Buffalo Hump
Buffalo Hump Potsʉnakwahipʉ | |
---|---|
Born | c. 1800 Medicine Man |
Known for | Comanche war chief |
Buffalo Hump (
Early life
Little is known of Buffalo Hump's early life: education in his youth and training as a warrior, together with his cousin
In 1829 Buffalo Hump and, presumably, Yellow Wolf led their warriors northward to recover a large herd of horses stolen by a Cheyenne party, and the young
In 1838 Buffalo Hump, now an important war chief, placed Yellow Wolf in charge of the Penateka warriors and went with
The Council House Fight
The Comanches who arrived at the Council House at San Antonio in the Republic of Texas in March 1840, under Lamar's Presidency, came with the intention to negotiate a peace treaty. They sent a delegation of 65 people, including a dozen chiefs of several bands and several women too, led by Mukwooru and Kwihnai (Eagle), under a white flag of truce, as they understood ambassadors should do. The Texans had expected the Comanches to bring several white captives as part of the agreement. At the meeting the chiefs explained they had brought in all of the captives their bands had: to-wit one, a girl sixteen years old (the young Mathilda Lockhart). The Texans did not understand the chiefs had no power over the other bands to force them to comply with the demands, and so pulled out guns and declared to the Indians they were now their prisoners until the rest of the captives were returned. Now under threat, the Comanches, who were without bows, lances or guns, fought back with their knives. The Texans had concealed heavily armed soldiers just outside the Council House and at the onset of the fighting the windows and doors were opened and the soldiers outside shot into the room at the Comanche ambassadors and their people. Thirty-five Comanches (among them all the chiefs, three women and two children) were slain, 29 were captured, and seven Texans were killed. Mukwooru's widow was sent back to her people to warn them that unless all the white prisoners kept by the Comanches were relinquished, the Comanche prisoners at San Antonio would be killed. This massacre resulted in lasting bitterness among the Comanche people.[2] Isimanica led a party 300 warriors strong to the outskirts of San Antonio, challenging the Texas militia barracked in San Josè Mission, to come out and fight, but the Texans didn't accept his challenge. After this, Piava, a minor chief, brought to San Antonio three white prisoners, but probably the Comanches killed the other captives.[2] Pahayuca and Mupitsukupʉ became the Penateka principal chiefs, and Buffalo Hump became the principal war chief, with Yellow Wolf and Santa Anna as his lieutenants and partners.
The Great Raid of 1840
Buffalo Hump was determined to do more than merely complain about what the Comanches viewed as a bitter betrayal; in the summer he called a council, spreading word to the other bands of Comanches that he, Yellow Wolf and Santa Anna were going for a great raid against the white settlements in Texas as a revenge; in the meanwhile, Buffalo Hump, Yellow Wolf, Santa Anna and Isimanica, with 400 warriors, were raiding the settlements between Bastrop and San Antonio, exhausting the Rangers and Militia's detachments. When they were ready, in late July 1840, Buffalo Hump, along with Yellow Wolf, Santa Anna and likely Isimanica, led the Penateka warriors in the Great Raid, and old Mupitsukupʉ too joined the biggest war party. According to the Comanche tradition, all the principal Comanche chiefs took part in the Great Raid: if so, also Ten Bears, Tawaquenah (“Big Eagle” or “Sun Eagle”), Wulea-boo (“Shaved Head”), Huupi-pahati (“Tall Tree”), Iron Jacket, and possibly their allies the Kiowa, like Dohasan and Satank, could have had a role. On this raid the Comanches went all the way from the plains of west Texas to the cities of Victoria and Linnville on the Texas coast. Linnville was the second largest port in Texas at that time. In what may have been the largest organized raid by the Comanches to that point, they raided, burned, and plundered these towns.[3] The Comanches killed a large number of slaves and captured more than 1,500 horses.[4]
The Battle of Plum Creek
On the way back from the sea, the Comanches easily defeated three different Militia detachments under John Tomlinson, Adam Zumvalt and Ben McCulloch (all together, 125 men) near the Garcitas Creek; then, they overwhelmed another Militia company (90 men) led by Lafayette Ward, James Bird and Matthew Caldwell along the trail to the San Marcos River; finally, they were attacked by Texas Rangers (all the companies of central and western Texas, under
Texas and the Penateka Comanche treaty negotiations
Despite the Council House massacre and the subsequent
In May 1846, following the annexation of Texas to the United States, Buffalo Hump led the Comanche delegation to treaty talks at Council Springs and signed a peace treaty with the United States,.
As war chief of the Penateka Comanche, Buffalo Hump, and Yellow Wolf too, dealt peacefully with American officials throughout the late 1840s and 1850s.[9] In 1849, Buffalo Hump escorted Robert S. Neighbors and John S. “Rip” Ford's expedition along the first part of the trail from San Antonio to El Paso, as far as the Nokoni villages,[11] Yellow Wolf and Shanaco (son of a chief killed in the Council House of San Antonio) joining him; at the Nokoni villages Buffalo Hump and Yellow Wolf entrusted their proteges to their old friend Huupi-pahati, the Nokoni chief, who brought the whites to their destination.[11] In 1851 Yellow Wolf and Buffalo Hump once again led their warriors in a great raid into Mexico, raiding the states of Chihuahua and Durango.
