‘The Boy Captives’

In 1871, Clinton L. Smith, 11, and his brother, Jeff, 9, were taken by Comanches from the family farm 27 miles west of San Antonio. Native peoples raided the area often. Clint escaped capture five times before he was caught.

We cannot imagine sending children out to herd sheep after so many close scrapes. But the parents of Clint and Jeff Smith couldn’t imagine they had a choice.

I’m not sure what the Comanche people would have said if they’d been asked about choices. They and other Native peoples did not know what to do about the encroaching white people. They raided the settlements, mainly to steal horses, the source of food and wealth. They killed people, taking scalps as trophies. They cut off the arms of victims and hung them in trees as warnings to the intruders. They stole children. All of that was part of what raiding was and had always been.

Contemporary writers have written fiction loosely based on these accounts. I feel I should like these novels.

In my younger days, I went through a phase of reading memoirs and letters from the era when Texas was a frontier, including The Boy Captives, the Smith brothers’ account as told to a newspaperman. I wonder whether reading them immunized me against fiction set in that era, like a flu shot that kept me from getting carried off by something stronger.

Contemporary writers have produced fiction that leaves out no detail. The emotion — the experience of horror and terror — is overwhelming.

By contrast, the Smith brothers’ memoir is an account of one raid after another — almost a list. The boys weren’t old enough to be warriors, but they were taken along to herd the horses seized in the raids. They saw the killing, but in their accounts the emotion is understated, rather than amplified.

One of the few times Clint cries is when his little brother is branded and sold to a group of Apache people.

Here’s Jeff Smith, recalling his life when he was 9:

 

I suppose I was too small to worry much about my situation, but at times there would come a longing for the loved ones at home. One day I was sitting in camp gnawing on a horse rib, and was thinking of my home, my brothers and sisters, and of my father, all so far away, and perhaps I would never see them again. And poor Brother Clint, who was in a condition similar to myself, and my grief became unbearable. I laid my bone down and commenced crying. One old squaw came up and asked me why I was crying. I told her an ant had stung me.

 

I think my problem with the novels I’ve read is this: Contemporary writers want to make sure we readers don’t miss the trauma their characters endured. I’m not sure the Smith brothers saw it that way. That doubt, in my case, is fatal to enjoying the fiction.

• Source: Clinton L. Smith and Jeff D. Smith, The Boy Captives, was published in 1927, when both brothers were old men and appearing at events celebrating the Wild West. The stories were written by J. Marvin Hunter. My copy was printed in 2013 and distributed by Allen and Beth Smith of Camp Wood, Texas. The quotation is on pp. 203-4.