Dac Crossley's Western Blog

A March 19 Court House Battle

On March 19, 1840, one of the seminal battles between Texans and Comanches took place in the San Antonio court house. Like many of today’s court house proceedings, it turned nasty because of misunderstandings on the part of both litigants. This one broke out into a slaughter, with major consequences for Comanches and Texans both.

The Council House Fight, as it’s called, pitted a dozen Comanche “Peace” chiefs and some of their warriors against a Texan militia.

The chiefs were invited to a Council of Peace; they arrived in good faith, bringing their women and children. The Penateka Chief Muguara wanted to secure western Texas – Comancheria – as their own territory, safe from white excursions.

The Texans wanted to recover all prisoners held by the Comanches, and were willing to trade various supplies for their safe return.

The various Comanche Indian bands had no central leadership – each acted independently most of the time – and so, no general agreement about hostages was possible (Buffalo Hump and Pete Nocona adopted all their captives). The Texans did not understand this. They thought Chief Muguara was speaking for all Comanches.

The Council started well, with the Chiefs sitting on the floor, the Texans on a stage facing them. The Comanches had brought a hostage with them, Matilda Lockhart, who’d been badly mistreated (Her nose had been burned off, for one thing).

“Where were the other captives?”

The interpreter explained that the Comanches wanted ransom for Matilda, and more for an additional dozen hostages they’d failed to bring along. When the ransom was paid, the other white captives would be released, too.

“How do you like that answer?” said Chief Muguara.

At a signal from the Texan leader, the militia walked into the room and stood along the walls, guns at ready.

“You will all be held prisoner here until the captives are brought in.”

(“If I tell them that,” said the translator, “They will fight.” After translating the message, he hurried out the door).

The Council of Peace was inviolable to Comanches. They would not be taken prisoner. When the message was delivered, they rose to their feet. They fought, attacking the Texans. Militia fired into the room, wounding Indians and Texan alike. The battle spilled into the streets of San Antonio.

By the next day, 35 Comanche had been killed (including 3 women and 2 children) and 29 taken prisoner (27 women and two old men). Seven Texans were killed.

One of the woman prisoners was sent to the Penateka camp, carrying the message that all Indians would be released when the white hostages were returned. The furious Comanches tortured and killed the hostages (except for two, who’d been adopted into the tribe and thus were Comanche).

The upshot of the Council House Fight was the Great Comanche Raid of 1840, in which Buffalo Hump lead a huge war party all the way down to the Gulf Coast, in the largest Indian raid ever mounted on a city in what is now the continental United States. The cities of Victoria and Linnville were sacked. Linville was a major Texas port. The town’s citizens took to the water in small boats where, secure from the Comanches, they watched as their stores were looted. That was the Comanche revenge for the Council House Massacre.

My information is from the Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick (recently acquired), The Handbook of Texas, and (of course) Wikipedia.

A Few Notes on Crickets

Irene Black suggested that I do a blog entry about crickets. Nice idea. Thanks, Irene.

Check Wikipedia first; I always do. There’s plenty of information there about crickets, including a lot of interesting folklore. I remembered that Chinese people kept crickets as pets (you can still buy cricket cages on-line). Charles Dickens wrote about a house cricket: “The Cricket on the Hearth.”

House crickets likely originated in desert regions, possibly in Asia. They thrive at high temperatures – 85 to 90 degrees F. – and prefer low humidity. Crickets as a group are common world-wide, especially tree crickets here in the southeast and field crickets in the southwest.

In the old days I found crickets useful in my research. House crickets aren’t much of a pest problem – they really aren’t harmful anyplace, except for the noise they make – but they’re easy to find. House crickets are sold as fish bait; there’s a plentiful supply.

I needed a test insect species for studies of radioactive materials, and crickets filled the bill. I could buy them by the thousands; no need to keep colonies of them (but I did learn – don’t feed them Chick Starter Mash. You Ag types would know that starter mash is medicated. It kills crickets by destroying the microbes in their intestines. Like you and me, crickets have a symbiotic gut flora.).

In Civil Defense days I was asked, would insects survive a nuclear attack? Crickets helped me to solve a sticky little problem.

