USA > Texas > The evolution of a state, or, Recollections of old Texas days > Part 13
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"Why," said I, "didn't your father cure it?"
"O, h-1, no; he can't cure it; now, I want to know how to cure mine."
I then told him, stipulating that he shouldn't tell his father, and he kept his word.
Natty Moore and his sons formed a strong link in the cordon of frontiersmen, which, after all, was the most effective barrier to the incursion of the hostiles. Revered by all who knew them, the old man and his worthy helpmate lived to see their posterity in the fourth gener- ation settled comfortably in the prairie which bears his name.
Meanwhile the Comanches seemed to have withdrawn to their stronghold and what councils were there being held can only be conjectured from what subsequently transpired.
Early in the summer of 1837 a band of Comanches, con- sisting of two chiefs-Quinaseico (eagle) and Puestia- and six warriors, came to the fort waving a white flag. They had not yet learned to speak English, but all Texas Indians understood more or less Spanish. I, being the most expert in the use of the latter language, went out, though not alone by several, to ascertain their business.
They stated that their tribe was desirous of entering into a treaty with the whites, and to that end requested that a commissioner be sent out to their camp to,talk the matter over with their head men. I thereupon conducted them into the fort, where they laid their request before Captain Andrews.
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The white people, weary of the perpetual warfare which compelled them to live in forts and make a subsistence as best they might, hailed the proposition for a treaty with delight, and would have been willing to purchase even a cessation of hostilities at almost any price; but, the In- dians were so treacherous that the office of commissioner was not one to be coveted.
For reasons above stated, the chiefs selected me to un- dertake the business, pledging themselves that no harm should befall me. Knowing that there is a degree of honor even among Indians touching those who volun- tarily become their guests, I yielded to the stress of cir- cumstances and agreed to accompany them back to their camp, only about thirty miles distant, on Brushy creek.
One man was really safer than several, as the Indians would naturally have been suspicious of conversation they could not understand, and if treachery were intended num- bers would not avail against it.
I bade adieu to my comrades, many of whom thought it would be the last time they would see me, and, put- ting my life into hands red with the blood of my race, pro- ceeded to the camp where old Muguara, the head chief, received me with every mark of friendship, conducting me to his lodge, where I was made the recipient of every attention known to their code of hospitality. The camp was not nearly so large as I had expected, there being only about fifty lodges and not over one hundred war- riors. There must have been more of the tribe some- where, as they could, on occasion, muster a much larger force. They were exceedingly chary of information re- garding their strength, however. There were six prisoners in camp : one white woman and two white boys, and one Mexican woman and two Mexican boys. The Mexican woman was the only one of the lot that evinced any desire
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to return to her people. She was not permitted to talk to me in private, and policy prevented her giving vent to her feelings in the presence of her captors. After I had been some time among them, they relaxed their espionage somewhat, and she managed to tell me that she was very homesick, having been captured after she was grown. The poor woman cried bitterly over her situation, she having been appropriated by one of the bucks. The white woman said she was very small when taken, and remem- bered nothing of the circumstances. She had an Indian husband and several children.
None of the boys remembered anything of their homes. One of the white boys, a youth of eighteen or there- abouts, I recognized as a prisoner we had twice recap- tured, once at Gonzales and again at Victoria. Each time lie stayed a few days, apparently quite satisfied with his surroundings, but, when he got a good chance, decamped, taking several of the best horses along.
The other white child was a bright little fellow, five or six years old. Loath to leave him to grow up a savage, I tried to buy him, offering a fine horse in exchange, but the squaw who had adopted him gathered him close to her bosom with every show of affection. "No," said she, "he is mine; my own child." That was plainly a false- hood, but the love she manifested toward the hapless boy was some palliation therefor.
The Indians would give. no information about any of their captives except one little Waco, which Quinaseico had adopted, and I should not have known he was a Waco but that the old chief himself told me. Observing that the other members of the family were all grown up, I asked the old man if that little boy was his child.
