Council House Fight
1840 CE
The Council House Fight, often referred to as the Council House Massacre, is a decidedly lopsided fight between soldiers and officials of the Republic of Texas and a delegation of Comanche chiefs during a peace conference in San Antonio on March 19, 1840.
The meeting takes place under an observed truce with the purpose of negotiating the exchange of captives and ultimately facilitating peace after two years of war.
The Comanches seaek to obtain recognition of the boundaries of the Comancheria, their homeland, while the Texians want the release of Texian and Mexican citizens held prisoner by the Comanches.
'The council ended with twelve Comanche leaders shot to death inside the Council House, twenty-three others shot in the streets of San Antonio, and thirty taken captive.
Te incident ends any chance for peace and leads to years of further hostility and war.
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They return a white boy as a show of sincerity.
Colonel Karnes receives them, listens to their story, and agrees, but admonishes them by saying that a lasting peace can be negotiated only when the Comanches give up the Anglo captives that they hold, estimated at thirteen.
In March, Mukwooru, a powerful eastern Comanche chief, leads sixty-five Comanches, including women and children, to San Antonio for peace talks.
At this time, the Comanche people are not a unified nation.
There are at least twelve divisions of the Comanche, with as many as thirty-five independent roaming bands, also known as rancherías or villages.
Although bound together in various ways, both cultural and political, the bands are not responsible to any formalized unified authority.
The absence of a central authority means that one band cannot force another band to return their captives.
Chiefs Buffalo Hump and Peta Nocona have never agreed to return any captives to the Texian settlers.
Captives are often assimilated into the society and adopt into families, and the Comanche make little distinction between people born Comanche and those adopted.
The Comanche practice of taking captives dates back to at least the early eighteenth century with raids into Spanish New Mexico.
Women and children are preferred, and in a significant number of cases, young captives had been raised as Comanches and doid not wish to leave.
On January 10, 1840, a
The Comanches arrive in San Antonio on March 19.
Expecting a council of peace, the twelve chiefs have brought women and children as well as warriors.
They are dressed in finery with their faces painted.
The delegation hopes to negotiate a recognition of the Comancheria as the sovereign land of the Comanche.
One chief who does not attend is Buffalo Hump, the Comanche war chief who will lead the Great Raid of 1840 in retaliation for the killings to come.
The Comanche chiefs have brought to the meeting only one white captive, Matilda Lockhart, a sixteen-year-old girl who had been held prisoner for over a year and a half, as well as several Mexican children who had been captured separately.
Mukwooru refuses to deliver more captives on the grounds that they are held in the rancherías of other chiefs over whom he has no authority.
Because the delegation had not brought the expected number of captives, the members are taken to the local jail.
The talks are held at the Council House, a one-story stone building adjoining the jail on the corner of Main Plaza and Calabosa (Market) Street.
During the council, the Comanche warriors sit on the floor, as is their custom, while the Texians sit on chairs on a platform facing them.
The Texians demand to know where the other captives are.
The Penateka spokesman, Chief Mukwooru, responds that the other prisoners are held by various other bands of Comanche.
He assures the Texians that he feels the other captives will be able to be ransomed, but that it will be in exchange for a great deal of supplies, including ammunition and blankets.
He then finishes his speech with the comment "How do you like that answer?"
The Texian militia enters the courtroom and positions themselves at intervals along the walls.
When the Comanches will not, or cannot, promise to return all captives immediately, the Texas officials say that the chiefs will be held hostage until the white captives are released.
The interpreter warns the Texian officials that if he delivers this message the Comanches will attempt to escape by fighting.
He is instructed to relay the message anyway and leaves the room as soon as he finishes translating.
After learning that they are being held hostage, the Comanches attempt to fight their way out of the Council House using arrows and knives.
The Texian soldiers open fire at point-blank range, killing both Indians and whites.
The Comanche women and children waiting outdoors begin loosing arrows after hearing the commotion inside.
At least one Texian spectator is killed.
When a small number of warriors manages to escape from the Council House, all of the Comanche begin to flee.
The soldiers who pursue them again open fire, killing and wounding both Comanche and Texians.
Armed civilians also join the battle but, claiming they could not always differentiate between warriors and women and children, since all of the Comanche were fighting, shoot at them indiscriminately.
Seven Texians died, including a judge, a sheriff, and an army lieutenant, with ten more wounded.
They are given twelve days to return the captives.
On March 26, a white woman, Mrs. John Webster, comes into town with her three-year-old.
She had been a Comanche captive for nineteen months and had just escaped, leaving her twelve-year-old son with the natives.
Leaving the bulk of the warriors outside the city, Chief Isanaica (Howling Wolf) and one other man ride into San Antonio and yell insults.
The citizens tell him to go find the soldiers if he wants a fight, but the garrison commander, Captain Redd, declares that he has to observe the twelve-day truce.
Redd invites the Indians to come back in three days, but, fearing a trap, Isanaica and his men leave the area.
Another officer accuses Redd of cowardice for refusing to fight, and they both will die following a duel over the insult.
The captives, including Matilda Lockhart's six-year-old sister, had suffered slow roasting among other tortures.
Only the three captives who had been adopted into the tribe, and by Comanche custom were truly part of the tribe, were spared.
This is part of the Comanche answer to the breaking of a truce.
Aanother band of Comanches appear again to bargain for a captive exchange on April 3, when the truce deadline has ended.
They have only three captives with them, including Webster's son Booker, a five-year-old girl, and a Mexican boy.
Booker tells the Texians that the other captives had been tortured and killed when the Comanche woman had returned to camp with news of the Council House Fight.
These three captives had been returned after their adoptive families agreed to give them up.
The Comanche captives will be moved from the city jail to the San Jose Mission, then to Camp Cooke at the head of the San Antonio River.
Several will be taken into people's homes to live and work, but will run away as soon as they can.
Eventually, all of the Texians' Comanche captives will escape.