Hermann's First Attack With The Comanche
Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!
We're in a series about the Wild West and the incredible 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.
He's now 16 years old at this point in the story and has become a full blown warrior who hates and fears the White man. And in fact, has taken many a scalp.
Yesterday's post
In the last post Hermann was officially accepted and adopted into the Comanche tribe in a solemn ceremony. At last he felt like he had a real home.
Todays story
In short order the chief asked Hermann if he knew the territory of the White settlements and Hermann told him that he was captured from that area and had been back on numerous raids with the Apache...that there were many good horses that could be taken.
The chief told him that his people had lived in that region for many moons before they were forced out by the white man and had their hunting grounds taken from them. Just like the Apache, the Comanche were on a war footing.
Comanche war party:
They knew their time was limited as free men because their ancestral lands were being taken from them and they were being hunted down and slaughtered.
Therefore, anyone they saw on the Plains was a mortal enemy and everyone they killed bought them a little more time. They reckoned.
The Comanche operated their raids in similar fashion to the Apache except the Apache would send their best medicine men with the raiding party to act like modern day Medics in the military.
The Comanche kept their best medicine men at camp and would treat the wounded when they were brought back to camp.
The tribe pulls stakes and moves
But before they starting sending raiding parties it was decided that they'd move their village to the North. So the whole tribe prepared to move. Well, when I say the whole tribe it was the women who did all the heavy work.
Just like with the Apache, the women broke down and packed up the wigwams and packed and loaded all tools, building material and belongings onto travois pulled by horses.
They also put the dogs to work:
The pace was a leisurely one because of all the women, children, and the burden of all their stuff. Suddenly they got a signal from the scouts to "prepare for trouble." The warriors immediately moved out in front and formed a line.
The Comanche were always ready to do battle with whatever or whoever the threat might be, they didn't have to prepare for war because they lived in a prepared state.
So the warriors rode out in advance of the rest of the tribe and saw a Mexican wagon train. The Mexicans had spotted them and when the warriors swarmed them they jumped off their wagons and ran into the thick chaparral along the trail.
This is what chaparral looks like in West Texas, you can see how they could disappear in there:
Most of the Mexicans escaped but the warriors were able to catch, kill, and scalp 3 or 4. They also captured 2 girls and a boy.
The wagons were loaded with supplies like clothing, blankets, bullets, guns, sugar, tobacco and lead so it was a good haul. They set fire to the wagons and got away from the area as fast as possible.
Those Mexicans escaped from the Indians but who knows if they were able to survive in the wilderness with no supplies or horses. Many times the Comanche would intentionally leave victims alone if they were in an isolated location.
They would take all the supplies and horses but not kill the survivors because they knew that their deaths would take much longer and be much more agonizing to die from hunger and thirst in the desert.
The scalp dance
After traveling for 5 or 6 days and finding a nice place to set up camp they had a big "scalp dance" with the scalps placed on poles and the tribe dancing, yelling and shouting around them. The squaws going to the left and the warriors to the right.
They danced all night and part of the next day. The last part of the celebration was the plunder being divided among them. I was curiouss to know how it was determined who got what but he didn't say.
In the next post the Comanche go to war with cannibals!
Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas
He has become a full-fledged Comanche, hasn't he? I thought when he left the Apache it would be the beginning of his journey home.
Were you without power long? Was it a bad storm?
Howdy tonight Melinda! The electric was off for almost 2 hours which felt like forever. lol. Because of the internet and since it was raining I couldn't do anything outside. It wasn't a bad storm, just alot of rain but our electric service goes off and on all the time even in nice weather!
I don't think Hermann has that much time left with the Comanches.
Do you have a generator or a backup power source for extended outages? I'm glad I can still connect to the internet with my phone even if the power is out. With all of the wires underground mine seldom goes out anymore.
No we don't have any alternative sources yet but the sun shines all the time here so we're thinking about putting in some solar panels. But I haven't been wanting to be in a rush for that because that technology is advancing all the time so I don't want to spend a fortune and have it be obsolete in a year!
Are you working fast to catch up?
That makes sense. We put solar panels on the roof of the truck stop when we built it in the early 80s. 2 years later we removed them all because they simply were not effective
The leaderboard shows that I'm not even up to 50 yet.
well you probably got a late start. There's always tomorrow, I wouldn't kill myself trying to make it all up in one day. The kids are all doing good?
Everyone was great. We all watched A Star Is Born last night. I thought Lady Gaga did an excellent job with it.
My daughter in law made me a beautiful new mosaic art piece to hang on my back porch. She has made me so many lovely things, she truly is an artist when it comes to working in glass. And I am so glad to be the beneficiary of her art! I'll do a post about it soon.
Oh how cool! And your daughter in law does what kind of artwork in glass? Well that's okay I'll see it in a post, but anyway that's wonderful! Artists are amazing.
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here
Howdy c-squared! Thank you so much for the upvote and resteem and for all you do for the community!
Hi @janton, your far west series has picked up my curiosity since it seems like a great opportunity to learn about the US culture and history. I would love to start from the beginning of the series but dunno what it is. Since you have a plethora of posts about this topic do you happen to have some kid of index available? 😃
Howdy sir joelsegovia! This is a long series for me, I started it two months ago and the first post is titled: Captured By The Indians: A True Story Of Courage And Perseverance. All the posts until about a week ago have a title which starts with Captured By The Apache:...I just changed it because he was no longer with the Apache.
Thanks so much for your interest, I really appreciate it. I see you are in Venezuela? I'm so sorry about all the turmoil going on there! Are you able to work at a job?
