Role in Negotiating Peaceful Surrender of The Penateka Band
It is notable that had the Texans ever negotiated a treaty with all the Comanche where the Comancheria had been recognized, it would have stood, and led to the return of the captives that were at the heart of the Council House disaster. Despite the Council House, and the subsequent Great Raid of 1840, Sam Houston and Buffalo Hump, with other chiefs representing, for the first time, every major division of the Comanche in Texas, almost succeeded in such a treaty. In August 1843, a temporary treaty accord led to a ceasefire between the Comanches and their allies, and the Texans. In October, the Comanches agreed to meet with Houston and try to negotiate a treaty similar to the one just concluded at Fort Bird. (That this included Buffalo Hump, after the events at the Council House, showed extraordinary Comanche belief in Houston) In early 1844, Buffalo Hump and other Comanche leaders signed a treaty at Tehuacana Creek in which they agreed to surrender white captives in toto, and to cease raiding Texan settlements. In exchange for this, the Texans would cease military action against the tribe, establish more trading posts, and recognize the boundary between Texas and Comanchería. Comanche allies, including the Wacos, Tawakonis, Kiowa, Kiowa Apache and Wichita, also agreed to join in the treaty. Unfortunately, the boundary provision was deleted by the Texas Senate in the final version, which caused Buffalo Hump to repudiate the treaty, and soon a resumption of hostilities occurred.
Finally, in May 1846 Buffalo Hump became convinced that even he could not continue to defy the massed might of the United States, and the State of Texas, so he led the Comanche delegation to the treaty talks at Council Springs that signed a treaty with the United States.
As war chief of the Penateka Comanche, Buffalo Hump dealt peacefully with American officials throughout the late 1840s and 1850s.
In 1849, he guided John S. Ford's expedition part of the way from San Antonio to El Paso, and in 1856, he sadly and finally led his people to the newly established Comanche reservation on the Brazos River. Continuous raids from white horse thieves and squatters, coupled with his band's unhappiness over their lack of freedom and the poor food provided on the reservation, forced Buffalo Hump to move his band off the reservation in 1858. While camped in the Wichita Mountains, the Penateka Band under Buffalo Hump were attacked by United States troops under the command of Maj. Earl Van Dorn. Allegedly not aware that Buffalo Hump's band had recently signed a formal peace treaty with the United States at Fort Arbuckle, Van Dorn and his men killed eighty of the Comanches.
Nonetheless, despite this, and an aged and weary Buffalo Hump led and settled his remaining followers on the Kiowa-Comanche reservation near Fort Cobb in Indian Territory in Oklahoma. There, in spite of his enormous sadness at the end of the Comanches' traditional way of life, he asked for a house and farmland so that he could set an example for his people. Attempting to live out his life as a rancher and farmer, he died in 1870.
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