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Council House Fight
Part of the Indian Wars
Date March 13, 1840 Location San Antonio, Texas Result Texas Victory
Belligerents
Texan Rangers Militia	Comanche all bands
Commanders and leaders
Hugh McLeod, Captain Howard	Muk-wah-ruh
Strength
Approximately 100	33 chiefs, and 32 family members and/or retainers
Casualties and losses
7 killed, 10 wounded, virtually all from friendly fire	33 killed and 32 caught and imprisoned in what the Comanche call a massacre

The Council House Fight was a conflict between Republic of Texas officials and a Comanche peace delegation which took place in San Antonio, Texas on March 13, 1840. The meeting was conceived as a negotiated truce to release Texan and Mexican hostages who had been captured by the Comanche in recent years. The event ended in the deaths of every Comanche chief who had come to San Antonio under a flag of truce. This incident hardened Comanche hostility to Texans for years to come.

Background

By 1840, the Comanche had determined that white settlers could not be driven from their homes. The Comanche had successfully driven the Apache from lands previously. In the spring of 1840, thirty-three Comanche Chiefs responded to an offer to meet with the leaders of the Republic of Texas at San Antonio and talk peace. These chiefs hoped to negotiate a recognition of the Comancheria as the sovereign land of the Comanche. Other chiefs, such as Buffalo Hump, warned that the whites could not be trusted.

The treaty talks were to be held at the Council House in San Antonio. The Comanche Chiefs, who believed they were negotiating in good faith, arrived without their lance, axe, bow, or firearm, as they understood ambassadors should be unarmed. Their only weapon was a belt knife. The Texans, however, had as a precaution concealed a large number of heavily armed militiamen and rangers outside the Council House with orders to fire into the structure, if the doors and windows were thrown open.

The Council House Fight

The Texan officials began the treaty talks with demands that the Comanche considered impossible, including that the Comanche return all white prisoners. This included people such as Cynthia Ann Parker, who were held by bands of the Comanche not represented at the talks. The instructions to the Texan militia were explicit: Albert Sidney Johnston, Secretary of War, wrote Lieutenant Colonel William S. Fisher, commanding the 1st Regiment of Infantry:

"Should the Comanche come in without bringing with them the Prisoners, as it is understood they have agreed to do, you will detain them. Some of their number will be dispatched as messengers to the tribe to inform them that those detained, will be held as hostages until the Prisoners are delivered up, when the hostages will be released."[1]

The Comanche chiefs at the meeting had brought along one white captive, and several Mexican children who had been captured separately. The white captive was Matilda Lockhart, a 16-year-old girl who had been held prisoner for over a year and a half. According to witnesses, including Mary Maverick, who helped care for the girl, she had been beaten, raped and suffered burns to her body. Her face was severely disfigured, with her nose entirely burned away.[2]

The Texan leadership was enraged. The Comanche chiefs said that they had other captives available for return, which was corroborated by Matilda Lockhart. When the Comanches would not, or could not, return all captives immediately, the Texas officials said that chiefs would be held hostage until the white captives were released. As the Comanche drew their knives and attempted to escape, militia in hiding threw open the doors, and began firing in at the astonished Comanches. The Comanches were quickly killed outright or taken prisoner.

Differing perspectives

Republic of Texas officials had one goal in mind at San Antonio, and that was to regain the hostages held by the various bands of the Comanche. The Texan command had received orders in advance from Albert Sidney Johnston, Secretary of War for the Republic of Texas, to seize the Comanche peace delegation if all prisoners held by the entire Comanche tribe were not brought to the Council House.[3] Due to the chaotic nature of the Comanche hierarchy, this would have been very difficult. There were 12 formal bands, and dozens of smaller ones, with none having any authority over the others. The visiting Comanche delegation had little ability to bring about the return of all the captives.

The aftermath

Main article Great Raid of 1840.

Main article Battle of Plum Creek.

The twelve bands of Comanche had been raiding settlements of the Mexicans, Spanish, and Texas Settlers for hundreds of years. The Comanche had controlled the southern plains, most of Texas, Oklahoma, part of Kansas and New Mexico since at least 1700. They made a regular business of selling captives back. The events at the Council House virtually certain guaranteed that those captives still held would not be returned by the Comanche.

The war chief Buffalo Hump was determined to exact revenge. The result of the Council House fight was at least 25 settlers killed in the Great Raid, with others taken prisoner. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of goods were taken, and one city burned to the ground and another damaged. Without a peace treaty in 1840, the ensuing years saw countless settlers and Native Americans killed. It was another three decades before the last of the Comanche came in.[4] The results of the Council House fight were decades of bloodshed on both sides.

See also

• Great Raid of 1840
• Battle of Plum Creek
• Buffalo Hump

References:

Online sources:

• Jodye Lynn Dickson Schilz: Council House Fight from the Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved December 23, 2008.

• First person descriptions of the Council House Fight of 1840

• Article about Linville Raid from Texas Handbook Online.

• Dawn Donalson, Buffalo Hump.

• Texas Indians and the Council House Fight.

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)
• "Comanche" on the History Channel (August 26, 2005)
• Dunnegan, Ted. Ted's Arrowheads and Artifacts from the Comancheria (August 19, 2005)
• Fehrenbach, Theodore Reed The Comanches: The Destruction of a People. New York: Knopf, 1974, ISBN 0394488563. Later (2003) republished under the title The Comanches: The History of a People
• Foster, Morris. Being Comanche.
• Frazier, Ian. Great Plains. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1989.
• John, Elizabeth and A.H. Storms 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.
• 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.
• Native Americans: Comanche (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 Miliitary Patterns on the Great Plains. Monograph of the American Ethnoligical Society, No. 21. Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1953.
• 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 E. Adamson Hoebel. The Comanches: Lords of the Southern Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952.