Comanches at Chalk Mountain

March 20, 1867: 14-year-old Ole Nystel had planned helping to plant corn, but his father instead sent him with a neighbor, Carl Quested, to Golden Mountain (part of the Chalk Mountain hills) to chop cedar posts (this is before overgrazing eliminated grassfires that restricted cedar to the hills) “I was at the wgon and Mr. Quested had gone off fifty steps to commence work, when I heard a noise, and on looking up I saw two Indians made hideous with war paint . . . It appeared to my excited imagination that they were devils who had come for me and I really thought I could see great streams of fire issuing from their mouths. I had been taught that ‘the devil would get me’ if I was not good . . . I take occasion here to enter my hearty protest against making such erroneous impressions upon the minds of the young . . . I run about forty yards when an arrow pierced my right leg . . . I was placed on a poor, boney horse without a saddle and you can imagine, better than I can describe, my discomfort.” The Comanche party eventually headed back toward the Panhandle, not making camp for five days. After about 200 miles they made camp, the Indians slept in a tent while Ole, suffering from the arrow wound, slept under a rock overhang to avoid the snow that fell that night. Ole T. Nystel, Lost and Found: Or, Three Months with the Wild Indians, a Brief Sketch of the Life of Ole T. Nystel, Embracing His Experiences While in Captivity to the Comanches, and Subsequent Liberation from Them. (Introduction and notes by Derwood Johnson) Clifton, Texas: Bosque Memorial Museum, 1967. Originally published in 1888.