Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Great Comanche Raid of 1840

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

This is a preview. Support the show on patreon for the rest, use code DEC25 to get 50% off patreon subscriptions until the end of 2025. https://www.patreon.com/posts/144965304?pr=true

Old paint happened to be the only Texan not carrying a gun that day. So he confronted a Kamanchi warrior, picked up rocks and started throwing him at him. The Kamanchi warrior that literally shot him in the knee with an arrow, turning him into a character from Skyrim. This is insane. This is absolutely insane. Also, I'm just laughing at the idea of like you getting rude tween firing squad with bows and arrows. I'm going to straight kill you. No cat, son.

No, they are experiencing what it's like to play Fortnite as a 30 year old I'm getting absolutely zeroed by a guy in a Goku skin who is probably nine years old. And saying the most horrific things into your ears of this side of a literal Nazi rally.

Maybe that was just my experience in online gaming and early Xbox live shit. Oh yeah. Lots of slurs, lots of just the worst shit imaginable. A lot of I fucked her mom. Oh, yeah. A lot of dudes playing Scrilex into their mic in order to piss you off.

Oh, that's worse than a slur. Did the Comanche kids have Turtle Beach headsets on? Oh, God. Scooting through town in Gabor chairs. God damn it, they brought movement back into this update. Fuck sake. They're tactical sliding everywhere. I hate the Gabor chair cavalry.

Now, all this took about a half hour, and the Texans gave the hiding Comanchee ultimatum, surrender or they'd all be killed. Some took the deal and others didn't, but in the end, at least 30 warriors, women and children were killed, and the Texans lost seven. One of the Comanche women was released, given a message, a horse, and sent back to the other Comanchee to tell them what happened. And to warn them, release all of your white captives, not to be about a dozen people, or everyone the Texans just captured would be killed. The Comanche didn't even entertain this shit for a second when news of the ambush got back to them. Instead, they conducted a series of grief rituals, like cutting off all of their hair or sacrificing the extra horses of the men

who were killed in the ambush. Some warriors cut themselves, while others chopped off one of their fingers as a promise of revenge. So we also have the Comanchee yakuza, I guess. All of this over disagreement and ethics and Texas governance. Still better than how it's worked out nowadays. then as an extra bit of fuck you to the Texans they lined up all their white captives and executed them just about the worst ways possible some were lit on fire while still alive others were worked over with knives for a real long time

it was all ugly but like I said the Kamanchi did not have a kind of centralized authority but given the circumstances one chief named Buffalo hump eventually rose to be the loudest voice in the room. He told people, after all of this happened, he had a dream, a prophetic vision of the Comanchee storming into Texas and destroying the Republic entirely. This would not be a raid like the Comanches would have done prior to this, but a proper invasion. Soon he sent men to the

other bands around Texas, trying to recruit them to his cause. And the band's furthest away from the whites didn't really bite, really. Didn't see the point of the whole thing. They didn't live anywhere near the Texans. They had other non-white problems to deal with. They're like, this really sounds like a Shelbyville problem. But other bands who had dealings with the Texans were quick to join up. This included several different bands of the Penateca, including one ironically led by a chief named Santa Ana. And knowing the Mexican Santa Ana, I would not be surprised if this was just Santa Ana who had once again switched sides. Actual Santa Ana, moonlighting. Shaved off his mustache and was wearing a funny hat.

Yeah. I'm a native now. I can't go back to Mexico. I have done so many things wrong. I mean, look, I appreciate Santa Ana's like dedication to just being like, no, fuck, government's fun. I was trying to go to war. I want to fight. You know,

no what you're good at. He doesn't like government as much as he enjoys having the title of president and then not governing. So he's like, I'm a chief now. I'm going to be the worst chief ever. That's my promise to you. And then I'm going to try to be white in like two weeks. I talked to some Dutch people that gave me ideas.

