In February 1868, a band of Comanche warriors attacked a remote settlement in Texas’ Llano County, leaving a trail of death and captivity that would become one of the most brutal episodes in the region’s frontier history. The assault on the Legion Valley settlement stood out not only for its violence but because it occurred when most of the men had traveled to Austin to sell their hogs, leaving only women and children behind. The story is recorded in J. W.
Wilbarger’s 1889 book “Indian Depredations in Texas,” which documents a series of Comanche raids on settlers in the region between 1859 and 1868. These attacks unfolded as federal troops withdrew from West Texas posts ahead of the Civil War, allowing Comanche warriors to renew raids from New Mexico, southern Colorado, and northern Texas. Among the earliest victims was Rev. Jonas Dancer, a Methodist minister who had been one of the first American settlers in Llano County.
On May 23, 1859, Dancer went to a meeting point to help build a new road from Llano to Austin. The others never arrived. While waiting, he was attacked by a group of five or six Indians. Unarmed, he fled into a deep ravine, where the warriors fired arrows at him from the slopes above.
Weakened by blood loss, he sat down against a rock outcropping and died there. The warriors then scalped him and mutilated his body, which was found the next day by a search party and returned to his widow and children. Dancer had built the first church in the area and was regarded as a father figure to the county. His death deeply affected the entire settlement.
In May 1862, a settler named Mr. Dennier went out unarmed to search for his cattle. About half a mile from his home, he was attacked by a group of Indians. He fled toward his house with arrows flying after him.
When he came close enough, he called out to his family. His wife ran out with his rifle, and the attackers fled. Dennier had been mortally wounded and died the next day. In the fall of 1863, Harrison Miller, a sheep farmer in Llano County, was eating dinner when arrows suddenly pierced his door and windows.
He grabbed his rifle and held the attackers at bay. When the Indians gathered at the front door, Miller jumped out a back window and escaped down a slope to a small creek. About a mile away, the same group encountered Barzilai Paine, a man around 60 years old who also owned a sheep farm. Paine had sent a Black boy home after finding his flock.
Shortly after the boy left, gunfire rang out, followed by the old man’s cry: “You may take me now. ” Paine was killed. His attackers were pursued, and one Indian was killed while the rest scattered. The pursuing Texans later encountered a lone Indian riding a fine horse, taunting them with gestures.
They chased him down and killed him after his horse was wounded. In January 1865, a widow named Martha Youngblood was living near the Gillespie-Llano county line with several children. While her six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter played near the house, a group of Indians crept up and killed the boy. Mrs.
Youngblood saw them coming and barred the door. When she refused to let them in, they tore a plank from the wall. She met them with a rifle, and they backed off. The young girl, who had followed the Indians unnoticed, slipped through the opening.
Thanks to the widow’s courage, she and her children survived. Three years later came the most deadly tragedy in Llano County’s history. Matilda S. Friend was the daughter of Rev.
Jonas Dancer. She had married John S. Friend. Her home lay in Legion Valley, about 15 miles south of Llano, surrounded by mountains and near Honey Creek.
On February 5, 1868, Mrs. Friend was with two or three other women and several children in the cow lot, about 100 yards from the house, when about 15 Indians passed by. The women fled into the house and barred the door. When the warriors realized no men were present, they advanced on the home.
Accounts vary on how many people were inside, but the names recorded include Mrs. Friend, Mrs. Samantha Johnson, Mrs. Rebecca Johnson, Miss Amanda Townson, a young girl named Melinda Cordell, Lee Temple Friend (Mrs.
Friend’s stepson, a boy of about eight), and two infants—one belonging to Rebecca and one to Samantha Johnson. The house was built of wooden pickets. When the Indians found the door barred, they tore out a pair of pickets. Mrs.
Friend was the only one who tried to fight back. She urged the other women to join her in defending the house, but they chose not to, apparently believing the Indians would spare them if they surrendered quietly. There were two weapons in the house. When Mrs.
Friend saw an Indian about to enter through the opening, she grabbed a rifle and tried to fire, but an Indian snatched it from her. Another warrior took the gun away, possibly fearing the sound would alert others. Mrs. Friend then struck the Indian with a flatiron, nearly knocking him down.
He recovered, drew an arrow, and shot her in the side. The arrow struck a rib, deflected around her breastbone, and came out the other side. A second arrow hit her arm, and a third struck her chest. Unable to keep fighting after the third wound, she sat quietly on the bed and leaned her head against the bedpost.
Believing she was dead, one of the warriors began to scalp her. The pain was so intense that she raised her hand and grabbed the knife. The Indian wrenched it away, cutting her severely. When she tried to seize the knife a second time, he struck her three times, leaving her unable to move.
Then he slowly finished scalping her and left her for dead. One of the warriors returned, thinking the victim might still be alive. He pulled the arrow embedded in her chest back and forth to see if she would move. Mrs.
