Book Review of "The Boy Captives."

“...I want to say my life has been molded in rude elements, 
without any of the refining influences which an education gives. This story,  therefore, has none of the characteristics of a novel in which the imagination supplies every need and meets every emergency. It is my aim to state simple  facts, and nothing but plain truths, as they occurred to me, for I have neither the gift, nor the inclination, to fabricate a story of thrilling adventure just  to please the tastes of those who look to the novelist to meet their demand for  entertainment.” 

- Clinton  Lafayette Smith of San Antonio, 1927

This is a tale in two parts. One part is the true story of two  brothers who experienced a fantastic adventure that turns what we know about  history on its head. The other part is about the efforts of a family to preserve this true story for almost a century.  

Around 1927 Clinton Lafayette Smith, in his sixties, wrote a  true story in longhand on a Big Chief tablet. Eventually, along with his brother Jefferson Davis Smith, he recounted his tale to noted writer J. Marvin Hunter.  The resulting book, The Boy Captives, has been in publication for eighty-five years through eighteen printings, all of which has been paid for by the Smith Family. What kind of  memoir would be so important that successive generations of one family repeatedly paid for its publication? 

In 1871, eleven year old Clinton and his nine year old brother  Jefferson were captured by Comanche raiders near their West Texas farm.  Jefferson was soon sold to none other than the legendary Apache warrior Geronimo, while Clinton was adopted by Comanche Chief Tasacowadi. For over five years they lived among the two most notorious warrior tribes in North America during one of the most tumultuous eras in American history. 

The Boy Captives could be described as Forrest Gump  meets Little Big Man, but with one  important difference, The Boy Captives was real. The Boy Captives isn’t a history book; the history is a mere by-product of the  telling. This is a story of two boys and their honest account of the vanished  people they came to reluctantly love. 

The story is told mostly by Clinton. Hunter makes it clear to the reader he adheres “...as strictly as possible to the manner of expression, the style of recital and the method of description used by Mr. Smith.” You can almost hear Clinton’s plain spoken, West Texas drawl rising off the pages. But you don’t hear an old cowboy recalling the days of his youth. Instead, you clearly hear a Comanche boy named Bak-ke-ca-cho (End Of A Rope) recounting the unique moments of his life as he transforms from frightened farm boy to a deadly Comanche warrior. Clinton moves, often non-sequentially, from moment to moment with no overarching idea or theme. He bestows importance to events based on what they meant to a young Comanche boy, not on an old white man’s perspective of history. 

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Clinton Smith with several Indian friends later in life

For example, Clinton devotes more time discussing how to properly prepare a rattlesnake for eating than recalling the time spent in the company of famous Apache Chief Geronimo, who he simply recalls as a great warrior and friend to his tribe. Clinton delights in explaining how to remove lice from a loincloth by shaking it over a hot fire and listening to the lice crackle like popcorn.  He gives scant mention, however, of standing in the presence of  the great Sioux Chief Sitting Bull overlooking the bleached bones of a battlefield where the Sioux won a victory over the U.S. Army.  Clinton’s voice is a time capsule, a crystal clear radio beacon from a lost era, free from the distortion of the historian’s pen.  

Through Clinton we are given an insight to how the Indians thought, how they viewed the world around them, and their values. When Clinton becomes a Comanche all thoughts of the past or the future cease to exist. He simply was. I would describe this as the “narrative of the moment.” The Boy Captives is a series of amazing life-and-death moments strung together and told in a matter-of-fact style that left me stunned. 

This book upends many myths about the Plains Indians, especially the Comanche. For example, conventional history says the Comanche’s range, the  Comancheria, stretched from Eastern New Mexico to north-west Texas to Central Kansas.   However, in the five years Clinton was with the tribe he describes roaming from Mexico to Canada, from Nebraska to the Pacific.

We are often led to believe the Indians were crushed by the  whites partly because the different tribes could not unite.   Yet, more often than not,  both Clinton and Jefferson state the Comanche, Apache,  Sioux, Cheyenne and countless other tribes formed alliances with great success against the whites. The  details presented in this book of the friendships between widely geographically separated tribes, which many believe had nothing to do with each other, is nothing short of astounding. 

The book also challenges many of the politically-correct myths  about the Native Americans. Both Clinton and Jefferson make it clear the primary endeavor of their tribes was raiding, killing and kidnapping white children. Modern perspectives and the illusions of cultural relativism wash away under the torrent of blood inflicted by the Comanche. The sheer volume of random, savage violence they wreak is chilling. It was often for sport, without the justifications of revenge or military necessity. In fact, the Comanche seemed to have all the purpose of a modern outlaw biker gang, only on a much larger scale and with greater effect.  Neither Clinton nor Jefferson excuse the atrocities, they simply call it what it was – killing.

