The Royal Enfield Bullet Blog
Sunday, March 07, 2004
Eastern Comanche Run
Eight generations ago Texas was in the midst of a collision between stone age man and the industrial age.
Sometime near 1700 the descendants of mountain Shoshone Amerindian tribes had become what are reputed to have been the finest horsemen on the Great Plains -- the Comanche -- and with their horses they followed the massive buffalo herds, hunting them with arrow, axe, and spear. They tracked these animals southward into the most fertile parts of the plains below the Arkansas river. Along the way from their northern Rocky Mountain orgins they spread east and west and ever further southward, driving out other indeginous folk, destroying cropland and appropriating horses, Utes to the west, Pawnee along the Platte, Apache, Wichita, Waco, and Tonkawa to the south. Some, like the Apache, they utterly decimated.
The weekend of February 21 I took my Bullet up from Austin to Fort Worth tracing the eastern extent of bison grazing in the 17th, 18th and 19th century; and in so doing I also tracked the eastern limit of regular Comanche ranging in Texas.
I avoided Interstate 35 on the way up, transiting perhaps 10 miles along that route once I entered the suburbs of Fort Worth.
Thoroughfares like I35 hold no interest for me while I'm aboard a motorcycle. For the best riding I sought out small state and county roads; I actually wound up finding a route that is straighter and shorter to Fort Worth than the interstate is.
But on the way up I chose a longer passage that penetrated deeper west into Comanche lands.
I traversed Travis, Williamson, Burnet, Lampasas, Coryell, Bosque, Johnson, and Parker counties. It was fantastic Texas motorcycling, from Austin to Briggs via 183, from Briggs to Copperas Cove via 2657, Copperas to Gatesville via 116, Gatesville to Valley Mills via 215/217, Valley Mills to Laguna Park via 56 (the most beautiful part), onto 22 toward Whitney, and from there taking 933 to a small intersection with a few houses called Blum, going a bit further to 174 which takes you north, eventually into Burleson and the junction with I35, Fort Worth.
Comanche conflicts with the invading industrial age white men have been recorded in an incredibly long tome titled "Comanche Depredations in Texas" by J.W. Wilbarger, first published in 1889. There are other books that catalog the confrontations, Wilbarger's is probably the longest and has an interesting origin of its own.
Picture this: you're riding from the coast toward Austin on chilly winter day, about 10 miles outside of La Grange you stop to rest at a bar; another cyclist comes in wearing a helmet. He takes it off and lowers it, messing with his jacket, and you see that the man's head is raw, red, wet, and showing a large patch of whitish skull bone on top.
You have to ask.
"Excuse me, but what happened to your head?"
The man matter-of-factly replies, "I been scalped."
Exactly that short conversation did take place in a cabin about 10 miles outside of La Grange in the 1840s. The scalped man was J.W. Wilbarger's brother Josiah Wilbarger. He and three companions were attacked by a small party of Comanche warriors near present day east Austin somewhere along Pecan Spring branch -- and though the indians took his hair, he did live to tell of it.
The asphalt of 2657 rushed past under my footpegs, I leaned into a long, downhill, lefthander. It was a beautiful sweep and I rolled the throttle slightly more open, accelerating, conserving traction. Limestone roadcut flew past as the turn unwound and I headed into a small valley and passed over a creek. The air was cool and dry, I smelled the earth, I smelled horses in the distance.
J.W. Wilbarger's book is not surprisingly starkly critical of Comanche behavior, and, at the same time, remarkably unreflective about why the Comanche were hostile to begin with. Nothing less could be expected from the pen of the brother of a man who was brutally attacked, stripped, scalped, and then left for dead. To my knowledge no accounting of this incident was left behind by any Comanche scribe, though tales were probably told of it by the campfire when the warriors returned home. Much is on the internet about Josiah Wilbarger, a search on Google will lead you directly to his story.
For the greater part of the ride north I was by myself. No cars. No oncoming traffic, no traffic behind me, no traffic to overtake. It was pristine. I had time to absorb the scenery, and reflect. The motor thumped rythmically, I was cruising a relaxed and comfortable sixty miles per hour.
