“A wonderfully interesting book is soon to come from the Hunter press, dealing with the life and captivity of Herman Lehmann, who spent nine years among the Apaches and Comanches. J. Marvin Hunter, editor of Frontier Times, is now compiling data for this book, and hopes to have it ready for the printer within the next two or three months. Lehmann, who lives at Grandfield, Oklahoma, came to Bandera in December and supplied the material for the volume. He tells a wonderful story of hardships and cruelties he had to endure when he was first captured, tells of battles with the white people, describes murders and raids committed by the Indians, tells of life in the camps, of buffalo hunts, trips across the desert, and many other thrilling adventures. 

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Lehmann was captured by the Apaches in 1870, when he was barely eleven years old. He was given thorough training in all sorts of Indian deviltry, and became to all intents and purposes an Indian, even to forgetting his own language. After spending four years with the Apaches, he became involved in a difficulty with a big medicine man, whom he slew with a bow and arrow, and had to flee for his life. He went into the mountains and remained in hiding for fully a year. Afterward he went to the Comanchcs and was adopted into that tribe, and remained with them until the Comanches were put on the reservation in Oklahoma. He was the last of the tribe to surrender and only then induced to give up by the persuasion of Quanah Parker. Finally he was restored to his people in Mason county, but was not content to remain there, and for a long time had to be constantly guarded to keep him from going back to the tribe. Eventually he became reconciled to adopt the ways of the white man and remained at Loyal Valley for many years and became a good citizen. When the Comanches surrendered and were given allotments in the Indian Territory, Lehmann, known then as Montaccan, was placed on the tribal roles and given an allotment, and is still numbered among the tribe. He removed to Oklahoma some ten or twelve years ago, and lives there among his old friends, the Indians.”

“While he was with the Apaches on a raid down into Mason and Gillespie counties in 1875, Captain D . W. Roberts' company of rangers got on their trail and followed the Indians away up on the Concho Plains where they overtook them early one morning and engaged in a desperate fight with them. In this fight Lehmann fought bravely, and seeing one of his comrades afoot, his horse having been shot down, he raced back and took the Indian up behind him, and was running away when a well directed shot from the gun of Sergeant J. B. Gillett bronght down Lehmann's horse. The Indian hit the ground running, but Lehmann was caught under the falling horse and pinned there. Sergeant Gillett and Ed Sicker rushed up and were about to shoot him, when they discovered he had blue eyes and appeared to be a white boy, so taking after the Indian afoot they ran him down and killed him and then came back to get the white boy, but that white boy was gone. He had extricated himself and crawled away in the grass and concealed himself until the rangers left, when he made his way back to the tribe some three hundred miles away.”

“Captain Gillett tells of this fight in his book, "Six Years With the Texas Rangers." In November of last year it was the writer's happy privilege to bring together at the old Trail Drivers' reunion in San Antonio, these two interesting characters, Captain J. B. Gillett and Herman Lehmann, their first meeting since that. memorable fight on the Concho Plains fifty years ago. They discussed all phases of their battle and compared notes closely and both were fully satisfied that each had taken part in the combat. In the forthcoming book Sergeant Gillett's version of the fight will he given, as will also be an account given some years ago by Tom Gillespie, who was also a participant; an account of the same fight will be taken from Capt. D. W. Roberts' book, "Rangers and Sovereignty," and Lehmann will tell in detail of his escape and how he traveled afoot back to the tribe and how he was made a sub-chief or his heroic attempt to save the life of his comrade, who happened to be his chief's own brother.

While he was with the Indians, Apaches and Comanches, Lehmann became the wildest of the wild. He would lead his braves on any kind of a perilous undertaking and was always foremost in battle or where the most danger was. Among the two tribes today there are many Indians who knew him and were engaged in raids with him.”

“But today Lehmann is a quiet law abiding citizen. He is sixty-five years old, and well preserved. He spent more than a week in the editor's home and from his bearing and quiet manner no one would ever suspect that at one time he was a savage, that the blood of innocent people had stained his hands, and that gory scalp-locks had dangled at his belt. He says truthfully that he thought that it was his mission in life to kill and steal; that the Indian taught him to do these awful things. But now he knows that it was wrong and no amount of provocation or under any circumstances could he be induced to shed his fellowman's blood.”

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