In fact, neither mentions revenge for white atrocities because,  until the professional Mexican and American armies finally brought their full power to bear against the Plains Indians, whites had little success against what both men clearly describe as the tactically superior Indian. Even then, the  Indians held the soldiers in scorn at first. Clinton describes this turning point:

At first, the Indians were not afraid of these soldiers, and were inclined to treat the matter as a big joke. They would overpower the ranchmen and steal their stock, kill settlers and commit all kinds of outrages. But this was only the beginning of the end, for in time the Indian had to give in to his superior, the white man. 

This statement is haunting when in context of perhaps one of the most historically significant parts of the book, the Battle of McClellen Creek. To history, this battle is a footnote. To Clinton’s tribe, it was devastating and showed a determined US Army bent on crushing Comanche power.

All through the book I kept wondering about the extent of Clinton’s participation in the massacres he describes. One too many times he  says he “held the horses” as others did the killing. I can almost hear the  evasion in his voice. Then, near the end of his account, he says this: 

I have been asked many times, “Did you kill anybody white while you were with the Indians?” When asked this question I always hang my head and  do not reply. It pains me greatly when this question is asked, for it brings up  memories of deeds I was forced to do, taught to do by the savages, whose chief  delight was to kill and steal. It must be remembered that I was just a mere boy,  and that I had, without choice, absorbed the customs and manners of a savage tribe. I was an Indian. 

The book is full of moments like this, dripping with so much understated emotion I had to read them over and over. Two of these touching scenes were from Jefferson’s short memoir. The first occurred after he was separated from his brother and sold to Geronimo.

I was then given the Apache name of Catowhich, which in our language means “horse tail.” When Geronimo took me to his squaw she very tenderly (for an Indian) washed my face, combed my hair with a bear-grass comb, and gave me a buckskin jacket and a fox skin cap, the tail of which hung down my back; also a new breech-clout and a nicely beaded belt, buckskin moccasins, and thought she dressed me up in style. Then she painted my face red, with blue stripes up and down my forehead and made a great deal of fuss over me but I could not understand her talk.

 Then, at the end of his story, Jefferson recounts this touching scene:

When [Geronimo] was captured he was brought through San Antonio under guard, and I went to see him there. The old fellow recognized me instantly, and called me by my name, and I had a long talk with him. I met other members of the tribe at the same time, and they all wanted me to get the white people to release them and they would promise to be good. As I started to leave them they would catch me around the neck and beg me to stay with them. I told them I would come back again. 

If he ever did, he never says, as his account ends there. 
 
The  Boy Captives isn’t just a tale of adventure on the American frontier; it’s also a tale of a family fighting to keep this story alive. Quite simply, it’s a story of frontier self-publication.

I had the honor of talking via phone to Clinton Smith’s grandson, Clint Smith of the Rafter-O-Ranch in Junction, Texas. Junction lies in the same hill country where Clinton and Jefferson were abducted all those years ago. In an easy, West Texas drawl Clint was kind enough to tell me how The Boy Captives survived to this day.

The brothers told their story to J. Marvin Hunter, who wrote it down and printed 500 copies for the family in 1927. The Smith family secured the copyright and split the copies between the brothers. Clinton and Jefferson died in 1932 and 1940 respectively and their story drifted into obscurity until J. Marvin Hunter passed in 1965. 

Marvin Jr. then began selling “bootleg”copies of the book without the Smith Family’s permission. As Clint put it, “We never sued nobody,” but somehow they persuaded Marvin Jr. to surrender the illicit copies. The  Smiths then collected 50 cents from each family member and issued another  printing of The Boy Captives. The years came and went and, from time to time, they issued more printings.

Agents and publishers offered to take the book mainstream, but the family declined. As Clint conveyed, “They only offered pennies on the dollar per copy, so nothing came of it.”  Movie producers wanted to make the story, but Texas author Elmer Kenton advised against it. Elmer, whose book, The Good Old Boys, was made into a movie with Tommy Lee Jones, reportedly told the family that if Hollywood made the movie, “You won’t like what they’ll do with it.”  

The Smiths seemed satisfied keeping The Boy Captives a low-key and self-published endeavor. Until recently, it wasn’t an easy book to find. Copies could be found in  roadside book stores and museums in Texas and the Southwest, handed from friend to friend (how I found  it), and in historical societies. Recently, however, one of the family members put it on Amazon, but not in an e-book format. By keeping this book alive, the Smiths rescued a national treasure and we are all richer for it.

The next time you’re on a road trip across the U.S. stop in the local museums or historical societies and look on the local history shelves for  the self-published books. You know the ones I’m talking about, the paperbacks with antique photos on simple covers. Maybe inside you’ll find a hidden treasure, a fantastic true story from the past only known to a few. 

Now it will be known to you, too. And you will be richer for ​it.

The Boy Captives on Amazon

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This book review originally appeared in Underground Book Reviews 18 June 2012.