At the time of Josiah Wilbarger the land I was traversing did not look like it does now. Scrub oak, cedar, and even the ubiqitous cactus plants were native only to regions further south; during rainy years tall grass -- waist high -- dominated the softly rolling landscape. You can still see this wherever ranchers remove the invading species for grazing. Trees and shrubbery concentrated in crooked lines following the path of creek and river. Bison ranged here freely one and a half centuries ago, eating that tall grass, seeking out water pools and streams. Comanche hunters, moving in out of sight in nearby vales, charged up suddenly on horseback and stampeded the buffalo. They attacked them with both spear and arrow. The Comanche would press their knees against their steed, their hands busy with weaponry, directing their mount by pressure, the horse following its master's command, narrowing distance, cutting off animals that strayed, driving them further, galloping full speed across the plain. The hunters fired into the heaving animals and brought them down.
It is a strange sight then, to drive so many miles across essentially empty land: no bison, only a few stray cattle along the road, some horses that look up startled as I honk the tinny-sounding electric horn, sheep, huge swine farms, and the occasional house and hound dog.
A million creatures that once dominated the landscape, now nothing more than ghosts and distant murmurs, for none now live that can remember that time.
For a brief moment on a long straight tract of empty road I released my firm grip on the handlebars, let my knees push the tank, let the bike lean a little to the left and to the right, tried to find the quickening pulse of another age -- but nothing came of it.
I continued on.
Soon I was busy dodging cars and trying to find my way in Copperas Cove. The signage for 116 north was essentially not present and my map was innaccurate. I wound up going too far east on 190. I should have gone north at Main Street -- which is 116, for any that want to know -- but instead I had to stop at a grunged out garage and ask.
Once I got onto 116 I discovered that it is truly a fine trek; it traces the western borders of Fort Hood, which is one of the largest military reservation in the US. The road winds up at Gatesville, where nearby numerous conflicts between Comanche and Texan happened in the mid-nineteenth century.
I was racing along country that was covered with grass, that was used for grazing cattle today and in the spring of 1859 was the scene of a Comanche raid from the northwest.
A party of warriors came down; they were looking for hostages and other booty, horses or other goods that they might use, and of course to harrass and punish the invading white Texans. North of Gatesville I began traversing farm road 215, another two laner that winds along hill and dale, fields that stretch out beyond the immediate lining of scrub oak or fence. In that territory the warrior party made its way, and whenever they encountered traveling whites they attacked them.
Early one day a certain Wm. Riggs was taking his wagons down to a cedar brake to collect wood with a young boy, David Elms. They saw distant horsemen approaching fast.
"Are those Indians?", David asked.
Moments later the Comanche war party swooped down upon them. Elm was captured almost immediately, while Riggs began a mad dash for his home -- some four hundred yards away. The warriors whipped them both with ox tails and chased Riggs, some of them laughing, some whooping, trying to outpace him as some kind of strange joke. When the indians saw Rigg's home, however, they turned tail and ran, fearing that it might be a trap of some sort, with firearms waiting for them to come within range.
All these things happened as clearly as the road appeared to me, rushing past, twisting and turning, but those things were invisible now, the asphalt and the grass and the animals and trees tell no such story -- and yet this same landscape witnessed these events, the same kinds of animals looking up surprised, the oxen chewing their cud, the horses nervously bolting, the grass crushed underfoot, a child screaming for help.
Riggs made it home, the indians took Elm hostage, and seemed to ride away.
Sometimes it's best to stay home, sometimes not, in any case Mr. Riggs decided to make a run for it with his whole family; the indians saw this and intercepted them, felling Riggs and his wife, and taking a 10 year old and a six year old hostage.
They left a baby boy crawling about on the bodies of its parents.
These things are hard to grasp today. Our world is filled with news, sometimes bloody news, but conflicts like these between two cultures vying for the same land are something far away from the shallow undulations I was riding through.
Texas FM 215 merges into FM 217 at a small village called Mosheim. There is what looks to be the ruins of a mission there. I did not stop to investigate but it would make a nice picture or two.
On to Valley Mills.
The only thing I regret about my ride is that I didn't take enough pictures. I failed to take any of the curving two lane roads that stretched out so invitingly before me. That was mostly because of the distance I had to travel and the speed I was limited to: I didn't want to stop too much to be taking pictures. I did manage to get one of Lake Whitney, one of some horses in Blum, one of Crawford (home of the new western white house), and one of the green countryside at Valley Mills.
Valley Mills is a very picturesque part of the journey, the Bosque river flows nearby, and it is obvious that the town was built in the fertile soil of the flood plain. Though my picture of Valley Mills didn't come out, I will go through there again I should think, and will get more pictures then.
