1 The Captured Reading Guide Thesis and evidence Big issues events characters Experiences of the captured children Treaties Be sure to take good notes of the prologue The Trail and the epilogue The Trail Fades The Trail Prologue Chapter 1 Adolph Korn 1895 is what the headstone the guy found read He realized that it was his own family There was an old yarn his family had told about Adolph being captured by Indians and nobody knew the details exactly Each of his family members said something different The narrator is in the Texas Hill Country between the Llano and James Rivers just south of Mason Him and his buddies grew up in this area that is rich in Native American history and tales The narrator calls up the town historian and asks why Adolph wasn t buried with the rest of his family and he says well Adolph was always a little strange This spikes his interest and he decides he wants to find out information at least enough to give him a decent headstone White Indians are what people would call children who were kidnapped by Indians and raised in that way of life Many of these captured children ended up resisting rescue attempts they preferred the Indian lifestyle Even after they were forced to return to their original families they would still act like Indians Adolph like many Indians went relatively untraced so there wasn t a lot of info on him so narrator kid turns to the documented things of other children who were captured around the same time He left notes for relatives crashed family reunions anything to find out information about his Uncle Adolph because people were alive that knew him and knew of him Responses came pouring in and he soon began to learn a lot He visited the Comanche tribe in Oklahoma to learn about their way of life He decided that he wouldn t let these captured children including his uncle to have their stories be lost Adolph and his twin brother Charlie Korn are herding sheep out in the open as Indians they didn t think they were Indians as they were approaching rode towards them They only spoke German Three Apache men rode up and Charlie was able to hide One of them caught Adolph whacked him over the head with a pistol then took him away This was the worst and the last in a series of disasters during their 10 year bout with the Texas frontier Apparently their decision to move there was a terrible one He says For all its delicate beauty the Texas Hill Country is an unexpectedly harsh land Grandpa Louis Jacob Korn moved around a lot after arriving in America He ended up being a baker before finally moving to Texas to try out his hand at ranching Charlie and Adolph are twins and their Momma married Grandpa when she was 21 after the death of Grandpa s wife They moved from San Antonio to Mason country where their new living conditions sucked compared to the city The immigrants dwellings at the time were crudely made log cabins of one two rooms The walls were weak and didn t do a great job of protecting from the cold The floors were hard packed dirt The thatched roofs leaked Their diets consisted of whatever they could take off the land deer turkey rabbits etc The Korn children didn t attend school because there wasn t any The youngsters spent almost every day carrying out tedious and repetitive chores Grandpa Korn had invested 1 200 in cattle his life savings and never got a dollar back Failure in the cattle business was a result of the Civil War They lost their biggest consumer the federal army Living conditions plummeted during the Civil war The Korns were desperate Grandpa Korn ended up having to raise sheep They lived like mighty sorry white trash The threat of Indian raids where they moved were worse because they were so spread apart The Indian s scalped their victims killing the young and old alike Many people who moved to Texas hated it but were trapped there by poverty 5 murders in the little community of Saline in one year Clinton Smith was a white Indian captive and he said sometimes they d scare settlers and watch them run just for fun Comanches and Kiowas were the main Indians attacking and kidnapping One man accidently shot his own son thinking he was an Indian Many families gave up and left including the Korns Adolph was taken and everyone frantically looked for him It was the Apaches that took him on New Year s Day As a captive Adolph was property of the man who abducted him His owner traded him for stuff He fell off a horse and hurt his leg and they wanted to kill him but a woman saved him His father searched high and low reported his kidnapping and had the government look for him even Grandpa s wife was mad and decided they d been on the frontier too long They packed up and went to San Antonio Chapter 2 2 Adolph roamed the land with the Comanches Treaty with German Texan forefathers in 1947 o WE are the Promise of our Ancestors we agree to uphold the Treaty of Peace made between the people of o Fredericksburg and the Comanche nation We are not afraid of war we choose peace We shall walk blah blah blah all about keeping the peace The signers are people who wanted to tolerate and coexist with one another The bond of friendship between the Comanches and German settlers hadn t been bad Comanche German treaty is remarkable unique The federal government didn t own Texas so they couldn t help the Comanches get the boundaries they wanted The Germans traded with the Comanches which saved them else they might have starved The Germans had plans to settle all this land land belonging to Comanche hunting grounds The Germans saw white men the Indians had caught One was a man who loved living with the Comanches refusing to return with the Germans Also a little white boy Comanche German agreement The Germans were free to visit any part of the land grant between Llano and San Saba Rivers The Comanches were free to visit the German communities The Comanches wouldn t disturb the fledgling German settlement on Llano River They would help each other fend off marauding tribes and bring criminals to justice The Comanches would allow the Germans to survey the uninhabited parts of the Grants The Germans would give the Comanches 3 000 worth of presents o o o o o o o Both sides would work to maintain peaceful relations The Comanches main concern was land not separation because of race or skin color Ferdinand von Roemer o The only observer who took a clear eyed unsentimental look at the Comanches prospects for the future The Comanches and Germans were getting along
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