Around 1760, a Spaniard by the name of Juan Manuel Ruiz immigrated to San Fernando de Bexar (San Antonio, Texas). He married Manuela de la Pena, a native of Saltillo. They had a son, Jose Francisco, on january 29, 1783. Jose was educated in Spain, but returned to manage his father’s ranches on the Nueces River south and west of San Antonio. By the age of thirty, Ruiz was involved in the revolutionary effort to free Texas from Spanish rule. He survived the defeat in the Battle of Medina River in August 18, 1813, but had to flee for his life. He took refuge among the Comanche–who seemed supportive of Texas independence. He lived with the Comanche for eight years.
Jose Fransico Ruiz, 1783-1840.
He was one of two native Texans
to sign the Texas Declaration of
In 1828, he wrote a brief account of Comanche life in Report on the Indian Tribes of Texas. (A facsimile of the text is held in the Beineke Rare Book Library at Yale.) He saw the Comanche as “fierce defenders of their freedom.”
He noted what he called an elite group of warriors called “los lobos,” or, the wolves. They wore “profuse adornments,” Ruiz wrote, which they alone had the privilege of wearing. The Lobos are not allowed to retreat from the scene of the battle, not even when they are vastly outnumbered. It is their duty to die rather than surrender their ground, although the other warriors may be in full retreat.
(Ruiz says this was a big hit among the Comanche women.) Ruiz reports that any Lobo who surived, when other Lobos were killed, must find a new Comanche band to live with. If he survived, and other Lobos were killed, that meant, to the families of the dead, that the survivor had somehow neglected their duty. He should be dead!
The Lobos were normally treated as royalty, with great ostentation. Now, whether the Comanche referred to these kinds of warriors as “wolves” we cannot say. It was quite clear in Ruiz’ mind, however, that this was their nomenclature.
Timber Bluff, Comanche, 1872. Eyes of a wolf?
Later oral tradition has it that the Lobo would tether himself to a lance or pole stuck in the ground, and there fight until he was either killed, or the killed anyone who challenged him, until the battle was over. This tradition is aggrandized in Comanche lore. James M. Cox, great grandson of Quanah Parker, has a wonderful painting of such a Comanche, tethered to his lance, stuck in the ground. The Comanche thus declares his final stance. He will win, or die trying. He will not give ground. This fine art piece hangs in Cox’s office in Midwest City, Oklahoma. I asked him about it. He told me the oral tradition. It was especially meaningful to him, as head of the Oklahoma Association of Chiefs of Police, and as the son of James M. Cox–Chairman of the Comanche Nation, elected in 1976. There was a special verse accompanying the artwork, written below it. It was about never backing down from principle, from right, from defending your people.
I told him about the Ruiz account. I was most interested to know that the oral tradition was so similar to the written record of Ruiz, in 1828. Of course, Yale has dozens of historical, published accounts of captives who wrote about their horrifying “two days” with the Indians, or their “three months,” etc. These kinds of accounts were a dime a dozen. They were the cheap paper-back novels of day. They were the TV Westerns, or even the soaps. Yet, Ruiz seems to have been describing a very real social phenomenon among Comanche–certainly when compared to living oral tradition.
But the idea of the “crazy” warrior was not limited to the Comanche. Other plains Indians have similar traditions. Among the Lakota there was the Heyoka. These kinds of warriors were indeed killers. Often it was the result of personal tragedy, as in the case of Crazy Horse, who lost his baby daughter to war. Sometimes it was a vision. But whatever, it made the warrior exceedingly dangerous in battle. No one knew what he was going to do. He often did the opposite of what was expected, even in peace time, and in battle this meant he would stop at nothing.
One of the two photographs of an
Indian who may have been the
famous Crazy Horse.
The Cheyenne had warrior societies comprised of these kinds of heart-broken, heart-ripping warriors. Among them, the Dog Soldiers and Bowstrings turned into something similar to motorcycle gangs. They were on the fringe of their own societies. The Crow Indians had such phenomena among them as well.
Not every Comanche band or tribe accounted for the “crazy” warrior in the same way. Perhaps what Ruiz reports about Los Lobos was in fact about a group of such men. Perhaps it wasn’t. There is an oral tradition about a more singular warrior, whom you could count on to do something crazy. They called him Pu-kut-si. He was much more rare. In the 1930′s, an old Comanche woman said she had only known one, personally, in her entire life.
This kind of social psychology among the 18th and 19th century days of the Plains Indians is a sorely neglected field of study. This is of course due to the fact that there is little known evidence or documentation, and even less understanding on the part of early anthropologists. At least, this is the case for American Indians. I say it is the lack of conceptual identification on the part of the white observers. The world is often left with misconceptions of behavior and values when it comes to Indian life.
A Crow brave. Was he a “crazy” warrior?