By the time I got to FM 56 I was getting tired. I hadn't really taken a break except to get more fuel in Briggs and then again in Gatesville; I was being hyper-cautious about keeping fueled up, not really knowing the distances or how big any one town might be. Some of the towns had only one gas station, some had none at all. FM 56 is a great road that winds up out of the Bosque river valley and ends at lake Whitney.
Here's a picture that turned out, it's of Lake Whitney:
FM 56 dead ends at Laguna Park into state highway 22, where I turned right and headed across the lake Whitney dam, going north. The Brazos river feeds Whitney, and continues on southeast down toward Waco.
SH 22 was pretty busy and I can't say it was an particularly interesting part of the ride.
Right south of Whitney I turned left onto 933. That was a good ride once I got out of Whitney and into the countryside again. I passed through more good horse and cattle country, green swells that rose and fell as far as the eye could see. That was all well and good, but by this time I'd been riding for near on 4 hours and I was getting TIRED. But I was determined, and despite the growing numbness in my hindquarters I persevered through Blum and onto SH 174, going north, the last bit through Cleburne, Joshua, and finally Burleson.
There where way too many traffic lights starting at Joshua. Basically I spent a good twenty minutes getting through Joshua and Burleson and I was pretty happy to get onto I35. That was annoying on the one hand, but at each traffic light I could at least stand up and rest my poor aching ass. Well, I wouldn't take the long route again, I was certain of that.
The interesting parts of the ride pretty much ended after getting past Cleburne. The rest was just Friday afternoon rush hour, a wreck or two, bad tempers, impatience.
My route started about 100 miles north of the lowest extent of the Great Plains, and it ended in Fort Worth, nicknamed "Cowtown" for the cattle drives from the south that ended at the railheads here. I don't know how many million head traversed from south Texas, down by the King Ranch and other places, but I do know that those cattle are the reason that so much of central and north Texas are now covered with cedar and scrub oak and cactus. The seeds were brought north with the cattle.
After Burleson it took me maybe 15 more minutes to arrive where I was going.
It was the longest motorcycle ride I'd ever done with no breaks. My Bullet held up admirably. I STOOD at my girlfriend's for the better part of an hour, drinking wine, watching her fix dinner. It was shrimp scampi over pasta and with wine it washed down the last of the hard flavor of 222 miles of Texas two-lane highway.
I had arrived.
Sometime near 1700 the descendants of mountain Shoshone Amerindian tribes had become what are reputed to have been the finest horsemen on the Great Plains -- the Comanche -- and with their horses they followed the massive buffalo herds, hunting them with arrow, axe, and spear. They tracked these animals southward into the most fertile parts of the plains below the Arkansas river. Along the way from their northern Rocky Mountain orgins they spread east and west and ever further southward, driving out other indeginous folk, destroying cropland and appropriating horses, Utes to the west, Pawnee along the Platte, Apache, Wichita, Waco, and Tonkawa to the south. Some, like the Apache, they utterly decimated.
The weekend of February 21 I took my Bullet up from Austin to Fort Worth tracing the eastern extent of bison grazing in the 17th, 18th and 19th century; and in so doing I also tracked the eastern limit of regular Comanche ranging in Texas.
I avoided Interstate 35 on the way up, transiting perhaps 10 miles along that route once I entered the suburbs of Fort Worth.
Thoroughfares like I35 hold no interest for me while I'm aboard a motorcycle. For the best riding I sought out small state and county roads; I actually wound up finding a route that is straighter and shorter to Fort Worth than the interstate is.
But on the way up I chose a longer passage that penetrated deeper west into Comanche lands.
I traversed Travis, Williamson, Burnet, Lampasas, Coryell, Bosque, Johnson, and Parker counties. It was fantastic Texas motorcycling, from Austin to Briggs via 183, from Briggs to Copperas Cove via 2657, Copperas to Gatesville via 116, Gatesville to Valley Mills via 215/217, Valley Mills to Laguna Park via 56 (the most beautiful part), onto 22 toward Whitney, and from there taking 933 to a small intersection with a few houses called Blum, going a bit further to 174 which takes you north, eventually into Burleson and the junction with I35, Fort Worth.
Comanche conflicts with the invading industrial age white men have been recorded in an incredibly long tome titled "Comanche Depredations in Texas" by J.W. Wilbarger, first published in 1889. There are other books that catalog the confrontations, Wilbarger's is probably the longest and has an interesting origin of its own.
