Celia Hayes is a retired Air Force broadcaster, who lives currently in San Antonio and writes historical novels about the American frontier, as well as contributing to many on-line magazines and managing the Independent Authors Guild website

That there would ever be any sort of peace between the  Comanche people, the horse-lords of the Southern Plains, and the settlers who steadily encroached upon the lands which they had always considered their own particular stamping grounds in 19th century Texas verges on the fantastical. That it lasted for longer than about a week must be accounted a miracle of Biblical proportions; but there was indeed such a treaty, negotiated and signed about mid-way through the bitter, brutal fifty-year long guerrilla war    between the Tribes, and a group of settlers newly arrived in Texas.

The need for a little patch of peace became a matter of urgency upon the arrival of nearly 7,000 German immigrants under the sponsorship and auspices of the Mainzer Adelsverein, or as it was formally known; The Society for The Protection of German Immigrants in Texas, in a brief space of years after 1844. The Verein, as it was called in Texas, was formed by a group of high-born and socially conscious German noblemen, who conceived the notion of establishing a colony of German farmers and craftsmen in Texas. Their motivations were a combination of altruism, and calculation. This settlement plan would generously assist farmers and small craftsmen who were being displaced by the dwindling availability of farm land, and by increasing mechanization. But it would also establish a large, homogenous and German-oriented colony in the then-independent Texas nation, from which they hoped to profit materially and perhaps politically.

Unfortunately, their organizational skills and economic resources were not anywhere near equal to their ambitions; ambitions which in turn were only equaled by their astonishing naivety about the frontier. Their first commissioner in Texas was well-intentioned, well-born, and utterly clueless: every scammer, con-man and shady land-speculator west of the Mississippi must have seen Prince Karl of Solms-Braunfels coming for a considerable distance. In a remarkably short time, Prince Karl effortlessly managed to piss-off most of the elected officials of the independent State of Texas, spend money as if it were water, burden the Verein with the Fisher-Miller Grant, (a large and almost useless tract of land smack-dab in the middle of Comanche territory), and amuse (or appall) practically everyone with whom he came in contact. Among the most risible of his personal peculiarities was the fact that he traveled in state with a large and specialized entourage, including a personal chef and two valets to help him on with his trousers of a morning. This went over with the rough denizens of the frontier about as well as could be expected.

In his short tenure as commissioner, Prince Karl did manage to found two towns for the benefit of his German immigrants (Indianola and New Braunfels), before he departed, probably hastened with sighs of deep relief from all concerned… and the hot breath of his creditors. Prince Karl’s hasty exodus late in 1844 left his replacement to handle the resulting tidal wave of hopeful immigrants headed towards the extensively-advertised, but useless land grant in the high prairie north and west of the present-day Hill Country. The new Verein commissioner in Texas was made— fortunately for the settlers— of abler and more experienced materiel; Baron Ottfried Hans von Meusebach. Of the minor but substantial nobility, Baron von Meusebach was a lawyer and experienced civil servant, whose family motto was “Steadfast in Purpose”. He spoke five languages, including English, and had a wide circle of friends both in Texas and Germany. Sensibly, nearly the first thing he did upon arrival in Texas was to set aside his aristocratic title, becoming known thereafter as plain John O. Meusebach. He was faced with an absolutely Herculean task; where to put all the arriving German immigrants, how to move them from the coastal ports, and how to secure their safety, once arrived at… wherever.

Meusebach did not want to write off the Fisher-Miller Grant, around which the Verein had built so many hopes, including their own. With an eye towards a way-station to funnel settlers into it, he established the settlement of Fredericksburg in the Pedernales River valley, and a handful of others on the edge of the frontier, up in the limestone and oak forest Hill Country. Today it is one of the more beautiful parts of Texas; kind of our very own Lake District, but then it was the edge of the wilderness… hardly the best situation for newly-arrived European immigrants, fresh off the boat. Having been informed by many local experts that the Comanche war parties would see the German colonies as a sort of take-all-you-want buffet, John Meusebach decided that their best chance for prosperity and survival lay in making a peace treaty with them, person to person, people to people, as equals.

Late in January of 1847, John Meusebach set out with a picked party of men and three wagons on a dual mission; to survey the land which the Verein had been granted the rights to settle upon, and to make peace with the Comanche. The party included a company of mounted Verein private troopers, a group of American surveyors, some Mexican teamsters and an interpreter, Lorenzo de Rosas, who had been kidnapped by the Comanche as a child, and was serving Meusebach’s party as guide and interpreter, and three wagon-loads of supplies and gifts for the Comanche. The party was also joined by a group of Shawnee Indians, who were hunting along the route that Meusebachs’ party traveled, and a wandering scholar and geologist named Ferdinand von Roemer, who had been energetically exploring Texas and extensively studying the exotic flora, fauna and geology wherever he found it. A later addition was the Indian agent for the State of Texas, Major Robert Neighbors, sent post-haste after Meusebach with the noted scout and interpreter Jim Shaw, of the Delaware tribe, when the powers that be realized that Meusebach was entirely serious, and had already crossed the Llano into the Comanche hunting-grounds.

On the morning of February 5th, a day after crossing the Llano, Meusebach’s party was approached by a small party of Comanche warriors under a truce flag, led by a chief named Ketumsee. Meusebach rode out with his interpreter: Ketumsee informed the German party that they had been observed, and were surrounded, and asked as to what their purpose was, either peace or war… either of which would be perfectly acceptable to the Comanche. John Meusebach answered that he had come to make peace, as the representative of a people who had come a long way over the ocean, and stood with the Americans. He also added that the hospitality of Ketumsee’s people would be reciprocated, in the German colonies. Ketumsee appeared to be much impressed by this: he offered to receive the German party at his main encampment, a day or so journey away, and to send word to the other great Comanche chiefs to come to a peace conference. But first . . .

