Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Bull Creek and Comanche Daily Life
December 10, 2003

Elmer Kelton, in "The Wolf and the Buffalo," does an incredible job of telling the story of the last free days of the Comanches, from the contrasting perspectives of a black buffalo soldier, and a Comanche warrior. Rereading the book inspired further research, and at the Haley Library I found a volume of Colonel Randell Mackenzie's official communications during the campaigns against the Comanche.

The Bull Creek watershed is northwest of Lake J.B. Thomas, but enters the Colorado River downstream from the dam of the impoundment. Most of the watershed is on ranchland without any public roads. Somewhere along the creek is (or was) a marsh. (The current owner told me the day before Thanksgiving that it does still exist -- I ran into her in a checkout line at a grocery store.) This marshy area is of interest to me, for the site is mentioned several times in those Army reports as a winter camp of the Comanches. Quanah Parker was the war leader of the last large group (400 people) of free Comanches until they surrendered in June of 1875 at the marsh on Bull Creek.
.
I gave a civic group talk in Snyder one afternoon last fall. With information about the winter camp in mind, I spent the morning driving what few roads do cross the Bull Creek. On County Road 1610 in Borden County, the road crosses the creek north of Lake Thomas. I sat at that crossing for a while, and let my imagination run rampant… all the way to November, 1867. I invented a hero, Aatakitai, an older brother of Isatai, and a member of the band led by Cuatro Plumas and Black Horse, and created the following scene as a way to imagine time and place.

Aatakitai had not slept all night. As the eastern sky lightened, he went to visit his shield. He kept it at the head of a steep arroyo overlooking the marsh, where a clump of junipers formed a living lodge. Not only a device to deflect arrows (and even bullets,) a shield represented spiritual protection as well. He sat beside the tripod upon which it was hung, and looked out over the valley. The warm water of the marsh created morning ground fog, each spot of open water with its own wraith-plume, all sinuously slowly drifting down stream with the chilly northern breezes. At the bend of the valley all of the plumes gathered together in a lake of fog.

Aatakitai's shield was a painted shield, one endowed with "power" (puha) received in a vision quest. If anyone except himself touched it he would surely be wounded in the next battle. His wife's brother, one of Sanaco's warriors, had just been killed by an army patrol near Shelving Rock Spring, the water hole between the Colorado River and Concho River. Sanaco's winter camp near the old buffalo jump north of the spring and north of the Colorado River was no longer unknown to the army. His brother-in-law had been out looking for another good winter camp, and was headed back to report that the valley of the head of the North Concho was full of pecans ripe for the picking, and that buffalo were plentiful and acted undisturbed there. This was great news, for thousands upon thousands of buffalo had died in early summer, victim of a disease brought by longhorn cattle. Billions of screwworm flies had swarmed around the carnage.

His wife wanted him to avenge her brother's death. Upon learning of his death the day before, she had gashed her face, her arms, her legs, and her breasts with a knife, and cut off her hair, and lopped off the tip of a finger. She had been wailing and moaning all night. After observing the valley for a few minutes, Aatakitai mixed some of the last of his good Comanchero tobacco he had received in September with pinches of dried three-leaf sumac. His soapstone pipe was covered with black markings carefully painted with walnut juice. He sat smoking, fingering his medicine bag, and sang the song he had learned when he had received the power for the shield.

When the last ember had been extinguished in his pipe, he set it down, and opened up his medicine bag. He removed the small round ball he had once removed from a buffalo stomach. His brother, a shaman, and at that time living with Quanah's band in Palo Duro, said that for many generations those Comanches lucky enough to possess such a thing were invincible in battle. As he rolled it between his fingers, he again looked out over the valley. From inside the lake of fog one of the little black and white herons that hunt at night flew up as the sun crested the horizon. It flew directly to his grove of junipers, and lit above him.

Four feathers of the species rimmed the bottom his shield -- it had been the intermediary that had come to him during the vision quest that marked his entrance into manhood. The heron peered down at Aatakitai, its brilliant red eye seeming to look into his soul. The following words came to his mind unbidden; "In two days, the soldiers that killed your brother-in-law will be at the goodwater spring along the salty creek a day's ride to the southwest. Their horses will eat the jimmyweed there and will sicken. The soldiers will be easy to catch."

Quanah Parker is a regional icon. I have met at least 100 people that claim to be related to him (and interestingly enough, never to any other Comanche -- it has to be Quanah!) Quanah visited the Llano Estacado again two years after the surrender at Bull Creek. In July of 1877 he came to round up the followers of Black Horse and Cuatro Plumas who the fall before had returned to the Llano Estacado to follow the old ways. In March, Black Horse and Cuatro Plumas met up with a group of Apaches at Casas Amarillas, and later met a group of Comancheros including John Benson from Lincoln County in the Blue Sandhills a little further west. Quanah, with papers from Fort Sill saying he was to convince the renegade Comanches to return to the reservation, rode up to Captain Nolan's camp a few days before the renegades led Captain Nolan into waterless country. Nolan was also trying to find the band of Comanches.

Jose Tafoya (scouting for buffalo hunters also trying to find the renegade Comanches) tried to tell Nolan where the Indians were, and where water was, but according to John Cook, one of the buffalo hunters, Nolan thought Tafoya was purposely misleading him to protect Comancheros. Quanah finally found the renegades and was able to convince most of them to return to the reservation. Meanwhile, four of Nolan's troopers died of thirst. The story of the summer of 1877 on the Llano Estacado would make an incredible movie!