I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches

33. Renegades and Refugees

329 On April 24, 1881, Lipans carried out the last Indian raid in Texas. From the cover of a rocky bluff overlooking the Frio, the small party could see for miles. They had come here every moon for twenty years, mostly to steal horses. For days, they monitored John McLauren ’s place, seven miles above Leakey. Finally, McLauren left, and they saw his wife, children and a teenaged hired hand, Allen Lease, leave the house and walk down a hill to work in the garden. The Lipans dropped down from their lookout, crept onto the property and proceeded to plunder the house. Had Kate McLauren not heard some commotion, that’s probably all that might have happened that day, but she thought the pigs got loose and sent Lease to pen them up. When he spotted the Lipans, he turned to run but was shot in the head and died instantly. Mrs. McLauren, who was sitting to nurse her infant, jumped to her feet. The Lipans shot her several times as she hurried toward the fence at the river, still holding her baby and shouting at the other two children to run. Six-year-old Maude instead ran back to the house, walked past the Lipans, who were still looting, and retrieved a pillow for her mother. After seeing to her mother’s comfort, the plucky girl placed her threeyear -old brother Alonzo and baby Frank next to the bleeding woman, 33 CHAPTER Renegades and Refugees A long time till everything peaceful. —Percy Big Mouth 330 I FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT climbed the fence and started down the river, where she found a neighbor fishing. He quickly summoned help. John McLauren found his two sons still at the side of his wife, who died minutes after his return. The Lipans had taken every bit of clothing from the house and emptied the mattresses of feathers. Soon Bullis was on the trail with thirty-four Black Seminole scouts and Teresita. Although the raiders had wrapped their horses’ hooves with rawhide to avoid leaving tracks, the scouts managed to follow their trail over rough terrain near Devils River. They killed thirty of the horses they were unable to drive before them, crossed the Rio Grande below the mouth of the Pecos and continued high into the Burro Mountains. Teresita, the leading guide, realized from signs on the trail that they were following her people and tried to divert the detachment to an older trail, but another scout caught on and returned troops to the fresh trail. She became so violent the scouts tied her to her horse. On May 2 they found the Lipans. They hid until midnight and then crept toward the sleeping camp, leaving seven men behind with the still struggling Teresita and the horses. At daybreak on May 3 they attacked, killing four men and taking a boy and wounded woman captive. They recaptured twenty-one stolen horses. The woman said fifty or sixty families were still living in the Sierra Carmen and from there to the mouth of the Pecos and in Costilietos and Teresita, photographed in 1873 in front of their jacal. H. A. Doerr, photographer. DeGrolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Ag2008.0005 Renegades and Refugees 331 San Carlos. Bullis sent her to the Fort Sill reservation. The leader of the group was San-Da-Ve, (Santavi), the same man who fought Kickapoos with Chivato. Reportedly, he was mortally wounded, but he would later turn up at the Mescalero Reservation. This was the Black Seminole scouts’ final campaign.1 Q R The infamous Mescalero Alsate and his Lipan counterpart, Colorado , who had been a menace on both sides of the border for at least ten years, lost the last of many battles in 1881.2 In late 1877, American troops, under cover of a snow storm, attacked the group in the Sierra Carmen and destroyed their well-stocked camp. A year later Mexican forces descended, killing six and capturing eighty-six, including the two chiefs. Soldiers took the prisoners to Santa Rosa, where some resident Apaches obtained the release of several children. Because the soldiers didn’t receive their pay, they went on to Mexico City with their captives , and during the six-month journey some Apaches died of smallpox . In Mexico City, there was still no money for them, and they either freed their prisoners or let them escape. The Apaches remained...