Mile after mile, before daylight, we rode west on I. H. 10 at a steady 70 miles per hour. It was early Monday morning, May 17, 2010, our oldest daughter, Karen Duban, and I are on our way to Big Bend National Park, 650 miles west of my home north of Houston, Texas. We both love photography and are really looking forward to having three full days in this scenic wonderful place in far west Texas for the next three days. 

After the sun was up, we stopped in Schulenburg, Texas, to have breakfast at Frank’s Restaurant. After breakfast, I was looking around in their gift shop area and saw a book that appeared to be interesting. The book was titled The Captured by Scott Zesch. Karen said “Let me buy it for you”. I finished reading that book yesterday.

After breakfast, we took some pictures in the field near the parking lot of some yellow wildflowers that are named Plains Coreopsis, the same as in the painting above. For the rest of that day and for the next several days we would see thousands of them along the roadways and in the fields and pastures. After twelve hours in the SUV, we finally arrived late in the afternoon at The Chisos Mountains Lodge in Big Bend National Park. 

As time would permit in Big Bend, I started reading the book that Karen bought for me. It was appropriate reading in this wild and wonderful place in the West Texas mountains.  

Mr. Zesch is from Mason, Texas, in the Texas hill country. By accident one day, he stumbled upon the grave of the step-brother of his great-great grandmother. His name was Adolph Korn. He remembered the name as one of his relatives that had been captured by Indians. Members of his family didn’t seem to know much about him, so he set out to learn as much about him as much as possible. 

Adolph was captured by the Indians when he was about ten years old, on January 1, 1870, while herding sheep for a neighbor. He lived with the Comanche Indians roaming the high plains of Texas. When he was returned to his family in 1872, he never fit in again with the culture of his family. Eventually, he went into the wilds of Texas and lived his remaining years as a hermit in a cave overlooking the Llano River. 

To learn about Adolph, Mr. Zesch had to find the stories of other white children captured about the same time by the Indians that would have known him as a captive and that did later tell about their experiences living with the Comanche Indians including their remembrances of Adolph. 

This book is one of the best that I have ever read about the clash of the American and European cultures of the people that were settling in Texas with the cultures of the nomadic Indians that needed the same land to hunt for the wild game that was their source for food, clothing and shelter. 

The Indian tribes on the plains suffered from a low birth rate and a high mortality rate due to their warlike culture. So they needed children. It was very important for them to capture children to assimilate into their tribes. They wanted children from ages eight to fourteen that could be indoctrinated into their culture. Children captured that were less than eight years old that couldn’t withstand the rigors of the escape rides, were just killed. Those older than fourteen that would be difficult to indoctrinate, were generally also killed or saved for a ransom. 

Contrary to the thoughts and fears of the parents of the captured children, once the children had reached their villages, they were treated very well by the standards and culture of the Indians. The boys got to ride horses, go swimming, learn to shoot, go hunting and go on raiding trips to far away places. It was an exciting life and they were seldom disciplined. For them, it was something like modern day summer camp on steroids. The captured girls were generally given to a Comanche woman that did not have a daughter. They were lavished with love, attention and care.  

When they were eventually returned to their families, essentially all of them never quite fit in with the dull farm life, the hard work and the lack of travel and adventure of their families. All wanted to go back to the Comanche way of life. The problem was that by then, the Comanche way of life of roaming the plains had ended. They were now living on reservations living on rations issued to them by the government. 

The wildflowers in this painting, named Plains Coreopsis, just seems appropriately named for this story.