Picture this: you're riding from the coast toward Austin on chilly winter day, about 10 miles outside of La Grange you stop to rest at a bar; another cyclist comes in wearing a helmet. He takes it off and lowers it, messing with his jacket, and you see that the man's head is raw, red, wet, and showing a large patch of whitish skull bone on top.
You have to ask.
"Excuse me, but what happened to your head?"
The man matter-of-factly replies, "I been scalped."
Exactly that short conversation did take place in a cabin about 10 miles outside of La Grange in the 1840s. The scalped man was J.W. Wilbarger's brother Josiah Wilbarger. He and three companions were attacked by a small party of Comanche warriors near present day east Austin somewhere along Pecan Spring branch -- and though the indians took his hair, he did live to tell of it.
The asphalt of 2657 rushed past under my footpegs, I leaned into a long, downhill, lefthander. It was a beautiful sweep and I rolled the throttle slightly more open, accelerating, conserving traction. Limestone roadcut flew past as the turn unwound and I headed into a small valley and passed over a creek. The air was cool and dry, I smelled the earth, I smelled horses in the distance.
J.W. Wilbarger's book is not surprisingly starkly critical of Comanche behavior, and, at the same time, remarkably unreflective about why the Comanche were hostile to begin with. Nothing less could be expected from the pen of the brother of a man who was brutally attacked, stripped, scalped, and then left for dead. To my knowledge no accounting of this incident was left behind by any Comanche scribe, though tales were probably told of it by the campfire when the warriors returned home. Much is on the internet about Josiah Wilbarger, a search on Google will lead you directly to his story.
For the greater part of the ride north I was by myself. No cars. No oncoming traffic, no traffic behind me, no traffic to overtake. It was pristine. I had time to absorb the scenery, and reflect. The motor thumped rythmically, I was cruising a relaxed and comfortable sixty miles per hour.
At the time of Josiah Wilbarger the land I was traversing did not look like it does now. Scrub oak, cedar, and even the ubiqitous cactus plants were native only to regions further south; during rainy years tall grass -- waist high -- dominated the softly rolling landscape. You can still see this wherever ranchers remove the invading species for grazing. Trees and shrubbery concentrated in crooked lines following the path of creek and river. Bison ranged here freely one and a half centuries ago, eating that tall grass, seeking out water pools and streams. Comanche hunters, moving in out of sight in nearby vales, charged up suddenly on horseback and stampeded the buffalo. They attacked them with both spear and arrow. The Comanche would press their knees against their steed, their hands busy with weaponry, directing their mount by pressure, the horse following its master's command, narrowing distance, cutting off animals that strayed, driving them further, galloping full speed across the plain. The hunters fired into the heaving animals and brought them down.
It is a strange sight then, to drive so many miles across essentially empty land: no bison, only a few stray cattle along the road, some horses that look up startled as I honk the tinny-sounding electric horn, sheep, huge swine farms, and the occasional house and hound dog.
A million creatures that once dominated the landscape, now nothing more than ghosts and distant murmurs, for none now live that can remember that time.
For a brief moment on a long straight tract of empty road I released my firm grip on the handlebars, let my knees push the tank, let the bike lean a little to the left and to the right, tried to find the quickening pulse of another age -- but nothing came of it.
I continued on.
Soon I was busy dodging cars and trying to find my way in Copperas Cove. The signage for 116 north was essentially not present and my map was innaccurate. I wound up going too far east on 190. I should have gone north at Main Street -- which is 116, for any that want to know -- but instead I had to stop at a grunged out garage and ask.
Once I got onto 116 I discovered that it is truly a fine trek; it traces the western borders of Fort Hood, which is one of the largest military reservation in the US. The road winds up at Gatesville, where nearby numerous conflicts between Comanche and Texan happened in the mid-nineteenth century.
I was racing along country that was covered with grass, that was used for grazing cattle today and in the spring of 1859 was the scene of a Comanche raid from the northwest.
A party of warriors came down; they were looking for hostages and other booty, horses or other goods that they might use, and of course to harrass and punish the invading white Texans. North of Gatesville I began traversing farm road 215, another two laner that winds along hill and dale, fields that stretch out beyond the immediate lining of scrub oak or fence. In that territory the warrior party made its way, and whenever they encountered traveling whites they attacked them.
Early one day a certain Wm. Riggs was taking his wagons down to a cedar brake to collect wood with a young boy, David Elms. They saw distant horsemen approaching fast.
"Are those Indians?", David asked.
