John Horan, Irishman I

The oldest son, John H. Horan, (b. 1850), penned a letter telling his father's story.  It may have a bit of the blarney. It begins:

John Horan was born in Ireland, either at Waterford or Cork in 1815. He left home about 1829, went to Liverpool where he had an uncle in the Linen Export business. He stayed a short while in Liverpool and decamped to New York, where he had another uncle, who was a linen merchant. After a short rest in N.Y. he went to New Orleans and worked in a drug store, where he remained about two years. The roving spirit took possession of him and he went up the Red River and landed in the Indian Nation.

I think his brother Ed joined him in New Orleans, for in 1834 they parted on the Washita or Ouachita River, John going to Texas, and Ed hiked for the Pacific Coast, and finally landed in Oakland, Calif.

After arriving in Texas, he was captured by the Comanche Indians. There was 3 other young men with them. An arrow shot by one the Indians pierced his leg and stuck in the rib of his horse. The Indian squaws were extremely cruel to the boys: They would get thorny switches and whip them. Whenever the Indians stopped for the they would tie the boys to trees and then the squaws would torture them. One evening one of the boys got his hands loose and picked up a club within reach and felled the squaw to the ground. The Indians stripped him, tied his feet to the limb of a tree, with his head hanging down, got long dogwood switches and flayed him from his head to his heels, not leaving a piece of flesh on his body. After they got through whipping him they left him hanging head down, built a fire underneath him and burned him alive; but fortunately for the poor lad had lost consciousness. For four years the other three boys were tortured by the savages.

One day a band of warriors started out on a raid and seemed to have been successful, as they brought in several barrels of whiskey. Then the festivities began and the boys were to be offered up to th Great Spirit as a human sacrifice to appease his wrath. The day before the sacrifice was to have been offered, they drank and feasted all day and into the night, until every warrior was wrapped in the slumbers of Bacchus. About midnight an Indian girl came to them and cut the ropes that held them, and gave them a supply of jerked of buffalo beef and Indian bread and told them not to stop, till the next night, and to travel on foot. They started out and traveled the rest of the night and all the next day. Near sundown they reached a strip of cross timbers and concluded to rest in the tops of trees. Darkness came soon after and with it came ten Indian bucks on horseback , right on their trail and losing their trail when the boys climbed the trees, they pitched camp right under the trees where the boys were hidden. The Indians rose after the first streak of day, and being anxious to have another feast of whiskey, soon turned back on their way to camp.

The boys traveled for six weeks, living on nuts, fruit, and berries, and roots, they finally reached a white settlement; that was in 1838.   To Be Continued ...

Source:  Mary Lou Fear and Al Yeager