Council House Fight

The Plaza and the Council House in San Antonio

Date	March 19, 1840
Location	San Antonio, Republic of Texas
Result	Entire Comanche peace delegation killed

Belligerents

Texas Rangers and Texas Militia

Comanche

Commanders and leaders

Hugh McLeod
George Thomas Howard
Mathew Caldwell (WIA)

Muk-wah-ruh †

Strength

Approximately 100

33 chiefs and warriors, and 32 family members and/or retainers

Casualties and losses

7 killed
10 wounded
(most from friendly fire)

35 killed
29 captured and imprisoned

The Council House Fight, often referred to as the Council House Massacre, was a decidedly lopsided fight between soldiers and officials of the Republic of Texas and a delegation of Comanche chiefs during a peace conference in San Antonio on March 19, 1840. The meeting took place under an observed truce with the purpose of negotiating the exchange of captives and ultimately facilitating peace after two years of war. The Comanches sought to obtain recognition of the boundaries of the Comancheria, their homeland, while the Texians wanted the release of Texian and Mexican citizens held prisoner by the Comanches.

The council ended with 12 Comanche leaders shot to death inside the Council House, 23 others shot in the streets of San Antonio, and 30 taken captive. The incident ended any chance for peace and led to years of further hostility and war.

At the time, the Comanche people were not a unified Indian nation. There were at least 12 divisions of the Comanche, with as many as 35 independent roaming bands, also known as rancherías or villages. Although bound together in various ways, both cultural and political, the bands were not responsible to any formalized unified authority.

The absence of a central authority meant that one band could not force another band to return their captives. Chiefs Buffalo Hump and Peta Nocona never agreed to return any captives to the Texian settlers. Captives were often assimilated into the society and adopted into families, and the Comanche made little distinction between people born Comanche and those adopted. The Comanche practice of taking captives dated back to at least the early 18th century with raids into Spanish New Mexico. Women and children were preferred, and in a significant number of cases, young captives were raised as Comanches and did not wish to leave.

On January 10, 1840, after several years of war and a major smallpox epidemic, three Comanche emissaries entered San Antonio and asked for peace, offering to send a large contingent of their leaders in 23 days to secure a new peace. They returned a white boy as a show of sincerity. Colonel Karnes received them, listened to their story, and agreed, but admonished them by saying that a lasting peace could be negotiated only when the Comanches gave up the Anglo captives that they held, estimated at thirteen.Albert Sidney Johnston, the Texas Secretary of War, had ordered San Antonio officials to take the Comanche delegates as hostages if they failed to deliver all captives. In March, Muguara, a powerful eastern Comanche chief, led 65 Comanches, including women and children, to San Antonio for peace talks.

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Wikipedia