Linnville, Calhoun County, Texas

Last updated April 18, 2019

Linnville, Texas was a town in the Republic of Texas, in what is now Calhoun County. It was founded in 1831 and destroyed in the Great Raid of 1840.^[1]^[2]^[3]

The Republic of Texas was a sovereign state in North America that existed from March 2, 1836, to February 19, 1846. It was bordered by Mexico to the west and southwest, the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, the two U.S. states of Louisiana and Arkansas to the east and northeast, and United States territories encompassing parts of the current U.S. states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico to the north and west. The citizens of the republic were known as Texians.

Calhoun County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 census, the population was 21,381. Its county seat is Port Lavaca. The county is named for John Caldwell Calhoun, the seventh vice president of the United States.

The Great Raid of 1840 was the largest raid ever mounted by Native Americans 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 who had come to negotiate a peace treaty, killing them together with two dozen of their family and followers. The Comanche tribe was supposed to have brought white hostages as their part of the negotiations but only brought one young girl. Arguments and fighting then broke out among the Texians and Comanches. The Texas Officials were determined to force the Comanche to release all white captives among them. To avenge what the Comanche viewed as a bitter betrayal by the Texans, the Comanche war 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.

The raid in August 1840 by Penateka Comanches, led by war chief Buffalo Hump, on Victoria and the Port of Linnville, on Lavaca Bay, Texas, is said to be the largest raid by American Indians on cities in U.S. history (Texas was at the time still a republic). Linnville was sacked and burned by the Comanches, and the port was never rebuilt. Citizens of Linnville escaped to safety by taking to small boats and a schooner in the waters off the bay, watching as their town was burned to the ground.

The raid on Victoria and Linnville was one in a sequence of strikes and counter-strikes in Republic of Texas history that defined bitter relations between Comanches and Texans.

Events began with the Council House Fight in San Antonio, March 1840 in which Republic of Texas officials attempted to capture and take prisoner a large number of Comanche chiefs who had come to negotiate a peace treaty, killing them together with dozens of their family and followers. In revenge, the Comanche conducted the raid on Victoria and Linnville in August 1840. The Battle of Plum Creek, near Lockhart Texas, shortly after the raid on Linnville, was Texans' retaliation against Comanches in their retreat from Linnville. And finally, an expedition commanded by Colonel John Henry Moore against a Comanche village in October 1840, was revenge by Texans for the raid on Victoria and Linnville by striking Penateka Comanches in their homeland near what is now Colorado City.

The Council House Fight, often referred to as the Council House Massacre, was a decidedly lopsided fight between soldiers and officials of the Republic of Texas and a delegation of Comanche chiefs during a peace conference in San Antonio on March 19, 1840. The meeting took place under an observed truce with the purpose of negotiating the exchange of captives and ultimately facilitating peace after two years of war. The Comanches sought to obtain recognition of the boundaries of the Comancheria, their homeland, while the Texians wanted the release of Texian and Mexican citizens held prisoner by the Comanches.

The Battle of Plum Creek was a clash between allied Tonkawa, militia, and Rangers of the Republic of Texas and a huge Comanche war party under Chief Buffalo Hump, which took place near Lockhart, Texas, on August 12, 1840, following the Great Raid of 1840 as the Comanche war party returned to west Texas.

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Lavaca Bay is a northwestern extension of the Matagorda Bay system found mostly in Calhoun County, Texas, United States. The ports of Port Lavaca and Point Comfort have been established on the bay, and are the main areas of human habitation. Linnville was located on the bay until its abandonment after the Great Raid of 1840, and the major port of Indianola was found near the confluence with the main Matagorda Bay, until the town's final destruction following the massive hurricane of 1886. Smaller communities include Olivia, Alamo Beach and Magnolia Beach. Lavaca Bay is approximately 82 miles (130 km) northeast of Corpus Christi, about 121 miles (190 km) southwest of Houston, and 145 miles (230 km) southeast of San Antonio.

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The Comanche Wars were a series of armed conflicts fought between Comanche peoples and Spanish, Mexican, and American militaries and civilians in the United States and Mexico from as early as 1706 until at least the mid-1870s. The Comanche were the Native American inhabitants of a large area known as Comancheria, which stretched across much of the southern Great Plains from Colorado and Kansas in the north through Oklahoma, Texas, and eastern New Mexico and into the Mexican state of Chihuahua in the south. For more than 150 years, the Comanche were the dominant native tribe in the region, known as “the Lords of the Southern Plains”, though they also shared parts of Comancheria with the Wichita, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache and, after 1840, the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho.

Buffalo Hump was a War Chief of the Penateka band of the Comanche Indians. He came to prominence after the Council House Fight when he led the Comanches on the Great Raid of 1840.

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The Texas–Indian wars were a series of 19th-century conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians. These conflicts began when the first wave of European-American settlers moved into Spanish Texas. They continued through Texas's time as part of Mexico, when more Europeans and Anglo-Americans arrived, to the subsequent declaration of independence by the Republic of Texas. The conflicts did not end until thirty years after Texas joined the United States.

Santa Anna was a Native American War Chief of the Penateka tribe of the Comanche Indians.

Robert Simpson Neighbors was an Indian agent and Texas state legislator. Known as a fair and determined protector of Indian interests as guaranteed by treaty, he was murdered for his beliefs by a Texan who disagreed with giving any rights to the Comanches.

Old Owl was a Native American Civil Chief of the Penateka band of the Comanche Indians.

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Emil Kriewitz (1822–1902) was a German immigrant and veteran of the Mexican–American War, who came to this country with the Adelsverein colonists. After John O. Meusebach successfully negotiated the Meusebach–Comanche Treaty, Kriewitz lived among the Penateka Comanche as an intermediary between the whites and Penateka. In 1993, his home in Castell, Texas, was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, Marker number 9444.

Plácido Benavides (1810–1837) was an early Mexican-born settler in De Leon's Colony, Victoria County, Texas. Benavides earned himself the sobriquet of the Paul Revere of Texas for his 1836 journey from San Patricio to Goliad to Victoria, warning residents of the approaching Mexican army. He was twice elected alcalde of Victoria, Texas. He married into the powerful De León family, and with his wife Agustina became the father of three daughters. Benavides fought against the dictatorship of Antonio López de Santa Anna, but did not feel Texas should be separated from Mexico.

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Mukwoorʉ was a 19th-century Penateka Comanche Chief and medicine man in Central Texas. His nephews were the two cousins Buffalo Hump and Yellow Wolf, both very important Penateka war chiefs during the decades 1840' - 1850'.

References

↑ Roell, Craig H. "Linville, Texas". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 4 March 2011.
↑ Roell, Craig H. "Linnville Raid of 1840". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 4 March 2011.
↑ Details on the road to Linnville from Victoria, TX are available in an 1858 map of Victoria County. Pressler, Charles W.. Victoria County, Map, November 21, 1858; digital image, (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth89041/), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Texas General Land Office, Austin , Texas.

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[1] Roell, Craig H. "Linville, Texas". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 4 March 2011.

[2] Roell, Craig H. "Linnville Raid of 1840". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 4 March 2011.

[3] Details on the road to Linnville from Victoria, TX are available in an 1858 map of Victoria County. Pressler, Charles W.. Victoria County, Map, November 21, 1858; digital image, (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth89041/), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Texas General Land Office, Austin , Texas.