Friend saw him coming and kept the same position she had held during the scalping, playing dead through the ordeal. Convinced she was dead, the Indian left. The other women and children in the house were taken captive. Hearing their cries as the group departed, Mrs.
Friend rose and tried to walk to the window but was too weak from blood loss. She crawled to an opening in the side of the house and through it took a last look at her captured friends. Once the Indians were out of sight, she tied a cloth around her head, went out, gathered the few items the Indians had left, and returned them to the house before closing the door. She then walked to the home of a neighbor, Mr.
Bradford, about a mile and a half away. She set out near sunset and arrived around 8 p. m. , quenching her thirst along the way with snow that had fallen that day.
When she approached, the family noticed her because of the fierce barking of their dogs. Bradford came out but did not recognize her in the dark because of her terrible appearance—wounded, scalped, and bleeding. He hurried back inside. She called out and identified herself, and he came to help her.
Bradford brought her inside and, at her request, began removing the arrows from her body. Then Bradford and his family fled the house, fearing an Indian attack, leaving Mrs. Friend alone all night. They did not even take time to dress her wounds or remove her blood-soaked clothing.
They left only a small fire and a bucket of water. She was alone, about two miles from any other house. Around 8 a. m.
the next morning, two widows came to help her. The cloth covering her head had dried and stuck to her wounds so badly that it could only be removed with hot water. Her body was so swollen from her injuries that removing her clothes was extremely difficult. The women did what they could, but it was nearly 8 p.
m. before a doctor arrived to dress her wounds. Mrs. Friend took nearly a year to recover but eventually regained her health.
She was later reported to be living in Kansas. During the night of the attack, a runner reached the town of Llano to report the tragedy. Early the next morning, ten or twelve citizens rode out to Legion Valley. They found that the Indians had headed south.
Mr. Loss, a resident of Llano at the time, later recounted the pursuit. About a mile and a half from the house, the pursuers found Mrs. Johnson’s infant on a large rock, its head crushed.
Four miles further, at a pass above the mountain, they found where the Indians had stopped, started a fire, and cooked meat. From the tracks, they estimated the group had stayed there for some time. Nearby, a narrow path led from the camp to a dense thicket about 100 yards away. There they found the mutilated body of Mrs.
Johnson’s 18-year-old sister. She had been tied to the snow-covered ground and appeared to have been brutally assaulted, then killed and disfigured beyond easy recognition. Continuing the chase about three miles further into the mountains and down into the valley, they found Mrs. Johnson’s body, stripped of most of her clothing and partially eaten by hogs.
At that point, the group split. Some stayed to bury the dead, while others, including Mr. Loss, George Miller, Orville Ottsman, and Frank Holden, continued tracking the war party. The Indians had turned west after gathering about 30 horses.
The pursuers followed them for five days, often traveling at night when the trail was visible. From small footprints seen near water holes along the way, they knew the warriors had taken Mrs. Friend’s eight-year-old son captive. They got close to the Indians near the Devil’s River but ran out of food, and their horses were exhausted, leaving them no way to continue.
According to Mr. Loss, three women and three children were in the house during the attack. Another account suggests there were seven or eight people. That version records that the young girl, Melinda Cordell, was taken captive along with Mrs.
Friend’s young son. She remained with the Indians for about eight months before being recovered by a company of state cavalry. She was sent to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, then to Fort Arbuckle, and eventually returned to relatives in Texas. The boy, Lee Temple Friend, remained with the Comanche for nearly five years.
He was finally recovered by his grandfather, Rev. Leonard S. Friend. At the time of his recovery, the boy could only speak in Indian dialects.
The two Johnson sisters were named Becky and Samantha, and the Townson girl was called Mandy. All three were assaulted, scalped, and killed, and their bodies were horribly mutilated. Notably, the only woman who survived the massacre, Matilda Friend, was also the only one who fought back. According to an article in the November 1927 issue of Frontier Times, the other three women had actually pulled the rifle away from Matilda Friend, believing the Indians might not harm them if they offered no resistance.
Matilda Friend was about eight months pregnant at the time of the raid. Despite being hit by three arrows and partially scalped, she gave birth to her daughter, Jennie Isabelle Friend, on February 29, 1868, just a few weeks after the attack. Once she recovered enough, she and her husband moved to Butler County, Kansas, where they had five additional daughters between 1870 and 1886. Lee Temple Friend was eight years old when he was captured by the Comanche during the raid.
He was Matilda Friend’s stepson and the grandson of Jonas Dancer, the preacher killed by Indians in 1859. His mother, Tennessee Jane Dancer Friend, had died in childbirth when Temple was born in 1860. After his capture, Temple spent more than four years with the Comanche before being recovered at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on November 14, 1872. He did not adapt well to civilized life and died on June 2, 1875, at the age of 15.
No information has been found about the cause of his death. The massacre of Legion Valley remains one of the darkest chapters in Llano County’s history, remembered through the accounts in Wilbarger’s book and the later recollections of those who lived through it.