Captured By The Apache: Hermann's Tribe Raids His Old Neighborhood

Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas! We're in a series about the Wild West and the story of an 11 year old German boy, Hermann, who was captured by an Apache war party from his family's farm in 1870 in Central Texas.

This is not a pro-Indian nor a pro-white man story. Both sides committed atrocities. The Apache were being decimated by the loss of their main food, shelter and clothing source, the buffalo, and they were being hunted by the army so they were on a war footing and fighting for their very existence. To them it was kill or be killed.

They hated the white man for all the destruction and death he had brought to them. But this story is being told from a white boy's perspective while living with the Apache. This ain't no Little House On The Prairie tale, this is a chunk of gritty, hard reality from those turbulent times.

Today's story

At this point in Hermann's story his tribe had made a treaty with the Comanche and they'd decided to concentrate on fighting the Palefaces. The Apache also made a treaty with the Kiawas, who were also fierce warriors and were Plains Indians similar to the Apache.

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Here's a classic historic photo of three Kiowa warriors in 1898 after the Indian Wars were over and they were on the reservation.

I'm sure that's why they aren't holding any weapons because warriors always held weapons in their photos if at all possible. I guarantee you this was not their choice.. afterall, they'd probably been fighting since their early teen years:

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The two tribes agreed to kill as many whites as they could until their tribes were killed or forced onto reservations. They also agreed to split up into smaller bands so they could travel around without being spotted easily.

The strategy and philosophy was that if there were many small bands it would be harder to keep track of and catch them. Which worked perfectly. The whites never knew where an attack was coming from next.

Back to his hometown

The first place Hermann's band went was to Fredericksburg, which is straight West of Austin, Texas.

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They went late at night and saw men drinking in a saloon and they left them alone but stole all their horses and then North of town they found and took another small herd.

See, the Indian tribes used horses to barter and trade for, horses were like cash or gold to the white man. So the more horses you came back with, the greater warrior you were perceived as being. And if you could come back with white scalps you achieved even greater honor.

Hermann's group got several good mules from one of his old neighbors, Fritz Ellebracht and stole some horses from another neighbor, William Bickenbach.

I mention these names just because it's interesting that after all those years he remembered their full names and I also think it's interesting that they were also German, the whole area must have been a German immigrant settlement.

When they passed right by Hermann's old homestead the other braves taunted him and called him a Paleface and tried to get him to leave and go back to his home.

He could see that it was vacant though and if you remember, they'd told him that all his family had been killed so he thought there was no one left to go back to.

Actually they would have killed him on the spot if he'd tried to go back, they'd consider that betrayal and worthy of execution.

Another white boy captured

Some of his party captured a young white boy about 13 years old and had also killed a family. By the time they got back to camp they had over 40 good horses and mules, 3 or 4 scalps and the captured boy so the raid was a great success.(by their standards)

Hermann didn't say if the captured white boy got the same treatment he did or not. Either the boy wasn't treated as harshly or he didn't want to talk about it.

The new kid didn't fit in. Maybe he didn't like eating raw organs

The only thing he said about the boy is that he did NOT take to the Apache ways so after living with them for about a year the tribe traded him to some Mexican traders.

Since he was traded Hermann didn't know if the kid ever made it back to his home or not. I don't know what Mexicans did with slaves. (another research project)

I think at this time Hermann was just trying to be as "Indian" as possible and fit in. Also, they may have kept him separated from the new captive in case he tried to help him.

A fight with cowboys

The next raid Hermann went on was with a group of Kiowa and this time they ran into some well-armed cowboys and had a battle. Two of the cowboys were killed and the others took off so the braves were able to gather up the horses that the cowboys were herding and took them home.

They scalped the dead cowboys for trophies but one of the Kiowa was wounded and died later from those wounds.

In the next post the raids continue, soldiers stay at their village and Hermann comes within seconds of being excuted.