Posted on 08/18/2013 4:48:36 PM PDT by Uncle Chip
The 16-year-old girls once-beautiful face was grotesque. She had been disfigured beyond all recognition in the 18 months she had been held captive by the Comanche Indians.
Now, she was being offered back to the Texan authorities by Indian chiefs as part of a peace negotiation.
To gasps of horror from the watching crowds, the Indians presented her at the Council House in the ranching town of San Antonio in 1840, the year Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.
Her head, arms and face were full of bruises and sores, wrote one witness, Mary Maverick. And her nose was actually burnt off to the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh.
Once handed over, Matilda Lockhart broke down as she described the horrors she had endured the rape, the relentless sexual humiliation and the way Comanche squaws had tortured her with fire. It wasnt just her nose, her thin body was hideously scarred all over with burns.
When she mentioned she thought there were 15 other white captives at the Indians camp, all of them being subjected to a similar fate, the Texan lawmakers and officials said they were detaining the Comanche chiefs while they rescued the others.
It was a decision that prompted one of the most brutal slaughters in the history of the Wild West and showed just how bloodthirsty the Comanche could be in revenge....
S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second......
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
So much for the belief that all Indians were noble people above committing atrocities.
While not an unreasonable response under the circumstances, it should be noted this was a violation by the Texans of a safe conduct under flag of truce. It also wasn't a particularly good idea, as it turned out.
Wow. Eye-opening.
bump
This reminds me of that Tommy Lee Jones/Cate Blanchett movie The Missing. In this case the girls were being kidnapped and being sold into slavery. Great movie, BTW.
“...And yet he and his fellow native Americans are presented in the film as saintly victims of a Old West where it is the white settlers the men who built America who represent nothing but exploitation, brutality, environmental destruction and genocide...”
The indians slaughtered each other and white settlers with wanton abandon.
Only since the late 60s and 70s - when the Marxists were infiltrating ever facet of our culture - has history been rewritten to portray them as innocent victims of the evil white man.
The left has been very effective at making white people hate their own culture, heritage, and country. We’ve been painted as the root of EVERY ONE else’s problems.
Don’t buy it.
For a good record of the red man’s conduct in America, read “For A Few Acres of Snow” by Robert Leckie (”Helmet For My Pillow”), and “Tribal Wars of the Southern Plains” by Stan Hoig.
Not so peaceful, nor so innocent.
Wonderful post! In leftist history books, the Indians have no faults. As with Zimmerman,we need to set the record straight.
By most accounts, it would be hard to choose which attacker would be more merciless; Comanche, Khanate Mongol or Tamburlaine Mongol, all of whom were superb light calvary. Their need was to destroy that which threatened their semi-nomadic life and customs, civilization with its farms and towns. Prisoners were only good as slaves or for trading / ransom and then only if there was no opportunity for pursuit. Each of the above were as harsh on their own members as they were on the enemy and generally they had few allies given their behavior(s).
So much for the belief that all Indians were noble people above committing atrocities.
They also were slave owners, enslaving other tribes and weren’t above stampeding herds of buffalo over a cliff to harvest meat and hides more easily. But above all else you must remember only the White man is guilty of murder, slavery and raping the land.
That movie was about 2.5 hours too long :-)
So much for the belief that all Indians were noble people above committing atrocities.
A preacher tried to convince me that the Indiginous Tribes never went to war among themselves. When they had a conflict, they would mock fight and a tap on the head was a “kill.”
He also claimed they were very cautious when hunting and wasted nothing. I got him to grudgingly back off of that one by explaining “Buffalo Jump” Montana. He still wouldn’t admit what ogrish things the tribes did to each other.
Human nature is human nature is human nature...
It was a timultuous time. I'd recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about the Comanches in central Texas.
It was a timultuous time. I'd recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about the Comanches in central Texas.
Great post.....I am a bit of a early american per-revolution history buff....
Several tribes east of the Mississippi were similar to the Comanche in cruelty....not all.... But Jesuit priests on their missionary journeys in the 1600’s were cruelly tortured in similar manner... While alive...Skin peeled off, fingers eaten off your hands, hot pokers rammed down throats, burned alive, having your beating heart ripped out of your chest and in your last dying moments watching a savage eat it....
Yeah... Them injuns were noble alright . /s
The left continues it today by their whitewashing, quibbling and excusing the Islamist atrocities.
I refuse to watch The Lone Ranger with Depp. It seems the movie is being pimped solely on Depp being in it as Tonto.
And yes; Indians were savage.
My mom has never had anything good to say about FDR, JFK, MLK, or Injuns (who she refers to as Savages... rightfully so, eh?)
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