Three Comanche emissaries, after several years of war and a major smallpox epidemic, enter San Antonio and ask for peace on January 10, 1840, offering to send a large contingent of their leaders in twenty-three days to secure a new peace.

They return a white boy as a show of sincerity.

Colonel Karnes receives them, listens to their story, and agrees, but admonishes them by saying that a lasting peace can be negotiated only when the Comanches give up the Anglo captives that they hold, estimated at thirteen.

Albert Sidney Johnston, the Texas Secretary of War, has ordered San Antonio officials to take the Comanche delegates as hostages if they fail to deliver all captives

In March, Mukwooru, a powerful eastern Comanche chief, leads sixty-five Comanches, including women and children, to San Antonio for peace talks.

At this time, the Comanche people are not a unified nation.

There are at least twelve divisions of the Comanche, with as many as thirty-five independent roaming bands, also known as rancherías or villages.

Although bound together in various ways, both cultural and political, the bands are not responsible to any formalized unified authority.

The absence of a central authority means that one band cannot force another band to return their captives.

Chiefs Buffalo Hump and Peta Nocona have never agreed to return any captives to the Texian settlers.

Captives are often assimilated into the society and adopt into families, and the Comanche make little distinction between people born Comanche and those adopted.

The Comanche practice of taking captives dates back to at least the early eighteenth century with raids into Spanish New Mexico.

Women and children are preferred, and in a significant number of cases, young captives had been raised as Comanches and doid not wish to leave.

On January 10, 1840, a

The Comanches arrive in San Antonio on March 19.

Expecting a council of peace, the twelve chiefs have brought women and children as well as warriors.

They are dressed in finery with their faces painted.

The delegation hopes to negotiate a recognition of the Comancheria as the sovereign land of the Comanche.

One chief who does not attend is Buffalo Hump, the Comanche war chief who will lead the Great Raid of 1840 in retaliation for the killings to come.

The Comanche chiefs have brought to the meeting only one white captive, Matilda Lockhart, a sixteen-year-old girl who had been held prisoner for over a year and a half, as well as several Mexican children who had been captured separately.

Mukwooru refuses to deliver more captives on the grounds that they are held in the rancherías of other chiefs over whom he has no authority.

Because the delegation had not brought the expected number of captives, the members are taken to the local jail.

The talks are held at the Council House, a one-story stone building adjoining the jail on the corner of Main Plaza and Calabosa (Market) Street.

During the council, the Comanche warriors sit on the floor, as is their custom, while the Texians sit on chairs on a platform facing them.

The Texians demand to know where the other captives are.

The Penateka spokesman, Chief Mukwooru, responds that the other prisoners are held by various other bands of Comanche.

He assures the Texians that he feels the other captives will be able to be ransomed, but that it will be in exchange for a great deal of supplies, including ammunition and blankets.

He then finishes his speech with the comment "How do you like that answer?"

The Texian militia enters the courtroom and positions themselves at intervals along the walls.

When the Comanches will not, or cannot, promise to return all captives immediately, the Texas officials say that the chiefs will be held hostage until the white captives are released.

The interpreter warns the Texian officials that if he delivers this message the Comanches will attempt to escape by fighting.

He is instructed to relay the message anyway and leaves the room as soon as he finishes translating.

After learning that they are being held hostage, the Comanches attempt to fight their way out of the Council House using arrows and knives.

The Texian soldiers open fire at point-blank range, killing both Indians and whites.

The Comanche women and children waiting outdoors begin loosing arrows after hearing the commotion inside.

At least one Texian spectator is killed.

When a small number of warriors manages to escape from the Council House, all of the Comanche begin to flee.

The soldiers who pursue them again open fire, killing and wounding both Comanche and Texians.

Armed civilians also join the battle but, claiming they could not always differentiate between warriors and women and children, since all of the Comanche were fighting, shoot at them indiscriminately.