Comanche Indians created... In the days of early Texas, the settlers also had to deal with a very real terror – the deadly Comanche Indian. The folks living in Lavaca,
DeWitt, and Gonzales counties had more than their share
of encounters with the Comanche and very often these encounters
ended in the torture or death of the poor soul involved.
It’s not that the Indian warrior was jealous of the white
man’s way of life – he was fighting to maintain his, and the
settlers were slowly but surely driving him from his homeland. But
the Indians didn’t play by the gentlemanly rules of warfare that
the pioneers were used to. And the Comanche loved to torture his
victim before the individual died – no doubt that person even
prayed for death, just to be relieved of the extreme pain and
suffering.
In his book, The History of Lavaca County, Paul C. Boethel
writes of several encounters that the settlers had with the
volatile Comanche. In every case, the Indian showed his tenacity
and determination to crush his enemy. One can only imagine how the
pioneers dealt with that ever-present danger.
Mr. Boethel writes of one event that happened in August of 1840,
when Tucker Foley and Dr. Joel Ponton, while traveling from
Columbus to Gonzales, encountered some twenty-seven mounted
Indians. They had traveled just west of Ponton’s creek when they
were jumped by the savages, who chased them all the way back to
the stream. When they hit the water, Foley’s horse sank in the
mud. Although he dismounted and ran for some timber, the Indians
surrounded and captured him.
The Indians promised to protect him if he would surrender without
a fight. Foley had barely given up his gun when they tied him up
and peeled back the skin on the bottom of his feet. Then, they
made him walk over freshly burnt grass before finally killing him.
Ponton faired better than Foley, although his horse was killed, he
crawled through the bottomlands and made his escape. After making his way back to the settlements, Ponton told of his ordeal – as a result thirty-six Lavaca County men, led by Adam Zumwalt,
started to track the Indians. Along the way, they
found poor Foley’s body and gave him a decent burial. When the
volunteers got to Boggy Creek, twenty-four men from the Gonzales
area, led by Ben McCulloch, joined them. Another sixty-five men
under the command of John J. Tumlinson joined the group later.
These men along with other forces caught the Indians and soundly
defeated them, near Lockhart, in the Battle of Plum Creek. More
than likely, the Comanches who attacked Ponton and Foley were part
of those involved in what has become know as the Linnville Raid.
In this excursion the Comanches raided down the Guadalupe River to
Victoria and on to the little port town of Linnville. According to
the Handbook of Texas, the Comanche band included some 500
warriors accompanied by a large number of Kiowas and several
Mexican guides.
Another interesting story in Boethel’s book recalls the
adventurer “Big Foot” Wallace’s arrival to Texas in 1839.
Wallace kept a journal of his experiences and once wrote about how
he happened to meet up with a self-proclaimed “Indian hater”
in Lavaca County. It seems that Wallace and some other men were
camped on the west bank of the Lavaca River near the Zumwalt
settlement.
Feeling they were safe, no guard was posted when they retired for
the night. When they awoke the next morning they found that all
their horses had been stolen. They walked to the Zumwalt
settlement and acquired some horses. It was there that Jeff
Turner, the Indian hater, joined them.
“Big Foot” Wallace, in later years, gave an account of why
Turner had such an intense hatred for Indians. It seems that
Turner, along with his wife and children, lived on a creek near
the Guadalupe River. After a hunting trip, he returned home to
find that Indians had killed his entire family. He made a solemn
vow that, from that day on; he would hunt and kill Indians at
every opportunity.
Turner made his camp on Chicolete Creek, in the southern part of
Lavaca County. It was from here that he continuously traveled in
his search for Indians – sometimes venturing as far west as the
Rio Grande River. At the time Wallace met him, Turner had
forty-six scalps hanging in his camp and was looking to get a
“cool hundred.”
Then there was that time when Lavaca County settler, John H.
Livergood found someone up his chimney – and it wasn’t Santa
Claus. According to The History of Lavaca County: “John
H. Livergood ‘dusted’ a Red Skin out of his fireplace chimney.
His home was always securely bolted from within and he was
awakened one night by a scraping noise made by an Indian who was
trying to gain entrance through the chimney. The Indian left
hastily when he learned Livergood had been roused.”
I think it’s safe to say that most folks, living back then,
experienced their share of terror during those early days on the
Texas frontier.
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