OCTOBER 6:

1993 Oka Quebec - Non-natives erect barricade at Oka to protest actions of Kanesatake Mohawks.

1862 Manitouwaning Ontario - Indian Commissioner William Macdougall 1822-1905 negotiates Manitoulin Island treaty with Ottawa and Chippewa; Crown awards land grants and interest for land.

October 6, 1840:  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 take several hundred head of livestock.

October 6, 1774:  In what would be called Lord Dunmore's War, Virginia Governor, John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore, would authorize an army of Virginians to go into Shawnee territory, despite the Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763, which prohibited European settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains.  Lord Dunmore had granted lands to veterans in the prohibited area, and he planned on  helping them to get it.  On this date (October 6), around 800 Shawnees under Chief Cornstalk would attack Lord Dunmore's force of 850 men at Point Pleasant (in what is now western Western Virginia) on the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers.  The fighting would last all day and both sides would suffer numerous casualties.  Cornstalk would lose the battle and eventually sign a peace treaty with the Virginians.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

Extract from Lee Sultzman's detailed 'Compact History' at http://www.dickshovel.com/ComancheTwo.html
 

The earliest mention of Comanches in Texas was in 1743, and they were after the Lipan. Some accounts call them Norteños, a collective term that probably included Wichita and Pawnee. The Spanish solution to Lipan hostility was to convert them to Christianity, but like most Apache, they were not very receptive. However, the Lipan, who had little love for the Spanish, noticed these efforts and saw an opportunity to lure the Spanish and Comanches into a war. In 1757 they approached the Spanish priests and requested a mission be built for them. The only problem was the suggested location was on land the Lipan knew was claimed by Comanches. The Spanish took the bait and built the mission and small presidio. The Lipan plot worked perfectly. Comanche and Wichita warriors massacred the priests, burned the mission, and attacked the presidio. When the Spanish tried to retaliate, Colonel Diego Parilla's army was defeated by the Wichita and Comanches on the Red River in 1759. In 1761 Comanche raiders struck a second mission for the Lipan on the Nueces River, and the Lipan had the war they wanted.

For the next 25 years, Comanche raids struck throughout eastern Texas and across the Rio Grande into northern Mexico. The fighting and raiding evolved into three separate wars: Comanches versus Spanish; Comanches versus Lipan; and Lipan versus Spanish. The French transferred Louisiana to Spain in 1763, but this did not change the trading patterns of the eastern groups of Comanches. Spain continued to administer Texas from Mexico City, while Louisiana was placed under the control of the Viceroy of Havana. Meanwhile, French traders from Louisiana continued to use the Wichita to trade for Comanche horses just as before. By 1770 Spain had gained better control of Louisiana and for the next three years used the French traders to make their first peace overtures to the Wichita and eastern Comanches. There was some success with the Wichita, but Comanche raids into Texas continued until a major smallpox epidemic (1780-81) decimated both the Wichita and Comanches.

By 1778 the Lipan and other Apache along the Rio Grande had become a major problem for the Spanish, and they began to consider the possibility of an alliance with the Wichita and Comanches against the Apaches. After several small military successes against Comanche raiders, Texas Governor Domingo Cabello in 1785 sent two emissaries to the Wichita villages to contact the Texas Comanches. By September they had agreed to a peace treaty which was signed in October at Béxar. In exchange for gifts and a promise of regular trade with Texas, the eastern Comanches agreed to help the Spanish fight the Lipan and to urge the western Comanches to make peace with New Mexico. As a result, New Mexico's war with the Comanches ended the following year. New Mexico's peace endured because of Comanchero trade and lavish gifts, but for Texas and northern Mexico, the peace achieved was only relative. During 1786 many of the Comanche treaty chiefs in Texas either died or were killed. As a consequence, groups of Texas Comanches resumed raiding. It was still peace because the number of raids never returned to previous levels. Several incidents in Texas, including the killing of the son of a Yamparika chief in 1803, almost erupted into war, but the intervention of the western Comanches maintained peace.

In both Texas and New Mexico, Comanches joined with the Spanish army to fight Apaches. The most noteworthy success was when they helped General Ugaldi crush the Lipan in southern Texas(1789-90). The Lipan were badly mauled and retreated across the Rio Grande into northern Mexico, but this was not beyond the reach of Comanches who kept after them for many years. During the last years of Spanish rule, Texas was in chaos. The Hidalgo Revolt(1810) was followed by an attempt by American adventurers (Filibusters) to seize Texas (1812- 13). American traders along the Red and Arkansas were trading guns to Comanches for horses, and this new market increased the tempo of Comanche raids in Texas. A Comanche chief, El Sordo, split from his own people in 1810 and gathered a combination of Comanches and Wichita to raid Texas and Mexico for horses. He was arrested during a visit to Béxar in 1811 and imprisoned in Coahuila. A large Comanche war party went to Béxar to demand an explanation, only to be confronted by 600 Spanish soldiers. There was no battle, but relations between Texas and the Comanches were never the same.

Spanish rule was replaced by the Mexican Republic in 1821. The following year Francisco Ruiz arranged a truce with the Texas Comanche followed by a treaty of friendship signed in Mexico City in December. All would have been well if Mexico had enough money to pay for the presents it had promised, but it did not and raiding resumed within two years. For this same reason, the Comanche peace with New Mexico was endangered, and by 1825 there was war the entire length of the Rio Grande. Chihuahua was particularly hard-hit. The treaties signed at Chihauhau and El Paso (1826 and 1834) with the Comanches could not halt the raids. New Mexico in 1831 temporarily suspended Comanchero trading and stopped the cibolero (New Mexico buffalo hunters), but this also had little effect. 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 http://www.texasindians.com/
 

Buffalo Hump by R E Moore
 
 

Buffalo Hump was war chief of the Penateka band of the Comanches. After the Council House fight of 1840 (See our Comanche page) he led the Comanches, mostly his band, to get revenge.

The Comanches came to the Council House at San Antonio to negotiate a peace treaty in 1840. They came under a white flag of truce as ambassadors. At the meeting the Texans made demands the Comanches could not meet. The Texans then pulled out guns and threatened to kill the Comanches if the demands were not met. The Comanches, who had come without guns because of the truce, fought back with knives. The Texans had concealed armed solders just outside the Council House. When the fight started the Comanche ambassadors and Chiefs tried to defend themselves with knives against solders armed with rifles. The windows and doors were thrown open and the solders shot into the room through them. Many Comanches were killed by the Texans. The Comanches were very angry that the Texans had not honored the truce and had killed their Chiefs and ambassadors.

Top get revenge Buffalo Hump led the Great Raid of 1840. On this raid the Comanches went all the way to the cities of Victoria and Linnville on the Texas coast. They raided and burned these towns and took whatever they wanted. Linnville was one of the largest ports in Texas at that time. On the way back the Comanches were attacked by Texas Rangers and militia at the battle of Plum Creek near Lockhart. The Texans say they won this battle, but this is questionable. The Indians got away with a lot of the stolen horses and loot.

Later, in peace negotiations, he met with Sam Houston and demanded the whites stay east of the Edwards Plateau. Of course they did not and more trouble ensued.

In 1846 Buffalo Hump signed a treaty with the US government at Council Springs. He led the Comanches to the Brazos river reservation in 1856. In 1859 he led the Comanches to the Oklahoma reservation at Ft. Cobb. He died there in 1870.