Theodore Adolphus Babb - In the Bosom of the Comanches

In the Bosom of the Comanches

THEODORE A. BABB

In the bosom of the Comanches, T. A. Babb

Jazzybee Verlag Jrgen Beck

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Deutschland

ISBN: 9783849652104

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This book has been licenced under the Creative Commons licence Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Details on this licence can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The original work is named 'In the Bosom of the Comanches: A Thrilling Tale of Savage Indian Life, Massacre and Captivity Truthfully Told by a Surviving Captive.' The source of the text is texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth38188/: accessed September 28, 2017, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Austin History Center. We credit the original rights holder for having made this work possible.

In the unchallenged verity of the chronicle of Theodore Adolphus Babb, better known as Dot Babb, recorded in the pages that follow is vouchsafed a sustained and absorbing interest to the reader and the student: a dissolvent of the mystical haziness that has characterized so much of the Indian lore, current hitherto; and a contribution to history, an inestimable legacy and gift to prosperity as rare and timely as truth is mighty and eternal. Mr. Babb, a descendant of resolute venturesome pioneer stock, entered upon an eventful boyhood in the untamed wilds of the western border of Texas in a locality and period when the mounted Indian marauder with his panoply of war and death was often seen silhouetted against the distant horizon, at a time when the spectre of tragedy and desolation, of atrocious massacre, mutilation, captivity, and torture, cast its terrifying shadow athwart the fireside of every pioneer home; when, unheralded, cunning monsters of vindictive savage hate, here and there among the settlers, in unguarded repose or fancied security, sprang from stealthy ambush, from the wood-land's dark border, the sheltering hillside and gulch, or the shadowy lustre of an unwelcome fateful full moon, amid and unheeding the shrieks of horror and frenzied slaughter, mingled with the cries of anguish and prayers of women and children kneeling before their doom, they struck with the fangs of the most vicious, merciless, and unreasoning beast, and in their unrestrained and unresisted madness and ferocity, they left in the crimson wake a sickening chapter of ghastly human wreckage of whole families exterminated, in either a fiendish butchery or revolting captivity without a counter part in all the annals of every race and age since the hour of the dawn of Christendom, if not since the world began.

At a time when there were no white flags and no surrender, and only such alternatives as death, flight, or captivity; when lion-hearted men defiant of frightful consequences went afield, tended the herds and flocks, and pursued the chase of all the vocations of daily life heavily armed, perhaps never to return, or returning to find a home in ruin and the family either annihilated or some members murdered, some made captive, and still others that miraculously escaped by flight, concealment, the coincidence of absence, or being stricken down and unwittingly left for dead; when upon these scenes of appalling desolation men and women assembled, the survivors buried their dead and with the gory fragments builded again, animated by the one unconquerable purpose to defend, hold or die on their border heritage. At a time when keenest vigil day and night was never relaxed by man or beast, when the horizon was anxiously scanned for the ascending camp fire smoke, swirling clouds of dust or other such unfailing portents of the red messengers of devastation and death; when every moonbeam and shadow in thicket or grove, when every sound or noise breaking the slumbrous solitudes (whether a gust of wind or the flapping of wings or plaintive notes of nocturnal fowls) was seen, heard and interpreted with strained senses of preternatural power; at a time when swift hoof-beats rang out upon the stillness of the night the warning of perhaps the sole survivor of the latest massacre, and, with relays of horses fleeting and untiring as if conscious of their mission, the gruesome tidings were borne to the settler far and near. Being thus warned Spartan men and women grimly and silently prepared for the onslaught, pad-locking corrals, replenishing the supply of water from the spring or well, barricading doors and with shotted rifles, bullet molds, and powder, stoically awaited the attack. During the nerve-racking watches of the dismal night, as babes and children lapsed into a slumber perhaps eternal, no sentinel nodded or slept at his expectant post. When at length the attack came, the defenders, conscious that no quarter could be asked or given, were transformed into an incarnation of belligerent fury, a super-human maelstrom of action and combative power, and with souls and all reserve forces and energies ablaze, and an unconquerable purpose to shield and preserve their loved ones, they grappled with the demoniacal savage. Failing, all perished together upon the hallowed altar and sanctuary of a family and home pulsating and resounding a few hours before the emotions and manifestations of love, joy, and hope.

From this circle of dramatic episodes, struggle, and peril, Dot Babb was evolved, and amid such stirring scenes he passed his early youth and advancing boyhood up to the hour of the tragical climax of the unutterably horrifying and heartrendering spectacle of his beloved mother impaled by the Indian as she pleaded for her children and his still deeper sorrow in being torn from her dying embrace for the inevitable captivity which immediately followed and her farewell words of solace in his inconsolable distress, and the tender maternal benediction gently spoken as he looked back into tear bedewed eyes for the last glimpse and vision on earth of a sainted face on which he plainly saw the unmistakable pallor of fast approaching death. In this enforced captivity by the Comanches, one of the fiercest Indian tribes then extant, Dot Babb approached his maturing years as a full-fledged warrior, being made to engage in raids and battles in common with the Indian braves. His experiences, privations and exploits he recounts with the simplicity and vividness of truth and in a like manner details his reclamation by the United States Army and his eventual restoration to the fragmentary units of his shattered family, his recivilization and subsequent career notable for the highest probity of character and usefulness as a most worthy and valued citizen down to this good hour, which finds him happy and prosporous in the sunset of a thrilling life, whether peacefully pursuing the herds on the broad acres of his Panhandle ranch or extending the proverbial pioneer hospitality of a spacious and beautiful home in Amarillo, Texas, to his old-time friends, who are legion. Upon his return from an unwilling militant service in the ranks of the red warriors to the society of his fellows, Mr. Babb was quick to re-adopt and experience a complete revival of the inherent sentiments and amenities of civilized life. After becoming settled in his chosen avocation of cattle raising he married the splendid and estimable woman who to-day is his greatest comfort in presiding over his elegent and hospitable home and in sharing with him the honor and blessing of the sterling family they have reared.

At an impressionable age Dot Babb, the boy captive and warrior, had much intimate contact with the inner Indian life, motives, habits and tribal laws, superstitions, joys, and sorrows of which the Dot Babb of to-day discloses glimpses as rare as they are interesting and instructive. Mr. Babb found much worthy of admiration and emulation if not adoption in the Indian character, in their traditional laws, heroic and domestic life; and being made familiar with the Indian view point he has found no little to condone and defend that in the public imagination has had universal and popular condemnation. In the period of his captivity there were cemented between him and many of the chiefs and the rank and file ties of strongest attachment that have not waned in all the lapse of time. Not a few of the ex-warriors now dwelling in comfort and contentment upon their allotments learned long ago after a fashion to write a mixed Indian and English dialect and have preserved in an unbroken correspondence throughout all the intervening years with Mr. Babb, who both speaks and writes the Indian language with the fluency and ease of a Comanche.