"The Horn wagon train was traveling by easy stages toward Matamoros when bloody savagery was meted out." - Comanche Bondage (2015)
"The captivity of Mrs. Horn and Mrs. Harris by the Comanches is vividly revealed in Mrs. Horn's narrative, which also gives insights into this tribe's life-ways." - The Arthur H. Clark Company (2002)
"The captivity narrative includes interesting cultural information on Comanche daily practices." - nps.gov
"When Sarah Ann Horn was about to be sold in New Mexico, an old Comanche woman who had always been kind to her broke into tears." - On the Borders of Love and Power (2012)
The stories of those pioneers who have survived captivity among tribes during hostile outbreaks along frontier settlements are full of harrowing interest. Of particular interest is that told by Sarah Ann Horn in her 1839 narrative, " A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Horn and her two children, with Mrs. Harris, by the Comanche Indians."
In 1837, Sarah Ann Horn (1809– 1839) was a recent immigrant from England, who along with her husband was en route to newly purchased land in the Republic of Texas. After being warned in "Austin's Colony" not to proceed any further because of recent Comanche raids on travellers in the area, Horn's party decided to proceed anyway despite the risk---a choice that would have dire consequences.
Arriving at their destination and forming a new colony, a mangled survivor of a Comanche raid sought refuge at the settlement, causing Horn and her family made the decision "to get to Matamoros, and sail for England as soon as possible."
However, "the route from where we were to any harbor was fraught with danger from the savage foe;—no one thought of undertaking the hazardous enterprize alone. We therefore made up a company of eleven men."
In describing her first sight of her future captors while en route back to Matamoros, Horn relates:
"I had just washed Mrs. Harris' babe, and as I was stepping up on the fore part of the wagon to get a clean dress to put on it, I saw a large company of strange-looking men mounted on mules, armed, and nearly naked. I was terribly frightened, and running back to my husband as soon as possible, told him what I had seen, and expressed my fears that they were Indians..."
Later after destruction of most members of the party, Horn and several others were taken back to the Comanche camp as captives:
"Having reached this dreadful place, we were almost suffocated with the stench arising from the stale horse-meat which lay in and about the camp. Here we were seated on the ground, under a guard, when they commenced stripping us of our bonnets, handkerchiefs, combs and rings."
The horrifying events and enslavement which followed are detailed in Horn's harrowing narrative, with one bright spot being that she was eventually taken in "by an old widow woman ... a merciful exception to the general character of these merciless beings."
