| |
| In
March of 1840, a meeting took place in old San
Antonio between representatives of the government of the Republic of Texas
and the Penateka Comanches to discuss terms of a peace treaty. The meeting was
held in a small, one-story limestone building on the corner of Main Plaza and
Calabozo (Market) Streets know as the Council House. The flat-roofed, earthen-floor
structure adjoined the old stone jailhouse where the City Hall now stands. The
yard back of the Council House was later the City Market. The disastrous results
of this meeting would soon lead to the
Great Comanche Raid of 1840 and the Battle of Plum Creek. |
 |
| Sam Houston, the first
president of Texas, had a policy of negotiating treaties and territorial boundaries
with the Republic's various Indian tribes, including the Cherokees
and Comanches, believing that a peaceful settlement of disputes between the races
would lead to a permanent and inexpensive solution to the Native American problem.
However, this was an unpopular position with many Texans, and Houston's successor
in office, Mirabeau Lamar, was elected in part by expressing an opposing view.
Rather than negotiations, Lamar insisted the only permanent solution to the Indian
problem was to expel the tribes from Texas, and to kill all those Indians who
refused to leave peacefully. |
 |
Immediately
after assuming the Presidency, Lamar moved to implement his policy of expulsion
or eradication with a vengeance. The first step was to order Chief
Bowles to lead his Cherokees
out of Texas. When Bowles
refused as Lamar suspected he would, the President authorized militia General
Kelsey Douglass to use force to drive the Cherokees
out of the Republic.
On July 16, 1839, the militia, bolstered by a few
soldiers from the Texas Army, attacked the main Cherokee
village located on the Nueces
River. Chief
Bowles was
among those killed during the fighting, and the Cherokees
were forced to hurriedly pack up a meager portion of their possessions and move
to present-day Oklahoma, leaving behind homes, livestock, and crops ripening in
the fields.
However, General Douglas refused to limit Lamar’s policy to
the Cherokees alone, and by
July 25, the militia had also driven the Caddo, Kickapoo, Muskogee, Creek, Delaware,
Shawnee, and Seminole tribes into Oklahoma or across the Arkansas line. Only the
small and inoffensive Alabama and Coshatta tribes were permitted to remain inside
the borders of the Republic, and they were moved to less fertile lands on what
was to become one of the few permanent Texas Indian reservations.
President
Lamar hoped to quickly deal with the Comanches in a similar fashion. Unfortunately,
the fierce "Lords of the Plains" were a far cry from the weak and nearly civilized
tribes of east Texas. The Penateka
Comanches, the tribal band with territory closest to white settlement, had been
waging a continuous bloody hit and run war for years with the settlers along the
frontier north and west of Austin.
President Lamar began his move against the Comanches by ordering his newly formed
companies of Texas Rangers to carry the fight into the fringes of the Comancheria
with attacks on hunting parties and a few scattered villages such as Colonel John
Moore's February, 1839, attack on a Comanche village in the valley of the San
Saba River. Although these attacks on the basic way of Comanche life were
not always successful, they eventually convinced the Penateka that the cost of
continued fighting would carry a high price.
As a result, on January 9,
1840, several Penetaka war chiefs rode into the old mission town of San
Antonio seeking a parley with the commander of the Texas Rangers, Colonel
Henry Karnes. At the meeting, the chiefs told Karnes all the bands of the Penateka
were ready to sit down with the whites and negotiate a peace treaty. Karnes consented
to the proposed meeting on the sole condition that the Comanches return their
white captives, believed to have numbered around two hundred at the time. The
war chiefs agreed and promised to return to San
Antonio in twenty days.
Fearing the Comanches would fail to keep their
promise, Colonel Karnes wrote to General Albert Sidney Johnston, the commander
of the Texas Army, requesting that three peace commissioners be sent to San
Antonio,
along with enough troops to capture the Indians who came to the meeting and hold
them as hostages if the white captives were not returned. After conferring with
President Lamar, Johnston agreed and immediately dispatched three companies of
the first regiment to San
Antonio under
the command of Lieutenant Colonel Fisher. Fisher was also appointed as a peace
commissioner along with the Texas Adjutant General and the Acting Secretary of
War. |
 |
San
Antonio post office mural depicting the Council House Fight
Photo courtesy
Terry
Jeanson |
|
On
March 19, 1840, sixty-five Comanches, including men, women, and children, boldly
paraded into the streets of old San
Antonio.
