When Children Were Captured By Comanches

There is a certain class of maudlin, sentimental writers who are forever bewailing the rapid disappearance of the Indian tribes from the American continent. We must confess we don’t fraternize with our brother scribblers on this point. They have evidently taken their ideas of the Indian character from Cooper’s novels and similar productions, which give about as correct delineation of it as are the grotesque figures a school boy draws on his slate of the animals or objects he intends to represent. — J.W. Wilbarger
FROM Indian depredations in Texas: reliable accounts of battles, wars, adventures, forays, murders, massacres, etc., together with biographical sketches of many of the most noted Indian fighters and frontiersmen of Texas by J.W. Wilbarger, 1890:
THE Comanche Indians were to Texas what the Pequot Indians were to New England and what the Sioux were to the traders and trappers of the west. Their incursions were for many years a terror to the border settlers of Texas, for they were a warlike, cruel and treacherous tribe, and as they always traveled on horseback they could swoop down unexpectedly from their distant 1838 stronghold upon the settlements, commit murders and depredations, and retreat before any effective pursuit could be made. It was a party of this tribe of Indians who captured the young lady whose sad story we are about to relate. Her father, Andrew Lockhart, emigrated from the State of Illinois in the year 1828 and settled on the Guadalupe river, in what is now DeWitt county — then De Witt’s colony. It was in the fall or winter of 1838 that Matilda Lockhart, Rhoda Putnam, Elizabeth Putnam, Juda Putnam and James Putnam left the houses of their parents one day and went to the woods to gather pecans. While they were thus engaged a party of Indians suddenly rushed upon them. They discovered the Indians too late to escape and were all captured. (more…)