Now, it's often said that Buffalo Hump managed to gather a thousand Comanchees, like this massive Comanche army of a thousand warriors invading the Republic of Texas. Which I guess is technically true, but there's more to it than that. The Comanche went to war as a community. As a society, they brought their civilians with them. This had several practical reasons behind it. The women and children acted as a kind of built-in logistics system. The older boys would drive livestock with them. Obviously, they need

that livestock while they're on the march to eat. And the younger children and women would vary supplies, mend equipment, take care of the wounded, you name it. There's also the fact that if they brought their civilian population with them, they wouldn't have to leave any warriors behind as a garrison, so to speak. So when the Comanche went to war, they did bring a thousand Comanche with them. But only about maybe half are warriors. So the story of the thousand-man raid isn't entirely accurate. Then again, if you give a 12-year-old a bow, we already could see what kind of damage they could do. Yeah, no kidding. And in August 4th, they got moving into Texas, traveling only by night in order to hide their movements from

the Republic forces. Though they did eventually get discovered by a single mailman, who happened to stumble upon their camp in the morning. That mailman then ran into the town of Gonzales, where a local captain of the Texas Rangers, Ben McCulloch was stationed. McCulloch is kind of a perfect encapsulation of a Texan of the time. He is a veteran of the Revolution. He manned the cannons known as the twin sisters during the Battle of San Jacinto. He's also a guy who owned several slaves and had one of his arms disabled due to being shot in a duel a few months before.

As one does. As one does. Yeah, it's just dueling, owning slaves. It's like ticking all the boxes for guy of this era from this, you know, know, region of the world. And it's important to remember where and how the Texas Rangers, infamous slash legendary law enforcement agency that still exists, how they got their start,

which was little more than a frontier death squad against native people. He did that too. He was as Texan as any man ever has been. From there, they rode out to try to find the Comanche army, who was busy doing some pretty horrific shit to any people they came across. without going into all the details I'll only include one they captured a guy

cut off the souls of his feet and then forced him to go for a walk until they got bored and just finished him off fucking hell yeah I mean I assume that's what happens at the Nike Performance Center

but you know it's a bit much in the Texas countryside that's what happens if you piss off Phil Knight yeah probably from there the Comanche conducted a half-hearted raid into the town of Victoria

deciding to instead call it off and raid in your by horse farm, because horses were worth more than a lot of material goods to the Comanchee. While doing so, several women and children were captured. And again, I'm not really going to go into details here because this is not that kind of episode I'm going for, but just know that the Comanchee warriors killed literal babies the same way the Khmer Rouge did. Yeah.

It was a tree. They smashed them against a tree. There. Is everybody happy they know those facts now? Moving on. I'm not. Fuck that. I'm not happy.

Nobody's better for knowing that in the context of the attitude of this episode. Then they turned and raided into the town of Linville. Hundreds of warriors stormed the town, surprising the town's people who rather than try to stand and fight

ran to the coast and got on some boats. The Comanche don't exactly have much of a seafaring tradition among them. So the people on the boats paddled only far enough out into the water where you couldn't walk to them and just watch the Comanche

plunder the town. One Linville merchant complained in a letter that he watched the Comanche loot his warehouse that was full of top hats and umbrellas. Oh my God. I'm just running out wearing three top hats with a parasol. The guy's just like

jumping up and down, shaking his face. The Camachi got dressed in front coats, top hats, and breeches and were like twirling umbrellas of the streets and laughing at the watching townspeople as they burnt down the town. Raging against the Bacchanali of it all. It's insane.

Camanchi Bacadalia. One guy in the boat was a local judge named John Hayes. He got really, really sick of watching the Kamanchi Bacadalia, we have named it. He grabbed a gun, jumped overboard, swam slash walked to shore. And the Kamanchi thought he was insane. So they just left him alone. as he wandered through town muttering to himself and holding a pistol. Then he went to dry his gun off because obviously, you know,

these are black powder weapons who can't fire him if they're wet. And Judge Hayes discovered he brought an unloaded firearm. Just kind of sat down crisscross applesauce as the command she continued to loot the town. All right. All right. At this point, Buffalo Hump and the other chiefs pretty much considered the mission of success. The Republic was hardly destroyed, but they had gotten absolutely loaded down with loot. They had stolen thousands of horses, which were very, very valuable.

They secured that fat horse stack. Just imagine a commanche warrior holding up a horse like it's a telephone. It's really hard to do a money spread with a horse. Getting all the horses to lay down is really hard. But like lay down in a way, they're like kind of layered on top of each other, but not completely so you can get an accurate account. It's that scene from Breaking Bad where they lay out the pile of money, but you're just rolling out incredibly angry horses.

It's incredible.