Comanche Warriors and Stolen Horses
I wouldn’t want the readers here to overlook the federally mandated Native American Heritage month of November and Friday’s Native American Heritage Day.
We’ll start with my old friends at No Pasaran:
Thanksgiving a “Myth” or a “Problematic Holiday”? What Nobody Tells You About Indians and Other Native Americans
Every time I hear about the tragedy (the tragedies) suffered by the Indians of North America (whether at Thanksgiving or at any other time), I bring up some variant of the following questions:
Do the calamities also include the theft of the lands of the Apaches? Does the genocide, real or alleged, of the Native Americans also concern the extermination of the Huron tribe (Huronia)?
This type of question usually boondoggles the leftist, whose eyes grow like saucers and who waffles trying to reply, since in his eagerness to sum up American and world history by meting out simplified explanations in one-sentence platitudes (that conveniently, and invariably, happen to be damning towards Americans, i.e., white Americans), he has neither had nor taken the time to think any details through as he attempts to display his alleged expertise as a modern-day genius.
The problem, of course, is that the lands of the Apaches were stolen by the Comanches.
While the Hurons were wiped out by the Iroquois.
What, wait, I thought the Indians were all-wise, worshipers of the Great Spirit, lovers of nature, peace-loving harmonizers with Mother Earth.
After conquering the Aztec and the Inca empires, in addition to large parts of South America as well as all of Central America, why did the Spanish armies not march further into North America (where the English had remained along the Atlantic coast while the French were focused on Québec and had barely crossed West across the Mississippi)?
The answer is the Comanche tribe, which was (I am prepared to apologize for the upcoming un-PC term beforehand) the bloodthirstiest people the Spanish superpower had ever encountered, and which brought the Spaniards’ advance to an abrupt halt in Tejas (in Texas).
Indeed, in his position as a military historian and a professor at the Sandhurst Military Academy, John Keegan described the Comanches as the fiercest warriors the planet has ever known.
If we had sent the Comanches to Afghanistan, we would have won that war because there wouldn’t be a single Taliban, ISIS or Al-Qaeda member left alive in the country. The entire Middle East would have been terrified to death of the Comanche Battalion of the American military.
This explains the “intolerant” attitude of White settlers, explains Time-Life’s The Frontiersmen.
“In the 18th century, frontiersmen, who had seen the bodies of pregnant women slit open by war parties and the fetuses of unborn babies left impaled on poles beside them, were not inclined to ponder the political attitudes of any Indian if granted opportunity for revenge.”
So much for smoking the peace pipe, I guess.
Who doesn’t know the “trail of tears and death,” when Andrew Jackson expelled tens of thousands of Indians from East side of the Mississippi? During one 1,200-mile trek, “thousands … died from exposure, malnutrition, and disease” and the grounds were littered with the bodies of “red-skins” and “Negroes.” Wait a minute, what did you say? “Negroes”? Blacks? What do you mean by that?! Oh, you didn’t know? The Cherokees, who are often presented as one of prime examples that Indians were, or could be, civilized (they had their own alphabet and newspapers), practiced slavery. Yes sir. And do not forget that a number of these Indians enlisted during the Civil War — on the side of the Confederacy. For sure, this was one of the “Five Civilized Tribes” (besides the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Creek, the Seminole, and the Choctaw) and, as it happens, one of the main slavery rebellions and escape attempts of the 19th century was a slave revolt against the cruelty of one particularly nasty Cherokee slave-owner.
It is now March of 1840 in the new Republic of Texas at San Antonio.
The 16-year-old girl’s once-beautiful face was grotesque.
She had been disfigured beyond all recognition in the 18 months she had been held captive by the Comanche Indians.
Now, she was being offered back to the Texan authorities by Indian chiefs as part of a peace negotiation.
To gasps of horror from the watching crowds, the Indians presented her at the Council House in the ranching town of San Antonio in 1840, the year Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.
‘Her head, arms and face were full of bruises and sores,’ wrote one witness, Mary Maverick. ‘And her nose was actually burnt off to the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh.’
Once handed over, Matilda Lockhart broke down as she described the horrors she had endured — the rape, the relentless sexual humiliation and the way Comanche women had tortured her with fire. It wasn’t just her nose, her thin body was hideously scarred all over with burns.
When she mentioned she thought there were 15 other white captives at the Indians’ camp, all of them being subjected to a similar fate, the Texan lawmakers and officials said they were detaining the Comanche chiefs while they rescued the others.
What happened to Squanto and Tonto ?
When that Indian delegation to San Antonio realised they were to be detained, they tried to fight their way out with bows and arrows and knives — killing any Texan they could get at. In turn, Texan soldiers opened fire, slaughtering 35 Comanche, injuring many more and taking 29 prisoner.
But the Comanche tribe’s furious response knew no bounds. When the Texans suggested they swap the Comanche prisoners for their captives, the Indians tortured every one of those captives to death instead.
‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonized bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’
It was the Comanche women in charge of the most brutal torture, mutilation and murder. Remember this when liars and frauds tell you female political leaders will bring peace and compassion to the peoples of all nations.
And then we come to August of 1840 at Victoria and Linville, Texas…
The sacking of Victoria and Linnville in August 1840 in what was then Victoria County was the strategic object of a great Comanche raid in 1840, the most terrifying of all Comanche raids in Southeast Texas. The attack originated as an aftermath of the Council House Fight in San Antonio in March 1840. By August the Penateka Comanches were able to accept the leadership of their remaining chief, Buffalo Hump, the others having been killed in the Council House Fight. In what became the largest of all southern Comanche raids, Buffalo Hump launched 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 number of warriors was probably between 400 and 500, though witnesses put the figure higher. The total included a good number of Kiowas and Mexican guides.
The Comanches made not the last, but the final huge raid in Texas, at Victoria and Linnville near the coast.
By this time the men of Victoria had recruited reinforcements from the Cuero Creek settlement. On the morning of August 7 the combined forces joined volunteers from the Gonzales and Lavaca settlements under Adam Zumwalt and Benjamin McCulloch and skirmished with the Comanches about twelve miles east of Victoria on Marcado Creek and again on Casa Blanca Creek, two branches of Garcitas Creek. The Indians stole away with their captives and plunder but were defeated by volunteers at Plum Creek near the site of present Lockhart on August 12 (see PLUM CREEK, BATTLE OF). Although the Indians tried to kill their Victoria and Linnville captives during this final battle, Juliet Watts’s corset prevented her arrow wound from killing her. She returned to the Linnville area, married Dr. J. M. Stanton, and opened the Stanton House, the first hotel in Port Lavaca, the new settlement established on the bay 3½ miles southwest by displaced Linnville residents.
I will stop here after ruining your bucolic, peaceful Thanksgiving respite. Taking Texas and turning it into an independent republic and then a member of the United States was no easy, peaceful job. The men and women who accomplished this can never be awarded enough gratitude and respect for their valor and courage.
Any and all efforts to dispel the fantasies and fakery of American media and academy in the perpetuation of historical fraudulences are worth all the discomforts and shocking realities of the truth.
I have other interesting resources to add to the front page over the weekend.
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