"Yes," said he, taking the child in his arms, "mine now. He then told me that during the war between the Wacos
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and Comanches, the latter surprised an encampment of the enemy and killed all the occupants except that one little child. Said he :
"After the fight was over I went into a lodge and found this boy, about two years old, sitting beside its dead mother crying ; and my heart was sorry for him, and I took him up in my arms and brought him home to my lodge and my wife took him to her bosom, and fed him, and he is mine now." And the little orphan Waco, as well as the little white boy, was petted by the whole tribe.
"Smithwick" being too much of a tongue twister for the average Comanche, old Muguara called the chiefs to- gether in council, when it was decided to bestow upon me the name of an illustrious chief, who had previously de- parted for the happy hunting ground.
Old Muguara then communicated the decision to me and in a voice that might have been heard a mile pro- claimed to all the camp that the white brother's name was henceforth "Juaqua." The name was taken up and repeated by every separate member of the tribe, the men pronouncing it with loud jocularity, the women shyly lisping it half under breath, and the children, with an expression that reminded me of nothing in the world so much as the little bark or squeak of the prairie dog as he disappears into his burrow at the approach of an enemy.
"Juaqua !" The name clung to me years after. I use the Spanish alphabet in spelling these Indian names, it seeming better adapted to the soft sound of the Comanche tongue. I tried to get some knowledge of the latter lan- guage, succeeding fairly well with the nouns and adjec- tives, but when it came to the conjugation of the Coman- che verb I gave it up.
The Indians were very skeptical about the utility of
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writing, but when they told me the names of different objects and saw me write them down and afterwards refer to them, giving the names correctly, they concluded it was "buena."
CHAPTER XIII.
I have often regretted that I did not preserve the notes I made of the Comanche tongue, very little of which I now recall. I do not think they followed the rule adopted by the northern tribes in their nomenclature, few of their names seeming to have English equivalents. Of the six chiefs, Mugua-ra, Quin-a-se-i-co, Pote-se-na-qua-hip, Ca-ta-ni-a-pa, Pa-ha-u-co and E-sa-nap, only the second and third appeared interpretable-Quin-a-se-i-co (eagle) and Pote-se-na-qua-hip (buffalo hump). My adopted name, Juaqua or Wah-qua, had no special significance that I knew of. One of the Spanish boys who, though having lost all other traces of his identity, still remembered that his name was Juan, was called by the Indians Un-ar-o- caddy, but whether it was considered the Indian equiva- lent of John or merely like Juaqua, the name by which he was adopted into the tribe, I could not determine. I pre- sume the squaws had names suggestive or otherwise, but I failed to catch them. About the only common nouns that I remember were tuhaya (horse), ait (bow), pock (arrow), wood-ah (bear) and quasack (a coat or covering for the body). The last word I am inclined to think an adaptation from the Spanish.
The study of the Indian tongue was fraught with many difficulties. Many of their nouns bore so strong a re- semblance to the Spanish as to suggest a common origin. This, however, may have been but a natural sequence to the long intercourse between the Mexicans and Indians, the latter having adapted the Spanish to their peculiar
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vocalization. But even on this hypothesis it was some- times difficult to account for the remarkable resemblance. One striking example was found in the Indian word bee- sone (buffalo), which is the Spanish pronunciation of bison ; the Mexicans, however, using the word "cibola" in speaking of the American buffalo. There were also many words used in common by Mexicans and Indians, which, while certainly not Spanish, were possibly relics of the Aztec tongue; "wah-ho-lo-te" (turkey) for instance, the Spanish for which is "pavo." "Tuhuya" and "woodah" were presumably pure Indian, being totally unlike any- thing in any civilized language. Their numerical system, perhaps, offered the most promising field for philological research. My achievements in that line were limited to the first ten numbers, the last four of which are all I re- member : mammiwassett, seven; semimamiwassett, eight; seminot, nine, and samot, ten.
