Herman Lehmann - Return and Adjustment

Return and Adjustment

Herman Lehmann lived with Quanah Parker’s family on the Kiowa-Comanche reservation in 1877-78. Several people took notice of the white boy living among the Indians. However, Lehmann's mother never gave up believing that she would one day see her son again. She questioned Colonel Mackenzie, the commanding officer of Fort Sill, whether there were any blue eyed boys on the reservation. He said yes; however, the description led them to believe that this was not her boy. Nevertheless, she requested that the boy be brought to her.

In April 1878, Lt. Col. John W. Davidson ordered that Lehmann be sent under guard to his family in Texas. Five soldiers and a driver escorted Lehmann on a four-mule-drawn ambulance to Loyal Valley in Mason County, Texas. Lehmann arrived in Loyal Valley with an escort of soldiers on May 12, 1878, eight years after his capture. The people of Loyal Valley gathered to see the captive boy brought home. Upon his arrival, neither he nor his mother recognized one another. Lehmann had long believed his family dead, for the Apache had shown him proof during his time of transition to their way of life. It was his sister who found a scar on his arm, which had been caused by her when they were playing with a hatchet. His family surrounded him welcoming him home and the distant memories began to come back. Hearing someone repeat "Herman", he thought that sounded familiar and then realized it was his own name.

At first, he was sullen and wanted nothing to do with his mother and siblings. As he put it, "I was an Indian, and I did not like them because they were palefaces." Lehmann's readjustment to his original culture was slow and painful. He rejected food offered, and was unaccustomed to sleeping in a bed.

Herman Lehmann’s first memoir, written with the assistance of Jonathan H. Jones, was published in 1899 under the titleA Condensed History of the Apache and Comanche Indian Tribes for Amusement and General Knowledge (also known as Indianology). Lehmann hated this book for he felt Jonathan had taken liberty to fluff it up a bit.

Throughout his life, Herman Lehmann drifted between two very different cultures. Lehmann was a very popular figure in southwestern Oklahoma and the Texas Hill Country, appearing at county fairs and rodeos. To thrill audiences, such as he did in 1925 at the Old Settlers Reunion in Mason County, he would chase a calf around an arena, kill it with arrows, jump off his horse, cut out the calf’s liver, and eat it raw.

His second autobiography, Nine Years Among the Indians (1927, edited by J. Marvin Hunter) was at the request of Lehmann. He requested that this time the book be written just as he told it. It is one of the finest captivity narratives in American literature, according to J. Frank Dobie.

Herman Lehmann’s story also inspired Mason County native Fred Gipson’s novel Savage Sam, a sequel to Old Yeller.