AUGUST 6:

Max Gros-Louis (Oné-Onti) 1931- Former Chief of the Huron nation at Lorette, born in Loretteville, Quebec. After a career in the handicraft business, Gros-Louis was elected Chief in 1964. He helped establish the Canadian Indian Pavilion at Expo 67 and found the Indians of Quebec Association in 1966.  He was re-elected Grande Chef in 2004.

1991 Ottawa Ontario Environment Minister Jean Charest announces new Aulavik National Park on Banks Island in Western Arctic; 12,000 sq km; Aulavik means 'where people travel' in Inuit.

1777 Oriskany New York Nicholas Herkimer 1728-1777 moves to relieve Fort Stanwyck; attacked by Mohawks under Joseph Brant; badly wounded; Indians retreat when reinforcements arrive from Fort Stanwyck.

1777 Oriskany New York John Johnson 1742-1830, with John Butler and Joseph Brant and a force of Loyalists and Indians, ambushes American Gen. Nicholas Herkimer carrying reinforcements.

1991 Thunder Bay Ontario Bob Rae 1949- recognizes First Nations right to self government; Ontario to devolve powers to each nation; policing, justice, medical care, education and resources.

August 6, 1676:  Weetamoo was the Sachem of the Wampanoag town of Pocasset, Rhode Island.  The sister-in-law of King Philip, she led as many as 300 warriors in battle.  Today, while trying to escape from European soldiers from Taunton, Massachusetts, she will drown in the Taunton River.   Her head will be cut off and displayed on a pole in town.

August 6, 1840:  Today hundreds of Comanches, led by Buffalo Hump, surround and attack Victoria, Texas.  In the next two days fifteen settlers are killed in the fighting.  The Comanches will take several hundred head of livestock.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

In 1835 Sonora re-established its bounties for scalps. Chihuahua and Durango followed, but by the 1840s, Comanche war parties were ranging all over northern Mexico...some staying for as long as three months.

Comanche war parties usually found easy victims in Texas, and when Americans began to settle there after 1821, Comanches did not distinguish between Anglo and Hispanic. In 1833 Sam Houston arrived in Texas as a United States representative to arrange a treaty with the Texas Comanches. There were some meetings, but Mexican officials began to wonder what he was doing in their country arranging a treaty with their Comanches, and he was asked to leave. Soon after Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836, Houston became president of the new republic.

In May, 1838, a treaty of peace and friendship was signed with the Texas Comanches but did not address the Comanches' main concern, a line between Comancheria and the white settlements. In the absence of an agreement on this, the whites steadily encroached, and the Comanches still raided. Houston wanted to set a line but was replaced in December by Mirabeau Lamar, a man determined to deal with Indian problems by war. One of his priorities was the return of Anglo prisoners taken by Comanches during the previous ten years of Mexican rule. Mainly women and children, the Texans were understandably anxious to get them back. In March, 1840 a meeting, under a flag of truce in San Antonio, was held with the Comanches to negotiate their release.

If the Texans had any illusions the fate of these people, they were about to be shattered. Rape was one of the kinder things Comanches did to women, and many of the children had grown-up as Comanche and had no wish to return. The twelve Comanche leaders who attended the meeting expected trade and ransom, but when the Texans saw the condition of a captive they had brought with them, they asked questions about others still in the Comanche camps. They were outraged by what they learned, and the negotiations collapsed. Rather than send the Comanches away, soldiers surrounded the council house to take them hostage to exchange for the white captives still held. The stunned Comanches tried to escape, and the Texans killed them. 27 women and children were taken prisoner. One woman was released to bring in the other captives. She returned with five, and the Texans released five more. No others were exchanged. It was now the Comanches' turn to be outraged by the killing of their chiefs under a flag of truce. Hundreds of warriors approached San Antonio screaming their rage, but remained just beyond rifle-range. Then suddenly they were gone, and the Texans thought the crisis had passed.

The Comanches had left to plan retaliation. When they got back to their camps, they killed the white prisoners they were planning to exchange. In August, Buffalo Hump led a 500-warrior raid straight into the heart of eastern Texas. Homes were burned, hundreds killed, and before they stopped, the Comanches had reached the Gulf of Mexico near Victoria. Then, loaded with loot, the war party began an unusual slow retreat to the north. Perhaps because of their numbers, the Comanches were overconfident, but this gave the Texans time to organize. With the help of Tonkawa scouts, Texas militia ambushed the main body at Plum Creek (Lockhart, Texas). Abandoning most of their spoils, the surviving Comanches escaped north. Afterwards, they would never again give the Texans such a easy target.
 

- From Lee Sultzman's comprehensive account of Comanche history, at
http://www.dickshovel.com/ComancheTwo.html