By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

In May I traveled to Mason, Texas, with my mom and dad and met with some aunts, uncles and cousins to watch a 45-minute documentary: “Herman, der Apache: Ein Deutscher unter Indianen” (“Herman the Apache: A German among Indians”). The film, made by a German film crew for TV viewing in Germany, had been dubbed in English and was shown by the Mason County Historical Society. It is the incredible true story of Herman and Willie Lehmann’s capture by an Apache raiding party in 1870. The meet-up was a reunion of sorts. My mom’s family and the Lehmann family are cousins. I’ve always been proud of this blood connection.

I remember reading Herman’s autobiography, “Nine Years Among the Indians” (1927), and writing a book report on in it grade school. I read it aloud to my kiddos when we did a Native American unit (I homeschooled). I list it as suggested reading to teachers who visit the Sophienburg. According to J. Frank Dobie, it is “the finest of the captive narratives of the Southwest.”

Years ago, I attended a lecture on Native American tribes in our area. The archaeologist mentioned Herman Lehmann’s book with a definite snicker and said it was completely made-up. I took him aside afterwards and informed him that not only was the story true, but that I was related to the family — my mom being cousins with Esther, Herman’s niece. The archaeologist got really quiet and then apologized.

You really need to read Herman and Willie’s story to understand why this narrative is so compelling. I cannot condense the detailed memories of an 11-year-old German boy captured and raised by Apache and Comanche, nor will I really try. I will simply give you a taste of what is in store when you read the book.

Imagine that you, your brother and two little sisters are out in a field a little way from the house to chase the birds out of the ripening wheat. You look up to find there are eight Apache on horseback at the fence and, frightened, all begin to run, except for your baby sister who is hidden in the wheat. The Apache shoot at your other sister and she falls; they think she is dead. They get your brother and go after you. You are finally subdued after you have been slapped, choked, beaten and your clothes torn off.

You and your brother are each tied up naked to the back of a horse behind a warrior and spirited away from the only world you know. The group separates, each taking one captive. Totally alone you are made to catch a calf your group comes across. Your captor slits its throat, cuts open the stomach and drinks the soured milk out of it. He offers some to you which of course you refuse, so he pushes your face into the open stomach.

That’s just part of day one. Have I piqued your interest? It gets better, or worse, before it gets better again. Willie escapes after about a week and makes his way home. Herman isn’t returned to his family until he is 19.

I am fascinated at just how completely Herman becomes Apache. It wasn’t easy — not all captives survived — but he does and he does well. He is adopted into his captor’s family and initiated into tribal life. He describes being burned, beaten, tortured, whipped and other things that he cannot even talk about.

Herman eventually finds affection, respect and acceptance. He forgets his mother tongue and learns Apache. He is taught their customs and rituals: how to hunt with bow and arrow; raid, steal, fight with lance and shield, kill and scalp. He becomes a warrior tested in fights with Texas Rangers, Mexicans, white settlers and other native tribes. By age 16, the only thing that does not seem Apache about Herman are his blue eyes.

He spends six years with the Apache and a year alone in the wilderness before he is adopted into a Comanche tribe. He is Comanche in 1877, when he takes part in the Buffalo Hunters War, the last major fight between Native and Non-Native Americans in Texas. It is Quannah Parker who gets him to go to the reservation in Oklahoma and who adopts him as his son. In 1878, soldiers take Herman from Fort Sill and bring him back to Loyal Valley.

He was home. But he was no longer a German boy.

He knew Apache, Comanche and Spanish, but no German. He hated sleeping inside a house, so his brother Willie slept outside under the stars with him. He hated “paleface” clothing and often changed back into leggings and breach clout and painted his body. He stole the neighbors’ cows and horses. It took time to learn to be a white man, but the same character that allowed him to become Apache, served him well once again. Eventually he “fits in,” somewhat — even gets married and has children. But the “Indian” never left him.

My mom’s cousin Esther knew her “Uncle Herman” really well. She and her sister, Gerda, made an oral history recording about Herman for the Sophienburg in 1992. Herman came to live with his brother Willie in 1927, when Esther was three-and-a-half years old. She told us stories of sitting next to him as he told his Indian tales. She loved it when people would be over and he’d let out a war whoop just to make them jump. She helped him sneak fresh-killed deer down to the cellar when it was out of season, and watched him eating his deer meat raw, ground up with onion and salt. “He loved that life,” she would say. “They should have brought him back and let his mother know he was OK, then left him with the Indians. He would have been happier.”