I could never discover anything analogous to written language; the nearest approach to it being diagrams, or more properly maps, which they sometimes marked out on the ground to convey an idea of locality. They were peculiarly expert in sign language, however. Some idea of drawing they had acquired, their work at times evincing a remarkable degree of skill. Any smooth surface-a board, a flat stone, or smooth-bark tree, served for can- vas, while charcoal furnished pencils. Colored chalks were sometimes substituted; but, whatever the material used, the subject was always the same-Indians chasing buffalo. When on a scout, out to the old Tumlinson block house, we found the walls covered with these Indian drawings ; every loose board being similarly ornamented. The block house was burned by the Indians shortly after. Whether there may have been some special significance attached to the drawings, or whether they were but the expression
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of a vague longing after the ideal, I could not even con- jecture.
Nor did they seem to possess any method of computing time; and though there were some very ancient looking people in the tribe, I could form no idea of their age.
I have known several deaf mutes among the Indians, but never a blind one. It is quite likely, however, that if a babe were born blind it would be put out of the way. And, really, aside from deafness, I never knew of any natural physical defect in an Indian. Nor were there any maimed or lamed in battle, though, like warriors of all times, they were very proud of battle scars, particularly those made by bullets, bringing them out more conspicu- ously by tattooing lines around them.
The utmost harmony prevailed among the various divi- sions of the polygamous families. The oldest wife seemed to be the mistress of the harcm. There was. one large central lodge used in common by all the families, each squaw having a smaller one for herself and children, the latter never numerous.
The family meals, consisting of meat alone, generally roasted on sticks, were all served together on the flesh side of a driedi skin, each fellow helping himself. Their drinking vessels were made of buffalo horns and terrapin shells, and some had even become possessed of a tin cup.
The vessels for carrying water were made of deer skins "cased"-stripped off whole-the legs and necks tied up tightly with sinews. Sometimes the smaller stomach pouch of a buffalo was used.
Not wishing to give the least occasion for offense, 1 ate with them, but I laid in a supply of coffee before I went out, which I boiled myself, drinking it from the cup in which it was prepared. In order to be sociable, I of- fered old Chief Muguara some coffee, for which he soon
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contracted quite a liking, thus cutting my supply short.
The Indian mode of cooking meat-roasting it on sticks -was excellent, but they had become so far civilized as to possess a pot in which, perhaps out of deference to me, they sometimes boiled their meat; but I much preferred the roasted, that seeming a little less filthy.
So far as my observation went, the Texas Indians were unlike those of any other section of the country, subsist- ing entirely on meat. The northern tribes raised corn, beans and several kinds of vegetables. Those of Arizona and New Mexico raised wheat and beans, and the Cali- fornia Indians in their primitive state gathered vast quan- tities of acorns, pine nuts, and grass nuts, which consti- tuted their staple food.
Perhaps, though, it was owing to the unfailing supply of game that the Comanche eschewed vegetable food, which required more labor than did the meat. Another peculiarity of the Comanche was his abstinence from whisky, few of them even venturing to taste it; old Mu- guara alone showing signs of dawning civilization by occasionally indulging.
On one of our several visits into Bastrop, when we were about starting on our return, he said to me:
"Juaqua, hadn't we better get a bottle of fool's water? We might meet hostile Indians on the road and it would make us brave."
Chief Muguara was also bald-headed, the only instance of the kind I ever knew; that may also have been attrib- utable to his over-civilization.
There were some of the dishes set before me that my stomach absolutely declined to do honor to; for instance the curdled milk taken from the stomachs of suckling fawns and buffalo calves, which they esteemed a rare deli- cacy.
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They were also very fond of tripe, which they broiled without even taking the trouble to wash it, merely drag- ging. it over the grass to wipe off the thickest of the filth.
They had some kind of religious belief which seemed akin to sun worship. Judging from outward manifesta- tions there was some power which it was necessary to propitiate by offerings. When out on a hunt as soon as game was killed they struck fire and roasted meat, and always before eating a bite the chief would cut off a morsel and bury it; the first fruit of the chase, I sup- pose.
