Lipan Apache and Chief Flacco, The Younger
Norman Rozeff, May 2010
At least one band of Native American Indians lives among residents of the Rio Grande Valley. Members of it may even be your neighbor. Some have taken part in the annual free-admission Harlingen Heritage Festival at the Harlingen Arts and Heritage Museum. There attendees were able to experience a favorite activity of children and adults alike. It was interacting with Valley descendents of the Lipan Apache Tribe. Past years have seen wonderful displays of American Indian artifacts, costumes, a tepee, and oral history transmitted by tribal members. Following is some history of this Texas tribe and one of its most famous chiefs.
The Lipan Apache are one of the six sub-tribes of the Apache tribe.
Anthropologists believe that their ancestors migrated south from Canada in the early1500s. By the 1600s they had moved as far south as the San Antonio area to a homeland they called "Many Houses" and where they developed the Lipan identity. Their sworn enemies, the warlike Comanches, likely drove the Apaches southward. Living south of San Antonio and as far as northern Mexico, they became known as Kóke metcheskó lähä, the "High-Beaked Moccasin People". The Lipan are also known as Nde buffalo hunters.While the Lipan Apache did not inhabit the four counties that came to comprise the southeast side of the LRGV, they always lived nearby. As were their enemies, the Comanches, the Apaches were accomplished horsemen. They traded widely west to the Pecos and later into Northern Mexico. Unfortunately the aggressive Comanche moved south into the Texas Great Plains during the 1700s and contested territory inhabited by the Apaches. In the second decade of this century Comanches and Lipans fought an epic 9-day battle in the Red River Basin. Lipan corpses are "left in piles like leaves." In the period to follow Lipans begin sporadic raids against Spanish-controlled San Antonio. A mark of prestige among Apaches, and other Indians as well, is the ability to stealthily and successfully steal horses.
When in 1730 Canary Island settlers arrive in the San Antonio area, the Lipan, envisaging more losses in their territory, declare war and launch attacks. Off and on again truces take place over the next decades. Some Lipan break off and move south to Coahuila while those remaining are reluctant to accept Christianity and are repeatedly exposed to decimating "white man's" diseases. Mission established to convert the Apache are burned or later abandoned. Military reprisals by the Spanish generally fail until 1800. That provides a reason in 1814 for the Lipan Apaches to fight along side rebels fighting for Mexican independence at Battle of Medina.
As the battles for Texas independence commences in 1836 the Lipans are sympathetic to the Hispanic Tejano rebels but not necessarily the Anglo ones. After independence is won, unsettled conditions in South Texas and the contested boundary between Mexico and the Republic of Texas allow for considerable cattle thievery by Lipans and Mexicans alike. This activity thrives for decades. The livestock is driven into Mexico where pursuit and recovery is negligible. When Mexican troops begin to clamp down some Lipan flee to New Mexico where later they are militarily forced into reservations, some in Oklahoma.
In the mid-1800s when Comanche depredations were very serious and were preventing the Anglo settlement of Central and West Texas, the Texas Rangers came into being. This is when Flacco the Elder and Flacco the Younger, Lipan Apache chiefs, both befriended the Texas settlers and were frequently used as scouts and guides against the Comanche Indians and the Mexicans. The elder in 1842 was asked by Sam Houston himself to assist doctors sent to serve the Apache. Being an Indian chief is not a hereditary title but is awarded to an individual with skills, leadership abilities, and accomplishments.
It was Flacco the younger who wrote history. Born around 1818 he accompanied the Moore expeditions of 1838 and 1839. It was his action with the greatest ranger to ever live, John Coffee (Jack) Hays, in 1840, 1841 and 1842 that brought the younger Flacco ever-lasting fame. The two learned from one-another and this served them well in numerous wild confrontations with their enemies and outlaws. Flacco is frequently quoted by historians for his dramatic statement about Hays: "Me and Red Wing not afraid to go to hell together. Captain Jack heap brave; not afraid to go to hell by himself."
Flacco was killed under mysterious circumstances in1842. The exact incident is bathed in a fog. Each historian has his own interpretation. One says that Flacco was driving a horse herd with two Mexicans and a deaf-mute old Lipan when the Mexicans killed him and ran off with the stolen horses to Louisiana. Another account says Flacco was found surrounded by six dead Cherokees, thereby indicating that he had died heroically defending himself. A third account has us believe that it was Flacco's Anglo enemies who did him in. While the exact nature of his demise may never be known, his death left the Lipan nation in unresolved turmoil. As a result, with no killers ever apprehended, Lipan and Texan friendship likely dissolved, this in spite of Texas President Houston's moving and loving memorial letter of bereavement to Flacco, the Elder, and the people of his tribe. Destructive border raids from other Apaches were to ensue for decades until the US Army in 1873 entered Mexico, destroyed native villages, and forced the Apache survivors into a New Mexico reservation.
One historian best sums the relationship as follows: "Among the Indian tribes whose friendship for the white settlers in Texas was steadfast and faithful, was the tribe of Lipans of which Flacco was the chief. This tribe was not of the more numerous of the Indian communities—it was just the other way—it was a small tribe. But it was a valuable ally of the settlers and on more than one occasion gave valued assistance to the hard-pressed settlers in their fight."
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