Iron Jacket
| Iron Jacket | |
|---|---|
| Po-bish-e-quasho (Pohebits-quasho) | |
| Quahadi Comanche leader | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1790 Edward's Plateau, Texas |
| Died | May 12, 1858 Little Robe Creek Roger Mills County, Oklahoma |
| Cause of death | Gunshot from .58 caliber Henry rifle |
| Children | Peta Nocona |
| Known for |
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Iron Jacket (Pohebits-quasho, Po-hebitsquash, Pro-he-bits-quash-a, Po-bish-e-quasho in Comanche) (born c. late 1780s or early 1790s – dead 1858) was a Native American War Chief and Chief of the Comanche Indians.
Pohebits-quasho ("Iron Jacket") was a Comanche chieftain and medicine man whom the Comanche believed had the power to blow bullets aside with his breath. His name probably resulted from his habit of wearing a Spanish coat of mail into battle, which protected him from most light weapons fire.
On May 12, 1858, the jacket (probably inherited from his ancestors) failed to protect him, and he was killed on the bank of the South Canadian River in the Battle of Little Robe Creek where his band of Quahadi Comanches fought a combined force of Texas Rangers and Brazos Reservation Indians led by John S. Ford, Sul Ross, and Placido, the Tonkawa chief.
Not much is known about Pohebits-quasho ("Iron Jacket")'s early life. He was born in the late 1780s or early 1790s. He became a chief among the Quahadi, or Antelope-eaters, Band of the Comanche. He appears to have been both a hereditary chief and a War Chief. Little else is known about Pohebits-quasho ("Iron Jacket"), except that he led dozens of terrifying raids on settlers from the 1820s to the 1850s in Texas and Mexico. In 1835, consequently to the Camp Holmes Council, he signed the treaty with gen. M. Arbuckle and sen. Monfort Stokes, along with chiefs such Tawaquenah (“Sun Eagle”) of the Kotsoteka and Pahayuca (“Amorous Man”) of the Penateka Comanche (his name was reported as Pohowetowshah, “Brass Man”).
It is believed today that he was a hereditary chief of the Comanche, and for decades the US and Mexican victims of his raids considered him a supernatural being because of his seeming invulnerability to any harm. Members of the Rangers, posses and the military on various occasions insisted that they shot the chief dead center without harming him.
Evidently, this was because of the coat of old Spanish mail the chief wore, which appears to have protected him from light weapons fire. In any event, he was a feared and dangerous figure along the Texas and Mexican border, and in the Comancheria in the decades leading up to the American Civil War.
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