The Great Raid of 1840 was the largest raid Native Americans ever mounted on white cities in what is now the United States. It followed the Council House Fight, in which Republic of Texas officials attempted to capture and take prisoner 33 Comanche chiefs and their wives, who had earlier promised to deliver 13 white captives they had kidnapped. Because of the small amount this Penateka band of Southern Comanche received for the ransom of nine-year-old James Putnam weeks before, they brought with them only one captive, 16-year-old Matilda Lockhart. Just as they had done to Mexicans and Santa Feans for nearly a century, the Penateka wanted to ensure they would receive a higher payment before ransoming the other whites they had abducted. This tactic, together with the terrible treatment they had given Lockhart, backfired, and the Indians found themselves taken hostage for a prisoner exchange. An attempt to escape followed by the brandishing of tomahawks the Comanche had secreted between their wives' blankets led to the massacre of all the male Indians except two elderly men, who along with the women were taken hostage.
In response to the killings and hostage-taking, the southern Comanche, led by chief Buffalo Hump, raised a huge war party of many of the bands of the Comanche, and raided deep into white-settled areas of Southeast Texas, stealing horses and taking more white captives.
Penateka first war chief Buffalo Hump was determined to do more than merely complain about what the Comanches viewed as a bitter betrayal. Spreading word to the other bands of Comanches that he was raiding the white settlements in revenge, Buffalo Hump led the Great Raid of 1840. Buffalo Hump, Penateka second war chief Yellow Wolf, Penateka third war chief Santa Anna, and Isimanica gathered at least 400 warriors, with (maybe 500) wives and young boys along to provide comfort and do work and, in the summer, raided the settlements between Bastrop and San Antonio. In mid-July they were ready and Comanches from every division (Nokoni, Kotsoteka, Yamparika and Kwahadi) were roaming through Texas. Altogether as many as 1,000 Comanche may have set out from West Texas on the Great Raid. On this raid the Comanches went all the way from the plains of west Texas to the cities of Victoria and Linnville on the Texas coast. In what may have been the largest organized raid by the Comanches to that point, they raided and burned these towns and plundered at will.
The northern Comanche did not participate in the raid. They were on their own raid into Mexico, stealing and kidnapping Mexican boys to act as their herders for subsequent raids. Before returning, they attacked the Lipan Apache and Tonkawa.
The early republic period saw the United States move from the weak Articles of Confederation to the federal Constitution ratified in 1788, with the Bill of Rights added in 1791. George Washington served two terms as president (1789–1797), establishing precedents for executive authority, and the federal capital moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1800. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's territory for roughly $15 million, opening vast trans-Mississippi lands to American expansion. The War of 1812 against Britain ended inconclusively but produced a surge of American national identity and eliminated most British support for Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi. The Northwest Indian Wars (1785–1795) and the Creek War (1813–1814) broke Indigenous confederacies that had resisted US expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily balanced slave and free states as the nation expanded westward, but embedded the contradiction of slavery in every subsequent territorial debate.
This page covers Great Comanche Raid of 1840 – Linnville Raid Aug 6-12. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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