Awesome! I will start to read your series and do a little research to further expand what the info you already provide 😃
I appreciate your kind words, it is indeed difficult times for all us here in Venezuela. Currently I am struggling to finish my major in Chemistry and I work hard to cover my expenses by fulfilling freelancer tasks. Last year I did well thanks to originalwork's writing contest, but due to the huge bear market and the long hiatus originalwork took I had a hard time since December... But, I still roam the Steem blokchain searching for translation/writing tasks that I could fulfill to add up some bucks to my monthly budget 🙂 The breach I need to bridge each month in my budget is around 30$, thus each day I work hard to make that $.
In the meanwhile, I really love to enjoy finding hidden jewels as your series and learn more about the world and the culture of other countries.
Howdy again sir joelsegovia! I didn't realize there was work to be found on Steemit for writers, that's very interesting. By the way, you are an analyst in the crypto space? If so, are you bullish on Steem and Steemit?
Thanks so much for the interest in my series. I usually do American Old West posts about well -known characters like Wyatt Earp but no one has ever heard of Hermann and his story so it's been alot of fun for me.
Steem price is not that hard to explain, due to the massive influence a centralized enterprise such as steemit inc has on the overall platform. The massive dumps we had were due to steemit inc failure to fulfill their promises in due time. For an investors point of view, a business that miss its self established dead-lines is just too risky.
Lately Steemit have shuffled their staff, but Ned's shadow is still present on the investor's mind. You add that to Dan's statements about MeOS (the flagship social media dapp on EOS) being "Steem's killer" and you have everyone dumping steem in order to catch sweet rewards on the initial MeOS hype.
Steemit still has SMTs to cause a major wave through blockchain social media users. If they succeed in chilling out one of the most resilient communities in the crypto sphere, Steem will likely climb back to top 30 at least. But, in order for it to be a definite recover Steem must free itself from Steemit inc grip, projects such as splinterland, steempeak, actifit, steemhunt and many other most find external investors in order to diversify Steem ecosystem's possibilities of investment.
My personal opinion is just that we need to open gates to what users already have on Whatsapp, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The advantage we have is that we don't need to invent the wheel, we just have to add economic incentives (funded via advertising revenues which generates billions for traditional social media) on top of what millions of people already do on those platforms and further boost gamification of social media engagements.
If one guy, with a big pocket and a smart team of counselors notice the business opportunity created by blockchain social medias, we will had the next few billionaires in the world.
Kindest regards.
Howdy again sir joelsegovia! wow, thanks so much for your analysis with such insight and details.
So the bottom line is to take a wait and see approach? Because it's longterm success relies on
great apps running off the steem blockchain like Steemhunt etc, right?
We could use some killer games to be launched from the blockchain.
You can see why they were hated and hunted down. Actually you can see both sides, but they were asking for it in the end as there would only be one victor.
Yes sir cryptoandcoffee, I can undestand why they didn't want to surrender but it made all the whites hate them and it made it much more difficult for the peaceful tribes who the federal government treated just like the hostile, warring ones. It's like the whites couldn't tell the peaceful Indians from the warrior tribes.
Hi janton, it sounds like one last ditch effort to me, but pity help any white man who walked across their path. Kill or be killed!
exactly angiemitchell, it was a very dangerous time to be roaming around in the West!
What happened to the little children that the Comanches captured?
And I wouldn't be out there!
Howdy tonight angiemitchell! I wouldn't be out there either unless it was with a large army group.
He never talked about the kids that either tribe captured except that one boy that kept trying to go into
camp when the soldiers were there.
He mentions that they had them but he never talks about how they were treated or what happened to them.
When tribes moved onto the reservation they always had to give up their white captives and the army usually
were holding Indian prisoners that they could exchange for whites.
Okay then, both sides did this! Taking a child away from parents is the worse.
Well, only the Indians were trying to take kids from their parents. The whites would take captive everyone they could. That is, if they didn't kill everyone! I agree though, that was the worst.
It would be interesting to know how they did that... I wonder if there was some sort of hierarchy of warrior status or something along those lines.
Howdy sir fotosdenada! you are wondering how they did what?
Divvying out the spoils, deciding who gets what
oh ok, yeah I wonder that too, probably the senority system. ha, I have no idea.
Howdy Jonboy. Can you imagine yourself living the Indian life? Always on the look out for attack from enemies. As if fighting against your own Race is not enough, you have the white man, and the Rangers to contend with. And always moving, living the nomadic life, not knowing what will happen from one day to the next. I think it would drive me crazy. lol
oh man sir Vincent, I think it would be exciting! lol. Actually no, for me personally I don't like moving all the time. I mean, before the white man got there it was a pretty good life and they didn't have very many enemies...a couple of other tribes and the Mexicans. And skirmishes were few unless you went looking for a fight.
Thanks for using eSteem!
Your post has been voted as a part of eSteem encouragement program. Keep up the good work! Install Android, iOS Mobile app or Windows, Mac, Linux Surfer app, if you haven't already!
Learn more: https://esteem.app
Join our discord: https://discord.gg/8eHupPq
Howdy esteemapp and thank you for the upvote!
It is really a survival back then and the war of territories and superiority.
It's cruel how they would leave someone to die but I think I understand.
Howdy again sir leeart! yeah, they wanted revenge on every non Indian, especially whites.
I'm glad you understand, I do too.
That Hermann is such a cruel guy. Killed the guys and took off their scalp?
That is beasty 🙊
Well, that's what you get when you mess with uncivilized people who have lived all their lives in the jungle
Howdy today sir hermannsol! well, I don't know if Hermann was doing the killing and scalping but he was there anyway. I agree, the natives had totally different ways of living and thinking that we can't comprehend!