End of the Penateka freedom
In the summer of 1854 Neighbors and Captain Randolph B. Marcy carried out a reconnaissance in search of a potential reserve for the Comanche and selected two areas, allocating to the Penatekas 18.576 acres on the Clear Fork of the Brazos, approximately five miles from Camp Cooper. In November Neighbors went to the Penateka winter camp and persuaded Buffalo Hump and the far more malleable Shanaco, Ketumse and Asa-havey to go and settle in the reserve, but Yellow Wolf, who was still pressing for the recognition of a border between Texas and Comancheria, left the council, flatly refusing to go. One week later Yellow Wolf was killed by a party of Lipan hunters, after which Buffalo Hump temporized almost two years more.[12] However, in 1856, he led his people to the newly established reservation.[12] Continuous raids on this by horse thieves and squatters, coupled with his band's unhappiness over their lack of freedom and the poor food provided on the reservation, persuaded Potsʉnakwahipʉ to move his band off the reservation in 1858. While camped in the Wichita Mountains the Penateka Band under Buffalo Hump were attacked by United States troops under the command of Major Earl Van Dorn.[9] Allegedly not aware that Buffalo Hump's band had recently signed a formal peace treaty with the United States at Fort Arbuckle, Van Dorn and his men killed 80 of the Comanches.[9]
Nonetheless, an aged and weary Buffalo Hump led and settled his remaining followers on the Kiowa-Comanche reservation near Fort Cobb in Indian Territory in Oklahoma. There, in spite of his enormous sadness at the end of the Comanches' traditional way of life, he asked for a house and farmland so that he could set an example for his people. Attempting to live out his life as a rancher and farmer, he died probably before 1867.
Portrayals
Buffalo Hump was played by Eric Schweig in the 1996 TV miniseries Dead Man's Walk, and by Wes Studi in the 2008 TV miniseries Comanche Moon (both part of the Lonesome Dove series). Buffalo Hump has also been portrayed by Horacio García Rojas in the History Channel series Texas Rising (2015) and by Wesley French in the German-language film Striving for Freedom (2013).
See also
- Texas–Indian wars
- John Coffee Hays, admired by Chief Potsʉnakwahipʉ "Buffalo Hump"
References
- ^ Jodye Lynn Dickson Schilz: Council House Fight from the Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved December 23, 2008.
- ^ a b Schitz, Jodye Lynn Dickson: Linville Raid of 1840 from the Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved 8 May 2010. Texas State Historical Association[dead link]
- ^ ISBN 978-0-292-75582-6.
- ^ Roell, Craig H. (June 15, 2010). "Linnville Raid of 1840". The Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved March 7, 2019.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-57168-039-6.
- ^ Fehrenbach, Theodore R. Comanches, The Destruction of a People, Knopf, New York, 1974
- ISBN 978-0-04-970001-7.
- ^ a b c Dickson Schilz Jodye Lynn, Schilz Thomas F., Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches, Texas Western Press, University of Texas, El Paso, 1989
- ^ a b c d Schitz, Jodye Lynn Dickson: Buffalo Hump from the Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved 8 May 2010. Texas State Historical Association
- ^ Dickson Schilz Jodye Lynn, Buffalo Hump from the Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, retrieved, 2010
- ^ ISBN 0292770340
- ^ a b Buffalo Hump, a Comanche Diplomat: West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 35 (1959)
Bibliography
- Bial, Raymond. Lifeways: The Comanche. New York: Benchmark Books, 2000.
- Brice, Donaly E. The Great Comanche Raid: Boldest Indian Attack on the Texas Republic McGowan Book Co. 1987
- "Comanche" Skyhawks Native American Dedication (August 15, 2005)
- Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1970
- Chalafant, William J. Without Quarter: the Wichita Expedition and the fight on Crooked Creek, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1991
- Dunnegan, Ted. Ted's Arrowheads and Artifacts from the Comancheria (August 19, 2005)
- ISBN 0-394-48856-3. Later (2003) republished under the title The Comanches: The History of a People
- Foster, Morris. Being Comanche.
- Fowler, Arlen L. The Black Infantry in the West, 1869-1891, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1996
- Frazier, Ian. Great Plains. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1989.
- Hagan, William T. Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1976
- Haley, James L. The Buffalo War: the History of the Red River Indians Uprising of 1874, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1976
- John, Elizabeth and Storms, A.H. Brewed in Other Men's Worlds: The Confrontation of the Indian, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1975.
- Jones, David E. Sanapia: Comanche Medicine Woman. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974.
- Leckie, William H. The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1967
- Lodge, Sally. Native American People: The Comanche. Vero Beach, Florida 32964: Rourke Publications, Inc., 1992.
- Lund, Bill. Native Peoples: The Comanche Indians. Mankato, Minnesota: Bridgestone Books, 1997.
- Mooney, Martin. The Junior Library of American Indians: The Comanche Indians. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993.
- Newcomb, William W. Jr. The Indians of Texas: from Prehistorics to Modern Times, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1972
- Nye, Wilbur Sturtevant. Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1983
- Native Americans: Comanche Archived September 11, 2011, at the Wayback Machine (August 13, 2005).
- Richardson, Rupert N. The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement: A Century and a Half of Savage Resistance to the Advancing White Frontier. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1933.
- Rollings, Willard. Indians of North America: The Comanche. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.
- Secoy, Frank. Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains. Monograph of the American Ethnological Society, No. 21. Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1953.
- Schilz, Jodye Lynn Dickson and Schilz, Thomas F. Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches, Texas Western Press, El Paso, 1989
- Streissguth, Thomas. Indigenous Peoples of North America: The Comanche. San Diego: Lucent Books Incorporation, 2000.
- "The Texas Comanches" on Texas Indians (August 14, 2005).
- Wallace, Ernest, and Hoebel, E. Adamson The Comanche: Lords of the Southern Plains, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952.
- Webb, Walter Prescott The Texas Rangers: a Century of Frontier Defense, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1983
- "Comanche" on the History Channel (August 26, 2005)
External links
- Buffalo Hump in the Handbook of Texas Online
- Map of Comancheria