The band numbered perhaps as many as 1,000, including the families of the warriors, who followed to make camps and seize plunder. The Comanches swept down the valley, plundering, stealing horses, and killing settlers, and sacked the town of Linnville. The Texans' volunteer army caught up with the Indians on Plum Creek, near present-day Lockhart, on August 11 and soundly defeated them the next day.”

That summary is scant on details, some of which are humorous, some sad, some gruesome. A fine historian, Donaly Brice wrote “the book” about the Battle of Plum Creek in 1987, back before the internet changed everything. Now there are primary sources on the net in addition to the sources Donaly had access to, but his book is still the one to read.

The first chapter of Tangled Honor is my version of the battle seen through the eyes of young John McBee, who was then a new immigrant to Texas. I had great fun with the story, interweaving historical and fictional characters.

As to some of the details missing in the summary set forth by the Texas Day by Day website, here’s a sampling:

The 200 or so Texans were aided by 13 Tonkawa Indians, who ran next to the white men’s horses over thirty miles from Bastrop to Plum Creek where the militia caught up to the Comanches.  The ‘Tonks’ were recorded as having indulged in a bit of ceremonial cannibalism after the battle, fallen Comanches being the main course.

One well-to-do captive woman wore a whalebone corset which apparently frustrated the braves who initially tried to ‘have their way’ with the lady, so they tied her to a tree. When the battle began, an Indian warrior shot the woman with an arrow, but the corset provided enough of a shield to keep the arrow from fatally injuring her. She was rescued.

During the raid on Linville on the Texas coast, the Comanches plundered a warehouse, finding a plethora of finery, much of which they wore or used for the rest of their raid. Braves and chiefs are recorded as wearing top-hats, carrying silk parasols, and one chief wore a black cutaway coat backwards. Long brightly colored ribbons were tied to horse manes and tails as decoration.

The number of Comanche braves, most likely over 500, might well have been sufficient to reverse the outcome of the hotly fought battle, except that most of the warriors were more interested in driving their herds of stolen horses and mules into the hill country than they were in turning to fight the Texan pursuers.

The Texans recovered a substantial herd of livestock, which they deemed proper payment for their valiant military service, as they divided the recovered mules and horses among themselves.

The running battle covered several miles, including a determined stand by a group of warriors in a grove of live oak trees that still provide shade to cattle just over a mile from where I’m sitting at home writing this.

I’ve not been criticized for starting the first McBee Civil War novel with a huge Indian battle, but I confess it was a stretch. Yet, the Plum Creek Battle story did introduce my main character as a youth twenty years before he became a middle-age (overage) Confederate infantry captain. And it grounded the book in Texas, even if the rest of the action happens in Virginia and other states up that way.

Finally, to end this post with a little crude humor, about ten years ago our local school district built a new elementary school not far off the path of the battle, and had a contest to name the new school. It wound up being “Bluebonnet Elementary,” a fine, if unoriginal, Texas name. I’m a bit hurt, though, that my ideas never got a fair shake. Nobody else seemed to want a school named “Tonkawa Feast Elementary,” “Whalebone Salvation Elementary,” or even a more general “Dead Comanche Elementary.” What a loss. Just think of the storytelling that would have followed for years as teachers, parents, and students explained to others what the name meant.

This week I finished reading The Fateful Lightning, a fine Jeff Shaara historical novel about General Sherman’s march through Georgia. It’s a well written and somewhat disturbing account of the punishing “total war” that Sherman’s army levied upon the civilian population of three southern states. It’s the sort of story that makes it easy to understand why some southern memories have lasted far beyond the lives of the participants.

It’s over a 100 degrees every day now in these parts. Hope your thermometer is being a little kinder where you are.