The brightly painted and attired contingent, dressed in their finest and decorated
with a rainbow of feathers and trade ribbons, was led by twelve war chiefs and
the great peace chief, Muguara, or Muk-wah-rah, the Spirit Talker. Unfortunately,
the Comanches arrived for the meeting with only two captives; a sixteen year-old
girl, Matilda Lockhart, and a young Mexican boy the Texans didn’t even consider.
To make matters worse, the young girl’s condition was abhorrent.
Matilda's
face and body were covered with bruises and sores, and the end of her nose had
been burnt off down to the bone by malevolent Comanche squaws who had routinely
awakened her from sleep by sticking a hot coal against her flesh, especially to
the tip of her nose. Matilda had lived with the Comanches for nearly two years
and she understood some of their language. She told the Texans the Comanches had
thirteen more captives in their camp, but they hoped to get a higher price by
returning them one at a time.
When Chief Muguara and the other war chiefs
entered the Council House, Muguara began the talks by demanding higher prices
for the remaining captives held by the Comanches. Ignoring the Peace chief’s outrageous
demands, the commissioners immediately insisted on knowing why the other prisoners
had not been returned as promised. Muguara arrogantly answered that although they
were being held by other Comanche bands, they could all be purchased for the right
price.
After seeing the mutilation of the young Lockhart girl, the commissioners
were furious, and Colonel Fisher ordered some of the soldiers who had been surrounding
the outside of the council house to enter the meeting room. Next, a reluctant
interpreter was ordered to tell Muguara that he and the war chiefs would be imprisoned
until the remainder of the white captives were released. After delivering the
threat, the frightened interpreter turned and fled from the room. The Texas Sentinel
of March 24, 1840, provided a detailed account of "a recent battle with the Comanches
at San
Antonio."
Pandemonium
ensued as the Comanches responded with shrill war cries and rushed for the door.
A war chief stabbed a soldier who attempted to block the door with his body, and
Fisher gave the command to open fire. Muguara was killed instantly, and in the
confusion caused by echoing blasts of gunfire, howls and screams of the Comanches,
and thick clouds of swirling black powder smoke, the surviving Comanches broke
out of the building.
Even the young Comanche boys who had been playing
outside during the meeting joined in on the fight, firing arrows in all directions.
Indians, soldiers, and spectators alike were killed in the general melee that
followed, and in the end, none of the Comanches escaped the deadly trap set by
Colonel Fisher. Muguara and all twelve war chiefs were killed along with many
of the Comanche women and children. About thirty women and children were taken
prisoner. The Texans suffered only six killed and ten wounded.
After
the smoke had settled, Colonel Fisher ordered that a squaw be given a horse and
sent to the Comanche camp with a warning; unless the white captives were returned
within twelve days all the Comanche prisoners being held in the San
Antonio jail would be killed. The squaw never returned to San
Antonio, but eventually a young white boy who had been adopted into the tribe
told the terrible tale of what happened when the war chief’s wife reached the
camp.
The loss of so many warriors and leaders was a serious blow for
any Comanche band to suffer, and the Penateka went into a frenzy of mourning.
Women screamed and howled as they slashed at their arms and legs with razor-sharp
flint knives, and men sacrificed many valuable horses to honor the brave dead.
However, all this was nothing compared with the ghastly fate suffered by the thirteen
white captives. Every one of them was either roasted alive or tortured to death
in hideous and lingering ways that only a fierce and vengeful people like the
Comanches could devise.
President Lamar's Indian policy and the ill-fated
results of the Council House fight ensured there would be no lasting peace between
the Republic of Texas and the Comanche nation, and for several months after the
incident people in and around San Antonio
lived in a state of terror. When nothing of note occurred by mid-summer, the Texans
assumed the Comanche threat was gone. This assumption could not have been further
from the truth. The Penateka had simply melted away deep into the far northern
reaches of the Comancheria where they held council with all the other Comanche
bands. Under a brilliant August moon the Comanches would return in a force heretofore
unknown, and Texas would eventually pay a terrible price in blood and suffering
during the Great Comanche
Raid of 1840.
©Jeffery
Robenalt
"'A Glimpse of
Texas Past"' December 13, 2010 Column
jeffrobenalt@yahoo.com
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