Texas Rock Art in The Taken

Texas holds many well preserved examples of Indian rock art. Some of the most notable rock art sites are found in Val Verde County (Lower Pecos River style rock art), in El Paso County, (Hueco Tanks pictographs), and in Concho County, near Paint Rock. The Paint Rock site holds thousands of pictographs painted on the limestone cliffs above the Concho River. The Paint Rock pictographs date back 6000 years. One of the Paint Rock pictographs is said to describe the abduction of 13 year-old, Alice Todd in 1865. (Photo- From Pecos River Rock Art, Jim Zintgraff, Solveig A. Turpin)

In The Taken, (Release Date November 2010 Dorchester Publishing), a pictograph legend serves as the impetus for the abduction of William Barret Kensing, age 5 from his Texas home.

The novel opens:

- In an older, darker time, a great prophet of the People journeyed to the sacred cliff home of the Day Father. There he wove together branches of oak and cedar and burned them as offering to the Great Spirit. And when the wood transformed to ash, the prophet threw himself into the blistering residue. Refusing to cry out, even as his flesh melted into hot grease, the great prophet prayed for a messiah. One who would battle the People's great enemy, an evil spirit known as the tai-vo-tovt.

The Day Father heard the prophet's prayer and was pleased by the shaman's strength and humility and being a just and benevolent spirit, he granted the prophet a brief glimpse of the saviour he would one day send down to earth. After the Great Spirit's vision departed, the prophet gathered up the melted grease of his flesh and forever preserved the People's saviour onto the sacred cliff wall.

And when he had completed his painting, he looked upon the image and proclaimed, "Behold, this is the avenger of the People. This is the tai-vo-tovt killer."

- A legend of the People

The Last Comanche Raid into Texas

On December 15, 1876, a band of Kwahadi Comanche, under the war chief, Black Horse, left the Fort Sill reservation to hunt buffalo on the staked plains. Black Horse's party soon began making war on any white hunters they found on the trail, stealing horses from Skelton Glenn and Pat Garrett, and killing and scalping Marshall Sewell. Garrett later earned notoriety as the killer of Billy the Kid. (Photo- Black Horse - Fort Marion, Florida)

White revenge followed quickly as a group of forty-six hunters operating out of Rath City, Texas tracked the Comanche raiding party to Yellow House Canyon. The ensuing battle, fueled by a barrel of whiskey, lasted all day before the hunters retreated to nearby Buffalo Spring. One hunter and thirty-five Comanche died during the fight. The battle and ensuing engagements were know as The Staked Plains War or The Buffalo Hunters' War.

In early May, the Tenth Cavalry buffalo soldiers, under Captain P.L. Lee overtook the Black Horse's band near Quemado Lake in Cochran County and returned them to the Fort Sill reservation thus ending the last Comanche raid into Texas.

Herman Lehmann, a notable white captive, who later authored a book about his captivity, Nine Years Among the Indians, was wounded during the battle.

The Comanche leader, Black Horse, died at Cache, Oklahoma around 1900.

Mike Kearby's Texas copyright 2010