A similar ceremony was observed when the chief lit his pipe; the first puff of smoke was blown toward the sun and the second to the earth after the manner of in- cense offering ; the substance used for the purpose being a mixture of tobacco and dried sumach leaves. The pipes were made of soft stone generally, though sometimes hard wood was substituted. They were not seemingly anxious to make proselytes to their religion, therefore were ret- icent about their tenets, all I gathered concerning which being from observation. They evidently believed in a hereafter, but whether the conditions thereof depended on their conduct in this life was uncertain. One thing I know, that though they would fight desperately to rescue the body of a fallen comrade so long as his scalp was intact, the moment he lost it he was abandoned; they would not touch the body, even to bury it. Whether, like the Chinamen, the cue was considered a necessary pass- port to the other world, or perhaps only because they thought that the enemy having secured the coveted scalp there was no use in hiding the body in the ground, re- mains a mystery to me. Another point on which they seemed to be superstitious was in never touching the heart
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of an animal. They would strip off every particle of flesh, leaving the skeleton entire and the heart untouched inside.
Although it was customary for the first fellow who woke in the morning to announce the fact in song, the act seemed rather a spontaneous outpouring akin to that of the feathered songsters than a religious rite; the song itself resembling the lay of the birds in that it was word- less save for the syllables, ha ah ha, which furnished the vehicle on which the carol rode forth to the world; the performance ending in a keen yell.
Theories and conjectures are not evidence. I therefore spare the reader mine, simply stating facts, from which all are at liberty to draw conclusions. Perhaps some of the old Comanches in the Indian territory might be pre- vailed on to throw some light on the subject.
But taking them all around they were the most peace- able community I ever lived in. Their criminal laws were as inexorable as those of the Medes and Persians, and the code was so simply worded there was no excuse for ignor- ance. It was simply the old Mosaic law, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
In cases of dispute, a council of the old men decided it, and from their decision there was no appeal. And when one died, all his belongings were destroyed, precluding all possibility of a family quarrel over the estate.
During the whole period of my sojourn among the tribe-three months-I did not hear a single wrangle among the adult members. The youngsters had an oc- casional scrimmage, which they were allowed to fight out to the amusement of the onlookers.
Notwithstanding their inhuman treatment of the helpless prisoners that fell into their hands, I never saw a woman or child abused. The women, as in all savage tribes, were
Gomanche Song
C
Hay ak ha hay at ha hoy or hay ate hay an
hay ar hoy an
Hayat ha hay on ha hay an hay an way an ha he ehehe the work!
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abject slaves, but their inferiority was their protection from the chastisement which "civilized" husbands some- times visit on their wives.
An Indian brave would have felt it a burning disgrace to strike a woman. I don't think they ever resorted to corporal punishment within the tribe. Like the ancient Jews, however, tribal law didn't apply to "the stranger without the gates," nor within, either, when the stranger was a captive.
There was a distinct line dividing the provinces of men and women, the mother having complete control of the children.
When an Indian girl arrived at a marriageable age, it was the mother who arranged the match; the suitor generally winning her favor by gifts, or barter of skins, and sometimes horses, if the girl was a belle.
The women, of course, performed all the labor, aside from killing and bringing in the game; stripping the skins from the animals, dressing and ornamenting them with beads or paint, a process which interested me very much. The skins were first staked down to the ground, flesh side up. With a sharp bone the squaw then scraped off every particle of flesh; next the scraped surface was spread with lime to absorb the grease, after which the surface was spread with the brains of the animal, rubbing it in and working it over. till the skin became soft and pliable, the process requiring days and days of hard work.
Then with paint, which they manufactured from colored chalks, and brushes made of tufts of hair, the artist, with the earth for an easel, beginning in the center, drew symbolic designs, the most conspicuous of which was the sun, executed with a skill truly remarkable.
A multitude of different colored rays commingling in a common center and radiating out in finely drawn lines, the
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spaces made by the divergence again and again filled in, taking as much time as a work by the old masters. Time was no object, life having nothing to offer beyond the gratification of this single vanity.
