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The campground was ominously quiet as the first rays of sunlight filtered through the trees along Sandies Creek. The dawn air was cool on the mid-April morning in South Texas. The tranquility was violently interrupted by the sudden report of rifles and resounding war whoops as more than five dozen Comanche Indians descended on the scene. The men of the camp scrambled to make a stand. Improvising breastworks of carts, packsaddles and trading goods, the biesieged fired back at the Indians, who outnumbered them by upwards of six to one. The contest was fierce but it was over before it had begun. From a small porthole type window in his pioneer cabin several hundred yards away, John Castleman could only watch the massacre in anguish. He was frustrated that he could not assist the besieged and that they had not heeded his advice. His gut instinct was to open fire with his rifle, however futile the effort may prove to be. Only the pleading of Castleman’s wife restrained him. The first shot he fired would only insure that he, his wife and children would also be slaughtered. Even still, it was difficult to watch as others died before him. Castleman and his pioneer family had become bystanders to a bloody Indian depredation in south central Texas. It was April 1835 when the Indians descended near his place and slaughtered a party of traders. John Castleman, a backwoodsman from Missouri, had settled with his wife, four children and his wife’s mother in the autumn of 1833 fifteen miles west of Gonzales. His cabin often served as a place of refuge for travelers moving down the San Antonio Road from Gonzales. Castleman’s place was located in present Gonzales County on Sandies Creek, a good watering hole. Indians were known to be about the area, and they had even killed his four dogs in one attempt to steal Castleman’s horses.  Chapter 1 Attack and Counterattack 1823–1835  SAV AGE FRONTIER On about April 15, 1835, a thirteen-man trading party with loaded packs mules from Natchitoches, Louisiana, made camp a few hundred yards from Castleman’s cabin. The group included a French trader named Mr. Greesier, his two partners and ten Mexican cart drivers and muleteers. Having noted Indian tracks about, he warned these traders that their lives were at stake if they did not use his place as a fortification for the night.1 The traders declined the offer to use Castleman’s cabin, choosing to retire for the night near the waterhole. The Indians attacked these traders right at daylight, the yelling from which awakened Castleman. The traders fired back and continued to hold their ground for some four hours while the Indian circled them. The attackers slowly tightened their circle as the morning sun rose, falling back temporarily whenever the traders managed to inflict damage on their own numbers. The traders suffered losses and drew to a desperate point. The Comanches finally took advantage of their enemy’s desperation and made an all-out onslaught from three sides. They succeeded in drawing the fire of the party simultaneously and left them momentarily unloaded. During this brief instant, the Indians rushed in with victorious war whoops and fell upon the traders in hand-to-hand combat.2 Raiding to acquire fine stock and other goods became a ruthless sport to the Comanche (translatable as “the real people” in Indian tongue) as settlement of Texas began to encroach upon the hunting lands the Indians had long claimed. By 1830, the Indian population in the territory of Texas was perhaps fifteen-thousand compared to about seventeen-thousand settlers of Anglo-European, Mexican national and black origin. In combat with early settlers, the Comanche warriors had learned to exploit any advantage a battle might offer them, such as lengthy time required to reload weapons in the case of the French and Mexican traders. The determined Indians could accurately fire a half dozen arrows in the time it took an opponent to reload his rifle a single time. The battlewise Comanches forced the traders to discharge all their weapons at once before moving in to slaughter the men before they could reload.3 This last terrific charge was witnessed by Castleman from his window , who immediately realized that it was over for the poor traders. The victims were brutally mutilated and scalped. The Comanches stayed long enough to dispose of their own dead, round up the traders ’ mules and collect...

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