Moments later the Comanche war party swooped down upon them. Elm was captured almost immediately, while Riggs began a mad dash for his home -- some four hundred yards away. The warriors whipped them both with ox tails and chased Riggs, some of them laughing, some whooping, trying to outpace him as some kind of strange joke. When the indians saw Rigg's home, however, they turned tail and ran, fearing that it might be a trap of some sort, with firearms waiting for them to come within range.
All these things happened as clearly as the road appeared to me, rushing past, twisting and turning, but those things were invisible now, the asphalt and the grass and the animals and trees tell no such story -- and yet this same landscape witnessed these events, the same kinds of animals looking up surprised, the oxen chewing their cud, the horses nervously bolting, the grass crushed underfoot, a child screaming for help.
Riggs made it home, the indians took Elm hostage, and seemed to ride away.
Sometimes it's best to stay home, sometimes not, in any case Mr. Riggs decided to make a run for it with his whole family; the indians saw this and intercepted them, felling Riggs and his wife, and taking a 10 year old and a six year old hostage.
They left a baby boy crawling about on the bodies of its parents.
These things are hard to grasp today. Our world is filled with news, sometimes bloody news, but conflicts like these between two cultures vying for the same land are something far away from the shallow undulations I was riding through.
Texas FM 215 merges into FM 217 at a small village called Mosheim. There is what looks to be the ruins of a mission there. I did not stop to investigate but it would make a nice picture or two.
On to Valley Mills.
The only thing I regret about my ride is that I didn't take enough pictures. I failed to take any of the curving two lane roads that stretched out so invitingly before me. That was mostly because of the distance I had to travel and the speed I was limited to: I didn't want to stop too much to be taking pictures. I did manage to get one of Lake Whitney, one of some horses in Blum, one of Crawford (home of the new western white house), and one of the green countryside at Valley Mills.
Valley Mills is a very picturesque part of the journey, the Bosque river flows nearby, and it is obvious that the town was built in the fertile soil of the flood plain. Though my picture of Valley Mills didn't come out, I will go through there again I should think, and will get more pictures then.
By the time I got to FM 56 I was getting tired. I hadn't really taken a break except to get more fuel in Briggs and then again in Gatesville; I was being hyper-cautious about keeping fueled up, not really knowing the distances or how big any one town might be. Some of the towns had only one gas station, some had none at all. FM 56 is a great road that winds up out of the Bosque river valley and ends at lake Whitney.
Here's a picture that turned out, it's of Lake Whitney:
FM 56 dead ends at Laguna Park into state highway 22, where I turned right and headed across the lake Whitney dam, going north. The Brazos river feeds Whitney, and continues on southeast down toward Waco.
SH 22 was pretty busy and I can't say it was an particularly interesting part of the ride.
Right south of Whitney I turned left onto 933. That was a good ride once I got out of Whitney and into the countryside again. I passed through more good horse and cattle country, green swells that rose and fell as far as the eye could see. That was all well and good, but by this time I'd been riding for near on 4 hours and I was getting TIRED. But I was determined, and despite the growing numbness in my hindquarters I persevered through Blum and onto SH 174, going north, the last bit through Cleburne, Joshua, and finally Burleson.
There where way too many traffic lights starting at Joshua. Basically I spent a good twenty minutes getting through Joshua and Burleson and I was pretty happy to get onto I35. That was annoying on the one hand, but at each traffic light I could at least stand up and rest my poor aching ass. Well, I wouldn't take the long route again, I was certain of that.
The interesting parts of the ride pretty much ended after getting past Cleburne. The rest was just Friday afternoon rush hour, a wreck or two, bad tempers, impatience.
My route started about 100 miles north of the lowest extent of the Great Plains, and it ended in Fort Worth, nicknamed "Cowtown" for the cattle drives from the south that ended at the railheads here. I don't know how many million head traversed from south Texas, down by the King Ranch and other places, but I do know that those cattle are the reason that so much of central and north Texas are now covered with cedar and scrub oak and cactus. The seeds were brought north with the cattle.
After Burleson it took me maybe 15 more minutes to arrive where I was going.
It was the longest motorcycle ride I'd ever done with no breaks. My Bullet held up admirably. I STOOD at my girlfriend's for the better part of an hour, drinking wine, watching her fix dinner. It was shrimp scampi over pasta and with wine it washed down the last of the hard flavor of 222 miles of Texas two-lane highway.
I had arrived.
