Epic Fail In The Mountains

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 about 15-16 years old at this point in the story and has become a full blown warrior and is both terrified of the White man and also hates him. In the last post his band had been chased by the army, but the soldiers had been killed by Hermann's war party.

Today's story

After that they rested up at the spring they were at and then traveled to the Rocky Mountains. They felt they'd be far enough away from the army and the Texas Rangers to rest and live peaceful lives. At first they lived "high on the hog" with plenty of game available.

But as they went up into the mountains game became scarce and there was no grass for the horses. They sent the horses back down the mountain to live and they kept all the mules for food.

source

When they ate their first mule it was an old one whose back was one solid sore from being rubbed by the Indian saddle.

Here's a basic saddle design:

This one has a saddle blanket with it:

source

I don't know if they had saddle blankets but either way you can see why it would rub and cause sores.

The interesting part is that when they processed the mule they ate the area that was one huge sore first because "that was sweet and tender." I never would have guessed that, would you guys?

Sweet and tender. I didn't imagine any part of an old mule would be sweet and tender!

These guys weren't mountain dwellers!

Ok, so they were higher in the mountains but they got into serious trouble when it started snowing. The path they'd taken to get there was treacherous when it was dry but down right deadly when it was covered with ice and snow.

And to climb higher was impossible for the same reason.

They were stuck in a bitter cold winter wonderland

So they were effectively stuck there with no shelter or food. It wasn't long before all the mules were eaten and Hermann said they started acting more like starving dogs then humans...fighting over the bones.

They knew they had to get off that mountain so they slowly and painstakingly worked their way back down.

I don't think they'd ever been in the mountains before(except Hermann and a couple others) because they weren't prepared for what they ran into with the cold weather and lack of food sources. They were a desert tribe anyway, this was way foreign to them.

Their horses waited on them

When they got to the bottom of the mountain most of their horses were there and in good condition. Some game was killed and they regained their strength. Plans were made to go back to their old hunting grounds but that's not what most of them wanted.

They'd been through so much hardship and suffering that most of the tribe wanted to go back to the reservation. A big council was held and it was decided that they'd give themselves up and go back to the reservation. Again. I think this would be their 5th try at reservation life.

But what choice did they realistically have? To not go back meant constantly being on the run and pursued by ever-growing numbers of soldiers with their traditional hunting grounds being taken over by settlements and ranches.

Back to the reservation

Reservation life sucked on many levels and was made infinitely harder by the failure of the federal government to keep it's promises of supplying food and supplies.

Most reservations were more like concentration camps full of starvation, disease and desperation. And soldiers in charge who didn't care.

Add to that the evil of bootleggers smuggling in whiskey and then you had Indians going crazy and fighting each other. But that's tomorrow's post.

Okay I lied. Yesterday I said today's post would bring dramatic events that would turn Hermann's life upside down. Now I'm saying that's tomorrow's post. Unless I get sidetracked. lol.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!

-jonboy
Texas
the gentleman redneck