Quanah Parker, prominent chief of the Comanche Indians with a feather fan; photo by James Mooney, 1892

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. When the Indians first came in sight Miss Lockhart fled for the house, and possibly might have escaped had not the youngest Miss Putnam implored her not to leave her. The noble girl, pitying her youthful companion, turned to aid her and both were captured. The Indians fastened these unfortunate captives on horses with rawhide thongs and hurried off with them into the Guadalupe mountains.

[…]

This raid of the Indians so terrified the settlers on the west side of the Guadalupe river that they abandoned their homes and forted together on the east side. When Captain [John] Tumlinson arrived at the west side of the river, he found that all the houses in the settlement were deserted. Ho knew nothing of the capture of Miss Lockhart and the young Putnams until he crossed the river and reached the house of Mr. William Taylor, where he first heard the sad story. A company of men was immediately raised, who went in pursuit of the Indians, but all to no purpose. They had got too far ahead to be overtaken. The poor captives were carried far into the Indian country, where they suffered terribly from hunger, hardships and exposure to the inclemencies of the weather.

During her captivity Miss Lockhart said that sometimes she had to travel from fifty to seventy-five miles a day on a bare back horse, and that seldom a day passed that she was not severely flogged. In the winter of 1839 a party of these same Indians took up their quarters on the San Saba river, about one hundred miles above where the city of Austin now stands. Information of this rendezvous was given to Colonel John H. Moore, of Fayette county, who raised a party of about sixty men, and, accompanied by a party of Lipan Indians, he went to their encampment and attacked them, when a desperate fight ensued.

Miss Lockhart was in the Indian camp when this attack was made, and knowing it was made by white men, she screamed as loud as she could, hoping they would hear her and come to her rescue. The Indians, suspecting the cause of her screaming, drowned her cries with their still louder yells, and when she persisted one of them nearby became so exasperated that he seized her by the hair of her head and tore out a large part of it. The father of the unfortunate girl was with the attacking party under Colonel Moore, and it was with a heavy heart that he returned to the settlement without his daughter, who had been a prisoner for over a year, and whom he felt quite sure was in the Indian village.

Upon one occasion a party of Indians who had Miss Lockhart in possession came within one or two days travel of San Antonio and pitched their camp. As they knew she was aware of their proximity to the white settlements, and fearing she might attempt to escape, they severely burned the soles of her feet to keep her from running away.

Not a great while after this a treaty was made with the Comanche Indians, under which Miss Lockhart was delivered up to the Texas Commissioners at San Antonio and subsequently sent back to her family. But the once sprightly, joyous young girl, whose presence had been everywhere like a gleam of sunshine penetrating the gloom of the wilderness, was a mere wreck of her former self. Her health was almost utterly ruined by the privations and hardships she had undergone and the brutal treatment to which she had been subjected by her savage captors.

When captured by the Indians, Miss Lockhart was only about thirteen or fourteen years of age. She was given over to the squaws, whom she served in the capacity of a slave. Their treatment of her was much more cruel than that of the bucks. The numerous scars upon her body and limbs bore silent testimony of savage cruelty. The ladies who examined her wounds after her reclamation (some of whom are yet alive) stated that there was not a place on her body as large as the palm of the hand which had not been burned with hot irons. After lingering some two or three years, she died. Her father was a brother of Bird Lockhart, for whom the town of Lockhart, in Caldwell county, was named. As to the Putnam children, the son was reclaimed many years afterwards. He had acquired many of the habits of the Indians and spoke their language. We have been informed that Rhoda became the wife of a chief and refused to return home. Elizabeth was finally reclaimed, but Juda Putnam remained a captive among the Indians for about fourteen years. She was several times sold, and once was purchased by a party of Missouri traders, who, after retaining her for some time, sold her to a man by the name of Chinault, who subsequently moved to Texas and settled in Gonzales county, the same section in which Miss Putnam had been captured by the Indians. With this man she had lived seven years. The citizens of Gonzales county, knowing she had been an Indian captive, and seeing the strong resemblance she bore to the Putnam family, came to the conclusion that possibly she might be the long lost Juda Putnam. After a time the Putnam family began to look into the matter, and questioned her in regard to her parentage and former life. She had forgotten her own name, and could tell nothing of her life prior to the time the Indians captured her; and of that event she had but a dim and uncertain recollection, as she was only about seven years of age when captured. A sister of hers said on one occasion, when speaking of the matter, that if this lady was really her long lost sister she could be identified by a most singular mark on her person. An examination was made by this sister and some other ladies, and the mark was found precisely as it had been described. This, together with her striking likeness to the family, left no doubt in the mind of any one that she was the identical Juda Putnam who had been captured by the Indians in Gonzales county twenty-one years before.

Thus, after fourteen years captivity among the Indians and seven years with Mr. Chinault, was this young lady by a train of circumstances brought back to the very spot from whence she had been stolen, and by the merest chance was recognized and restored to her relatives. Verily, truth is often stranger than fiction.

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 Coopers 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. There may have been, and no doubt there have been, some individuals among the Indians like those described by Cooper, et id omne genus, but they have been like angels’ visits, few and far between. His general character may be summarily stated in Byron’s words, when speaking of his hero, the Corsair: “He had’ one virtue linked to a thousand crimes.” This solitary virtue may have been physical courage, hospitality or something else, but among his unquestionable vices may be reckoned cruelty, treachery, vindictiveness, brutality, indolence (except when spurred to action by his thirst for rapine and blood) and his utter inability to advance beyond the condition in which nature had originally placed him. There is, however, one notable exception to this general rule, which is most singular and difficult to account for. We mean the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, who physically are similar to all the other North American tribes, but differ from them as widely in all other respects as any of the Caucasian races.

[…]

The “old Texans” have not infrequently been censured by some of the maudlin, sentimental writers before referred to for having treated poor Lo in a few isolated cases in a barbarous manner. Such writers probably never saw a wild Indian in their lives — never had their fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters butchered by them in cold blood; never had their little sons and daughters carried away by them into captivity, to be brought up as savages, and taught to believe that robbery was meritorious, and cold blooded murder a praiseworthy act, and certainly they never themselves had their own limbs beaten, bruised, burnt and tortured with fiendish ingenuity by “ye gentle salvages,” nor their scalps ruthlessly torn from their bleeding heads, for if the latter experience had been theirs, and they had survived the pleasant operation (as some have done in Texas) we are inclined to think the exposure of their naked skulls to the influences of wind and weather might have so softened them as to permit the entrance of a little common sense.

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