People who’d irradiated insects previously had reported that, at low doses of radiation exposure, some kinds of beetles tended to live a little bit longer. Never much, and hard to prove, but it was fodder for the “deniers” of that day. Maybe a little radiation is actually good for you!

We found that groups of crickets exposed to 1,000 R of gamma radiation would live an extra day or two, on the average. (That would instantly kill you or me). And then the answer emerged from the data.

The males died on schedule. Only the females lived a bit longer.

Because – they were sterilized and didn’t lay eggs! Laying eggs (or giving birth) is hazardous to your health; those females were given an extra day or two of life, by virtue of becoming sterile. This explains the results found earlier with beetles. The precise ages of the beetles weren’t known, and sexes weren’t accounted for in the analysis.

Thank you, house crickets.

p.s. Radiation is not good for you – not even a little bit. And some insects would likely survive a nuclear attack, especially if they happen to be flies.

(and thanks to Dave Reichle, Ed Menhick, Al Shinn and Marvin Shanks, who put up with my peccadilloes).

VICTORY or DEATH!

Early morning, March 6, 1836, the assault on the Alamo began. It ended a few hours later, and an icon for revolutionaries everywhere was created.

I learned the story of the Alamo at my mother's knee, as many of us old-time Texans did. Didn't you? Then, of course, at school we had the comic book --the Texas History Movies -- that told the story with pictures. Today's revisionists, of course, would re-write the history as we learned it. But -- Remember the Alamo just won't die.

History has decided that a half-dozen or so Texans survived the battle, only to be slaughtered by the direct order of Santa Anna. Among them was Davy Crockett. Others attempted to flee the battle, escaping from the rear of the chapel, only to be ridden down by Mexican lancers. These revisions, based on the diaries of Mexican officers, are incorporated into Campell's recent history of Texas (ISBN 0-19-51382-2; highly recommended). There, I read that Travis was willing to negotiate a surrender as late as March 5.

Never mind! I still believe that all fought bravely, that Travis pulled his sword and drew a line in the sand, and that Bowie died fighting from his cot.

Every year brings more books, more Alamo studies (and I hope to contribute my own. When the creek goes down ... ). One of the best is Three Roads to the Alamo (William C. Davis, 1999. ISBN 0-06-093094-2), biographies of Travis, Crockett and Bowie.

Why did it happen? Santa Anna didn't need to destroy the Alamo. It was a bit out of the way for his army, which would have done better to proceed up the coast where most settlements were. And Travis didn't follow Houston's order (suggestion? Command?) to destroy the Alamo and leave San Antonio. Like so many battles,it was a strange mix of personalities -- Santa Anna's bull-headed determination, Travis's ebullient patriotism, Bowie's rejection of leadership. The Texas Trojan war.

The Alamo is now part of our Texan legacy, and today I salute the bravery of the men who died fighting for what they believed. Remember!

Texas Independence Day -- March 2

The Texas Declaration of Independence was signed, adopted unanimously, by the 54 delegates to the Convention of 1836. They met on March 1 at the presumptive capitol, Washington-on-the-Brazos, now a ghost town. The Declaration was drafted overnight and hurriedly signed the next day, March 2,1836. It was urgent business. Mexican armies were bearing down on them; San Antonio and the Alamo were under siege.

The Convention proceeded with business, electing State officers, and remained in Washington-on-the-Brazos until adjourning on March 17, in the face of the approaching armies of Santa Anna. General Sam Houston, a signer of the Declaration, left the Convention early to begin organization of the Texas Army.

Most of us Texas school-kids learned our history from comic books, the Texas History Movies. Originally a comic strip in the Dallas News, booklets of the Movies were distributed free to the school children of Texas. The sweep of Texas history, explained in cartoons, still lives in our memories. (I have a copy of the little booklet, reissued in 1985. ISBN 0-935759-00-x; available used from Amazon associates). The Texas revolutionaries, the Mexican army, the fall of the Alamo – many of us still hold mental images based on drawings from those comics.

By 1836, American immigrants greatly outnumbered the original Mexican settlers. The list of signers of the Declaration includes but three with Spanish-sounding names. One of them was Lorenzo de Zavala, who ranched near San Jacinto. De Zavala had been a Spanish citizen who fought in the Mexican war for independence, and then became a Texan who fought against Mexico in 1836. De Zavala became interim Vice President of the Republic of Texas.