twenty Rangers joined forces with some seventy volunteer militiamen under Captain Jack Cureton and twenty troopers of the Second Cavalry under First Sergeant John W. Spangler. Together, they set out for the Pease River.
It was bitter cold and raining hard when Ross got word at sunset on December 18 that Comanches were camped a few miles up the river, along a small freshwater stream called Mule Creek, just south of what is now the Texas-Oklahoma border. Ross and Spangler drove their men all night. Curetonâs volunteers had to stop when their horses became exhausted; Ross and Spangler pressed on. At daybreak on the nineteenth the Rangers and the troopers reached a ridge above the encampment. The Comanches appeared to be dismantling teepees and packing up to leave.
Lawrence Sullivan âSulâ Ross: Indian fighter, Confederate general, governor of Texas, and self-proclaimed rescuer of Cynthia Ann Parker at the Pease River massacre of December 1860.
Ross and Spangler knew their cold, bone-weary men and their spent horses would not be able to keep pace with the Indians. They couldnât wait for the volunteers to catch up. If they were going to attack, they needed to do it now.
Spangler, using cover from a chain of sand hills, took his men around the far side of the camp to cut off a retreat. Rossâs men advanced over the ridge. He promised a pistol and holster to the first man to present him with an Indian scalp. Then he gave the order to charge.
THE BATTLE OF PEASE RIVER is one of those violent episodes in Texas history where fact and legend collide uneasily, leaving later generations to grope for the truth amid contradictory claims and shifting sensibilities. Sul Ross and his admirersâmost notably James T. DeShields, an amateur historian whose book recounting the battle twenty years later became the definitive accountâportrayed the battle as a glorious triumph for a small, intrepid band of Rangers who used the element of surprise and their own innate courage to overcome a much larger force. As Ross set out a decade later to build a political career, he and his supporters inflated his exploits at the Pease River in size and character.The detailed but highly embroidered memories of B. F. Gholson, who was likely not even at the battle, supported the DeShields-Ross version. Meanwhile, Rossâs critics, who emerged more gradually over the years, characterized the battle as a massacre of old men, women, and children.
One enduring dispute was over the size of the Comanche encampment that morning. DeShields claimed there were between 150 and 200 warriors at the site. But many of the witnesses said the camp consisted of a small band of Comanche women, servants, and old men busily preparing buffalo meat and hides for the harsh winter ahead. A hunting party was out killing buffalo, and the camp followers trailing behind had set about butchering the dead animals, drying meat, and curing skins along the riverbank. Ross himself in his original report said the camp consisted of nine grass huts. It was in effect an on-site work crew engaged in the kind of drudgery that most Comanche warriors studiously avoided.
No matter. The Rangers came rolling across the plain, guns blazing, while the troopers moved in from the right to cut off any retreat. The Indians panicked. The women in charge of moving the camp tried to flee by crossing Mule Creek on horses weighed down with hundreds of pounds of buffalo meat, tent poles, and skins. There they collided with Spangler and his troops coming at them from the opposite direction. Charles Goodnight, who arrived on the scene soon after the battle, said âthe Sergeant and his men fell in behind on the squaws ⦠and killed every one of them , almost in a pile.â Goodnight added that the sergeant âprobably did not know them from bucks and probably did not care.â
Other Comanches fled in panic. One old man tried to escape on horseback with a young girl
It was bitter cold and raining hard when Ross got word at sunset on December 18 that Comanches were camped a few miles up the river, along a small freshwater stream called Mule Creek, just south of what is now the Texas-Oklahoma border. Ross and Spangler drove their men all night. Curetonâs volunteers had to stop when their horses became exhausted; Ross and Spangler pressed on. At daybreak on the nineteenth the Rangers and the troopers reached a ridge above the encampment. The Comanches appeared to be dismantling teepees and packing up to leave.
Lawrence Sullivan âSulâ Ross: Indian fighter, Confederate general, governor of Texas, and self-proclaimed rescuer of Cynthia Ann Parker at the Pease River massacre of December 1860.
Ross and Spangler knew their cold, bone-weary men and their spent horses would not be able to keep pace with the Indians. They couldnât wait for the volunteers to catch up. If they were going to attack, they needed to do it now.
Spangler, using cover from a chain of sand hills, took his men around the far side of the camp to cut off a retreat. Rossâs men advanced over the ridge. He promised a pistol and holster to the first man to present him with an Indian scalp. Then he gave the order to charge.
THE BATTLE OF PEASE RIVER is one of those violent episodes in Texas history where fact and legend collide uneasily, leaving later generations to grope for the truth amid contradictory claims and shifting sensibilities. Sul Ross and his admirersâmost notably James T. DeShields, an amateur historian whose book recounting the battle twenty years later became the definitive accountâportrayed the battle as a glorious triumph for a small, intrepid band of Rangers who used the element of surprise and their own innate courage to overcome a much larger force. As Ross set out a decade later to build a political career, he and his supporters inflated his exploits at the Pease River in size and character.The detailed but highly embroidered memories of B. F. Gholson, who was likely not even at the battle, supported the DeShields-Ross version. Meanwhile, Rossâs critics, who emerged more gradually over the years, characterized the battle as a massacre of old men, women, and children.
One enduring dispute was over the size of the Comanche encampment that morning. DeShields claimed there were between 150 and 200 warriors at the site. But many of the witnesses said the camp consisted of a small band of Comanche women, servants, and old men busily preparing buffalo meat and hides for the harsh winter ahead. A hunting party was out killing buffalo, and the camp followers trailing behind had set about butchering the dead animals, drying meat, and curing skins along the riverbank. Ross himself in his original report said the camp consisted of nine grass huts. It was in effect an on-site work crew engaged in the kind of drudgery that most Comanche warriors studiously avoided.
No matter. The Rangers came rolling across the plain, guns blazing, while the troopers moved in from the right to cut off any retreat. The Indians panicked. The women in charge of moving the camp tried to flee by crossing Mule Creek on horses weighed down with hundreds of pounds of buffalo meat, tent poles, and skins. There they collided with Spangler and his troops coming at them from the opposite direction. Charles Goodnight, who arrived on the scene soon after the battle, said âthe Sergeant and his men fell in behind on the squaws ⦠and killed every one of them , almost in a pile.â Goodnight added that the sergeant âprobably did not know them from bucks and probably did not care.â
Other Comanches fled in panic. One old man tried to escape on horseback with a young girl
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