These painted robes were worn over the shoulders like shawls, the fur side underneath.
The old people of both sexes were treated with defer- ence, another sign of their benighted state. Little notice was taken of the female children by either parent, all their pride and affection being centered on the embryo war- riors, fitting them out with bows and lances, with which they fought imaginary focs and "mimic frays," much after the fashion of the old school days commemorated in the lines-
"O +were you ne er a school boy, And did you never train ; And feel that swelling of the heart You ne'er can feel again?"
The little Indian girls, brought up in the way they should go, played at dressing skins, setting up lodges, etc. Yes, and they played with dolls, too. I was never allowed to inspect those Indian doll babies, so I can't tell how they were made; but the little Indian maids bound them on pieces of bark, setting them up against trees, swinging them in hammocks or carrying them on their backs just as their mothers had done with them.
The small boys went entirely nude, but the girls always wore some covering. When not hunting, the bucks whiled away the time in telling marvelous stories of the fight and chase-the former for my benefit, I presume-running races, sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot. I sometimes ran with them, and in a 50-yard dash could beat most of them, that distance only serving to limber them up. They always insisted on running at least a quar-
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ter of a mile; in which case they could have distanced me, so I declined to run over my limit.
They were inveterate gamblers and would sit out in the broiling sun for half a day with the perspiration streaming down their faces intent on a game, the merits of which I failed to penetrate. though I watched them by the hour. The game, which seemed a combination of dice throwing, five corns, marbles and all other games pretty much, was played on the flesh side of a buffalo robe, marked into sections with chalk lines. The implements with which it was played were two smooth sticks, about four inches long, flat on one side and oval on the other, an inch or so in width on the flat side. These they placed face to face, and, holding them between the thumb and forefinger, struck them endwise on a flat stone in the center of the chalk lines, at the same time releasing them, when the rebound threw them in various directions, the points scored de- pending on the position in which they fell, both as to the sticks and the marks on the robe. They would bet their last deerskin on the game, and of course some one had to lose; still, I never knew of anything even approaching to a quarrel over the outcome.
Occasionally they had visitors from other tribes with whom they swapped lies, sometimes conversing entirely by signs, not seeming to understand each other's language at all, though it all sounded the same to me.
Among other things they told how on one occasion they had been down to Gonzales and collected a fine drove of horses and mules-they didn't hint that the animals were stolen-with which they were returning to their camp, when they were surprised by cowardly white men who stole upon them while they slept and chased them into the cedarbrake, wounding three of their warriors, one of whom died before they got home-a piece of information
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gratifying to me, as we didn't know we killed any of them -capturing all their horses and camp equipage. I didn't chirp about my part of the raid.
I often accompanied the bucks on their hunts, and rarely saw an animal killed in wanton sport, old buffalo bulls then being the victims. Having killed what they wanted for meat, they sometimes singled out an old bull, shooting arrows into his hump until he became irritated to the fighting pitch; then, as he charged one of his tor- mentors, another would run up beside him and jerk an arrow from its position in his hump. The pain thus pro- duced would impel the now thoroughly angered brute to turn on his daring foe, and I have seen them, clumsy as they look, wheel so quickly that it would be all the Indian's pony could do to get out of the way of his horns ; but then another Indian would create a diversion by running up and snatching an arrow. And so they kept it up till the bull was too much fatigued to make the sport interesting ; when they would despatch him to recover their arrows. This sport was doubtless an adaptation from the Spanish bull fight.
Another one of their sports, though in this case com- bined with business, was the lassoing of turkeys, deer, mustangs, and buffalo calves.
When a drove of turkeys ranged out on the prairie in pursuit of grasshoppers, the Indian would follow at a dis- tance until the birds were a mile or more from timber ; then he would dash upon them, causing them to rise. Put- ting spurs to his horse he would then keep right under the flock, keeping them on the wing until they fell to the ground from exhaustion, when he ran among them and lassoed all he wanted.
When he wanted venison the Indian secreted himself near a watering place till the deer. came in to drink, after
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