Except in
the supply of arms and ammunition, we perceived that our booty was worth
nothing. This Texan expedition must have been composed of a very
beggarly set, for there was not a single yard of linen, nor a miserable
worn-out pair of trousers, to be found in all their bundles and boxes.
Among the horses taken, some thirty or forty were immediately identified
by the Comanches as their own property, many of them, during the
preceding year, having been stolen by a party of Texans, who had invited
the Indians to a grand council. Gabriel, Roche, and I, of course, would
accept none of the booty; and as time was now becoming to me a question
of great importance, we bade farewell to our Comanche friends, and
pursued our journey east, in company with the five Americans.
During the action, the Comanches had had forty men wounded and only nine
killed. Yet, two months afterwards, I read in one of the American
newspapers a very singular account of the action. It was a report of
General Smith, commandant of the central force of Texas, relative to the
glorious expedition against the savages, in which the gallant soldiers
of the infant republic had achieved the most wonderful exploits. It
said, "That General Smith having been apprised, by the unfortunate
Captain Hunt, that five thousand savages had destroyed the rising city
of Lewisburg, and murdered all the inhabitants, had immediately hastened
with his intrepid fellows to the neighbourhood of the scene; that there,
during the night, and when every man was broken down with fatigue, they
were attacked by the whole force of the Indians, who had with them some
twenty half-breeds and French and English traders.
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