In March 1846, Jack Hays and his Texas Rangers lay in wait for Comanches beneath the namesake bluff. (Wayne R. Austerman)

'The light was still gray when the Comanches drove their stolen horses across the rocky bed of the dry ford and then swung the herd eastward toward the welcome scent of water'

Dawn was just bleeding into the eastern horizon that morning in March 1846 when a Comanche raiding party drove a herd of stolen stock across a dry ford to the north bank of the drought-parched Concho River. The raiders then swung their horses eastward to reach a deeper portion of the channel, where steep, brush-lined banks held ample water. Dust-grimed and trail-weary, the braves squinted directly into the blaze of the rising sun as they gazed up at a cliff face covered in rock paintings that variously summoned the gods' favors or boasted of warrior exploits. At a spot on the bluff, they might mix paints and depict their recent raid on the outskirts of the Tejano settlement of San Antonio, 200 miles to the south, where they had taken scalps and stolen horses from their hated enemies.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

The Comanches and their thirsty mounts neared the grove of willows and candleberry trees that shaded the deep stretch of river channel. Out of the gloom came a sudden volley of rifle shots, knocking some from their horses and causing the others to bolt. The usually wary Comanches were stunned and confused; they had been taken by surprise. The man behind the ambush was Major Jack Hays, supported by 40 Texas Rangers, and it must have given him no small pleasure. Five years earlier, Comanches had ambushed him and his company of Rangers in the thorny maw of Bandera Pass. Now he had turned the tables, and the payback that blossomed from the muzzles of his men's weapons held a rare sweetness for the veteran fighting man.

The epic fight that ensued on the north bank of the Concho at this ancient gathering place known as Paint Rock (or Painted Rocks) brought death to many Comanches and marked the close of one phase of Hays' already legendary career. Frontiersman William A.A. "Bigfoot" Wallace later dubbed it the fiercest battle with Comanches he had seen in four decades on the ever-dangerous Texas frontier.

The Comanches had descended upon the San Antonio area a week before, at a time when all of Texas was distracted by events to the south. A war with Mexico was brewing in the disputed border territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Texas had joined the American union in December 1845, and Mexico regarded that move as an act of war. Mexican troops marched into the area near Brownsville, south of the Rio Grande, and tensions mounted. American General Zachary Taylor and his "Army of Observation" encamped on the Gulf Coast at Corpus Christi in preparation for a move southward into the contested area.

Hays was in Corpus Christi to offer Taylor the services of the Texas Rangers as scouts in the event of war. When word reached him of the Comanche raid on settlements southwest of San Antonio, the major made a few days' hard ride west to Captain Richard A. Gillespie's camp on the Medina River. Upon arrival, Hays ordered Gillespie to have his 40-man company ready to march the next morning.

The Rangers were on the move at first light, led by trackers Chief Placido of the Tonkawas and the mixed-blood Cherokee Bill Chisholm. The Indian scouts soon picked up the trail of the raiders, who were heading north for their homes on the high plains above the Colorado River. These scouts, according to a Ranger's account a decade later, "could trail them Comanches like a dog-eared hound" and "would put their head down and look like they was smelling their tracks." Placido's presence guaranteed that any meeting with the raiders would soon turn nasty, because the Comanches and Tonkawas had been bitter enemies long before the Texians arrived on the scene (during the colonial Spanish period in Mexico and the Southwest). The Comanche people particularly hated the Tonkawas for their practice of eating portions of their slain foemen's bodies in acts of ritual cannibalism.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to