cept
in the supply of arms and ammunition, we perceived that our booty was
worth nothing. This Texian expedition must have been composed of a very
beggarly set, for there was not a single yard of linen, nor a miserable
worn-out pair of trousers, to be found in all their bundles and boxes.

Among the horses taken, some thirty or forty were immediately identified
by the Comanches as their own property, many of them, during the
preceding year, having been stolen by a party of Texians, who had
invited the Indians to a grand council. Gabriel, Roche, and I, of
course, would accept none of the booty; and as time was now becoming to
me a question of great importance, we bade farewell to our Comanche
friends, and pursued our journey east, in company with the five
Americans.

During the action, the Comanches had had forty men wounded and only nine
killed. Yet, two months afterwards, I read in one of the American
newspapers a very singular account of the action. It was a report of
General Smith, commandant of the central force of Texas, relative to the
glorious expedition against the savages, in which the gallant soldiers
of the infant republic had achieved the most wonderful exploits. It
said, "That General Smith having been apprised, by the unfortunate
Captain Hunt, that five thousand savages had destroyed the rising city
of Lewisburg, and murdered all the inhabitants, had immediately hastened
with his intrepid fellows to the neighbourhood of the scene; that there,
during the night, and when every man was broken down with fatigue, they
were attacked by the whole force of the Indians, who had with them some
twenty half-breeds, with French and English traders. In spite of their
disadvantages, the Texians repulsed the Comanches with considerable
loss, till the morning, when the men were literally tired with killing
and the prairie was covered with the corpses of two thousand savages;
the Texians themselves having lost but thirty or forty men, and these
people of little consequence, being emigrants recently arrived from the
States. During the day, the stench became so intolerable, that General
Smith caused the prairie to be set on fire, and crossing the river,
returned home by slow marches, knowing it would be quite useless to
pursue the Comanches in the wild and broken prairies of the north. Only
one Texian of note had perished during the conflict--the brave and
unfortunate Captain Hunt; so that, upon the whole, considerin