Part Two of a Series--Hugh McLeod, Pochanaquarhip, and Matilda Lockhart

 

The Council House is behind the wall, to the left of the church.  The San Antonio City Hall occupies this space today.

 In March of 1840, President Mirabeau Lamar sent his new Inspector General of the Texas Army, twenty-six-year-old Lt. Col. Hugh McLeod, to San Antonio.  McLeod was part of a three-man team sent to negotiate the terms of a peace treaty and the return of hostages with the Comanche Nation.  Lamar knew McLeod was not the shiniest penny in the bank, but felt the impatient young colonel was bright enough to make a reasonable deal with a bunch of hungry Indians.  He also knew that if the talks stalled, the impetuous McLeod was likely to fight, which was not, in Lamar’s opinion, all bad.

     On the morning of March 19, 1840, sixty-five Comanche, including twelve chiefs, arrived dressed in their finest ceremonial regalia.  The chiefs were accompanied for this festive occasion by their squaws and children.  The meeting was held in the council house adjacent to the jail where present-day Market Street and Delarosa meet the Main Plaza in downtown San Antonio.  The twelve chiefs sat on the floor, as was their custom, and the Texans sat in chairs on an elevated platform facing and looking down on the Indians, a not surprising white man tactic.  The other Comanche, mostly women and children, remained outside, in back of the building.  Two companies of Texas infantry assembled in front of the building to provide “security.”

     The Comanche brought only one white hostage, sixteen-year-old Matilda Lockhart, and several Mexican children of little interest to the Texans.  Miss Lockhart informed the group that she had seen fifteen captives in the main Indian camp, and she believed the Indians would bring them in, one at a time, after the ransom for her was paid.  From her observations, she thought the Indians wanted to establish a high value for the hostages before they released any of them.

     When asked about hostages, Chief Muguara, spokesman for the Comanche, said that he was sure they would all be released, but only after a large ransom was paid for each.  When he finished, he asked, “How do you like that answer?”

     Whether Muguara was being sarcastic or was seriously seeking an opinion, the Texans did not like that answer.  They were furious.  The Comanche had reneged on their promise to free the captives.  Lamar, always expecting treachery from the Indians, had prepared for such an eventuality.  If the Indians failed to produce the captives, the negotiating team had been instructed to imprison the chiefs and hold them to trade for the hostages.  The interpreter was instructed to inform the chiefs that they were under arrest.

     Outside, one of the rifle companies moved around the building to watch the Comanche at the back of the structure.  The other group crowded around the open doors and windows of the council house, to hear the exchanges as they grew more heated.  The glare of the bright sunshine made it difficult to see into the dark interior of the building.

     The translator refused to tell the Indians they were under arrest, knowing there would be a violent reaction.  Lt. Col. Fisher, head of the Texas council team, ordered him to translate the message.  The nervous interpreter edged toward the door, delivered the message, and lunged outside as the Comanche leapt to their feet, slashing with razor-sharp knives at everyone within reach, and pushing for the door.  One of the officers may have given the order, it may have been pre-arranged, or the soldiers may have acted spontaneously, but in any case, the riflemen at the doors and windows fired point blank into the building, hoping to hit Indians.

     The braves, squaws and children outside, hearing the commotion, began to shoot arrows at everyone on the street, while the Texan soldiers began to fire at the Indians.  According to the soldiers, they aimed for the braves and did not shoot at women and children.

     The “battle” lasted only a few minutes.   Lt. Col. McLeod’s official report, issued the next day, accounted for the sixty-five Indians as follows: Thirty-five dead—thirty adult males, including all twelve of the chiefs, three women and two children.  Twenty-seven women and children and two old men were captured and held at Mission San Jose.  One renegade Mexican who came in with the Comanche, slipped away in the confusion.

      The Texans lost seven dead and ten wounded.  Of the seventeen Texas casualties, perhaps a few were actually harmed by Indians.  Most were killed or wounded by friendly fire.

     The Texans, once again demonstrating their ignorance of the Comanche, decided to release one of the women hostages, give her a good horse and provisions, and send her to the Llano Estacado with an ultimatum for the tribe.  The Texans would release the remaining women and children and two old men when the Comanche brought in the fifteen hostages Matilda Lockhart had seen.  A two-week truce would be allowed to give the tribes time to deliver the hostages.

     The Comanche were mourning the loss of the twelve chiefs and other members of their tribe when the squaw delivered the message from the Texans.  Immediately, they began to torture the remaining captives in some of the cruelest, slowest, and most painful methods ever devised.  Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was reportedly roasted alive over an open fire.  All the hostages were dead within a short time.  Of the original fifteen, three hostages had been adopted by Comanche families and were not harmed as they were considered members of the tribe.  The Comanche made no distinction between native-born and adopted members of the tribe—all were considered Comanche and treated equally.

     Hugh McLeod and Lt. Col. Fisher made their way back to the primitive new capital at Austin to report to President Lamar.  The citizens of San Antonio worried about Comanche retaliation, but within a few weeks, things returned to normal.

     In most descriptions of this event, Matilda Lockhart, who had spent eighteen months in captivity, is said to have been horribly disfigured from abuse by her captors.  Her slender young body was scarred from months of torture with hot coals, rawhide whips, and knives.  Beatings with heavy clubs left evidence of broken bones.  Supposedly, her nose was entirely gone, burned off with hot coals, which left a grotesque hole in the center of her face.  Her appearance reportedly so enraged the Texans that they could not help but take revenge on the twelve chiefs.

     Matilda is mentioned in Lt. Col. McLeod’s report of the incident, written the day after the battle.  McLeod acknowledged her obvious intelligence, but said nothing about any sign of abuse.  It was common knowledge that she had been repeatedly raped, as were all female captives, but no contemporary report says anything about scars, burns, or other evidence of torture.  The newspaper reporters described everything about the “battle” in great detail, but no mention was made of a sixteen-year-old girl with a missing nose. Matilda’s sister-in-law, in a letter to her mother, reported on Matilda’s condition, but mentioned no disfigurement.

     The first mention of abuse occurred more than fifty years later.  In 1890, Mary Maverick wrote that Matilda had been abused, was terribly scarred, and her nose was badly burned.  Texas writers and the press quickly jumped on the story and expanded it.  At the time, Texas’ image was suffering at the hands of the Victorian press, both on the East Coast and abroad.  A tortured, abused, and disfigured sixteen-year-old girl may have helped give the Texans an excuse for their brutal treatment of the Comanche.

     Out on the Llano Estacado, Chief Pochanaquarhip, known to the Anglos as Buffalo Hump, was planning reprisal.  The sacred council laws had been violated.  The hated whites had murdered chiefs under a flag of truce.  Pochanaquarhip was arroused.   He was not one to go soft when faced with adversity.  He quietly planned and gathered braves, supplies, and horses for his revenge.  The Texans were well advised to worry—Pochanaquarhip in the Penataka dialect means “ an erection that won’t go down.”  Buffalo Hump was destined to become a legend in his own time.

     Stay tuned…..We're gonna have some fun with this....