But first, before they were welcomed to Ketumsee’s main camp, the interpreter Lorenzo de Rozas told Meusebach’s party that as a demonstration of their good faith and confidence, they should empty all their firearms, firing them into the ground, or into the air.
For the forty men of Meusebach’s peace venture, it was a pivotal moment, for they were far beyond the safe frontier, and surrounded by what was estimated to be five or six thousand Comanche, the acknowledged warlords of the Southern plains. They had assembled on a hillside near Ketumsee’s encampment on the San Saba, mounted on their best horses, in all their finery and carrying their weapons, on either side of a flag on a tall staff; warriors on the right, women and children on the left. It was a splendid and heart-stopping sight. In the event of Meusebach having entirely miscalculated the Comanche’s desire for a peace treaty there would be no aid, no cavalry pounding to their rescue. About the only thing that would be a certain guarantee in that event… would be that every one of them would die, in as agonizing a manner as the most creative sadist could devise.

Meusebach quietly ordered all his men to empty their firearms. And in response, the Comanche warriors who carried firearms also emptied theirs. Chief Ketumsee and his senior chiefs came forward to greet them with handshakes and with elaborate ceremony; Meusebach and his party were conducted into the village. They were invited to stay within the Comanche encampment, in their skin lodges, but on the excuse of finding better pasture for their horses, Meusebach graciously declined. They set up their own camp, but might as well have not bothered, because almost all of Ketumsee’s tribe came to visit over the next day or so; men, women, children and all, and mostly on horseback As one of the German visitors later wrote “Horses play an important role in the life of the Comanches… when there is a scarcity of food, horses furnish a supply of meat…from early youth both sexes are taught to ride… we saw children who had been nursed by their mothers until their third year, leave their mothers’ breast, jump on a horse and light a cigarette…”
Ketumsee had sent word to other high-ranking chiefs, namely Mopechucope, known as “Old Owl”, Chief Santanna, one of the important war leaders and Buffalo Hump, who had been bested in the Plum Creek fight after the Linville Raid seven years previously. But it would take time for those leaders and the lesser chiefs to assemble. In the meantime, Meusebach and the other Germans freely visited Ketumsee’s camp freely over the next few days. He earned a certain amount of good-will and respect by going about unarmed, among the Comanche, and showing neither fear nor favor. Both he and the scientist Von Roemer were genuinely interested in their hosts, which also earned further respect. Meusebach acquired the nickname among them of “El Sol Colorado”, the Red Sun, on account of the reddish-auburn of his hair and beard.

In order to make good use of the time, and to hunt—replenishing their stocks of food which had been diminished by the many calls made in the name of hospitality to their hosts— Meusebach proposed that the main part of his company continue with surveying and hunting, while he and Von Roemer and some others press on to explore the old Spanish Fort on the San Saba River. The fort had been built in part to extend control of Texas into the north, and to protect a mission for Apache converts, but the mission had been destroyed by the Comanche and the fort abandoned seventy years before. It had been claimed that there were silver mines in the vicinity— which if true, would be of benefit to the near-empty Verein treasury. Meusebach didn’t seem to think there were, but their possible existence was one more illusion to disabuse his far-distant superiors from believing in.

At the end of February, Meusebach rejoined the rest of his party, and they traveled all together to a point on the lower San Saba River, to meet at a great council-fire with fifteen or twenty chiefs, including Old Owl, Santanna and Buffalo Hump. Besides the expected gifts and payments rendered to the Comanche, in return for leaving the German settlements unmolested, Meusebach took the fairly advanced line that as two separate peoples, they could never the less co-exist, to their mutual benefit. He cunningly pointed out that as skilled farmers, his people would always have plenty of food… and when hunting was bad for the Comanche, the Germans would be able to share in trade. He proposed that both the settlers and the Comanche be free to come to each others’ dwellings, that they be allies against outside enemies. He even, daringly, had no objection to intermarriage, although historians are decidedly mixed on exactly how much that was even possible, or welcome in either case.

And the Comanche chiefs were convinced. The treaty was ratified two months later, in Fredericksburg. For a number of years, the Comanche came and went, trading freely with the German settlers there. A number of the settlers developed personal friendships, notably with Chief Santanna, who seemed to be a rather jolly and gregarious sort, and who sincerely believed in the wisdom of making peace. In that breath of time, the gently-rolling limestone and oak-forested hill country of south-central Texas was transformed utterly into a district of neat and prosperous farms and well-laid out towns… where for a time, the two peoples did co-exist to their mutual benefit.

Alas, in the end it seemed that Meusebach’s treaty depended very much on the mutual liking and respect that each of the parties involved had for each other, rather than on the strict letter of the treaty itself. And there were Comanche tribes who did not consider themselves bound by it. As men grew old, as men died, so did the peace; but it lasted long enough, and those who signed it took great pride in the fact that they did not break it. Meusebach’s treaty held for about ten years, up to the time of the Civil War… when much else in Texas headed towards the infernal regions, conveyed in the proverbial hand-held wicker-work container.

This expedition into the Llano country of Texas is a pivotal chapter of Book One of my forthcoming Trilogy about the German settlements in the 19th Century. The hero, a soldier and Ranger of German descent named Carl Becker accompanies John Meusebach on his daring adventure in search of a little patch of peace. He has been charged with this duty by none other than Captain Jack Hays – but Carl also hopes to court an immigrant girl that he has fallen in love with, Margaretha “Magda” Vogel Steinmetz.  All three volumes of the “Adelsverein Trilogy” will be released December 10, 2008. More about them – and a look at the covers – is at my website.