And that is exactly what I took away from that documentary. Herman was perpetually caught between two worlds. That he was able to move between them at all is a miracle. That he found any happiness is amazing.

Herman Lehmann died in 1932 and is buried at Loyal Valley. Esther passed on in 2016 and is buried next to “Uncle Herman.”

One more thing … it is said that Esther was the last person to have known an Indian captive. Wow.

More on This Subject

Sources: Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879, Herman Lehmann, 1927; The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier, Scott Zesch, 2004; “Nine Year’s with the Apaches and Comanches”, J. Marvin Hunter’s Frontier Times Magazine, July 1954; “Esther Lehmann: Herman’s Story”, Phil Houseal, Jan 8, 2014 and Feb 17,2016, Full House Productions; Esther Lehman and Gerda Lehman Kothman, “Reflections” #292, Sophienburg Museum & Archives.

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Recently I had an opportunity to practice my investigative reporting skills. I’m not adventurous enough to be a real investigative reporter but every once in a while something piques my curiosity and I’m off on an adventure. Reading a newspaper article by Oscar Haas that he wrote 45 years ago about Altgelt Pond got me started.

Never having heard of the pond before, I started looking and found very little. The story was very interesting but gave me sketchy clues about where this pond was located. Clue #1 was that it was four miles west of New Braunfels on the Dry Comal Creek. After several dry runs, my husband and I started over at the Plaza, went out Landa St., turned right before the overpass, turned left on Loop 337, heading toward the Dry Comal Creek area. Sure enough, large patches of trees on the right side of the loop led us to a little turn-in right after McCoys Lumber and Holiday Marine Boat Supplies. There was the River City Range and right there as you drive in on the left side of the short drive is Altgelt Pond. The pond has a chain-link fence around it but it is visible.

Johnny Rodriguez, a native of New Braunfels, owns the River City Range, a seven acre miniature golf course, two driving ranges, practice facility, batting cages, and sanded and lighted volleyball courts. There is a bar with several television sets, pool table, and ping pong table. Rodriguez bought the property five years ago.

Stories handed down by old-timers in the area tell of very big fish and that the pond was a favorite fishing spot. The pond has never dried up. Stories of the pond go back to the beginning of the settlement. Occasionally alligators were sighted in the Comal River and thought to be from the Dry Comal. Rodriguez said that even through the last drought in Comal County, the pool remained full. Other pools and tanks in the area dried up. It is estimated that the pool is at least 60 feet deep but was impossible to measure. Imagine the difficulty of measuring the depth of a spring-fed pool.

No one knows what name the pond had in the past. If it was named after the owners, it could have been Veramendi Pond, Prince Carl Pond, Meusebach Pond, Ernst Coreth Pond and finally Altgelt Pond. Probably the Native Americans had a name for it. According to Haas, there were several different names given to the pond, such as “Blue Hole” and “Bottomless Hole”. Early settlers called it “Der Teich”, meaning The Pond in German. This pond may be bottomless but it is not blue. It’s hard to imagine it as ever being described as blue. It’s green with algae and looks like it could be a great setting for one of the swamp movies. I imagine the snakes love it.

One of the first owners of the land on which the pond was located was John O. Meusebach, successor to Prince Carl as head of the Adelsverein in Texas. When Meusebach came to New Braunfels to take the place of Prince Carl, he came with a contract signed by Count Castell, president of the German Emigration Company. The contract stated that Meusebach would receive 500 acres of the company’s land of his choosing. In June, 1847, Meusebach chose a 280 acre plot where the pond was located.

Six months later he sold the tract to Count Ernst Coreth for $3,266 including a house, two cedar log cabins, farm implements, garden seeds, ploughed land, ditches and fences.

Meusebach married Miss Agnes Coreth, oldest daughter of Count Ernst and Countess Agnes Coreth on Sept. 26, 1852. For a brief time the Meusebachs lived at Hueco Springs and later founded Loyal Valley. Agnes Meusebach’s parents, Count and Countess Coreth, came with their six children to Texas in the fall of 1846 on the ship York, an emigrant sailing ship out of Antwerp. Five more children were born in Texas. The last child, Otilie, was born in 1858 and married Hermann Altgelt in 1879. The obituary of Mrs. Agnes Coreth states that the family after its arrival in Texas “went on to Fredericksburg, returned to NB and lived on a farm later known as the Altgelt Farm, which has the famous Altgelt Pond on it.” (Oscar Haas said that the pond was owned by E.R. Teinert in 1970.) It now belongs to Johnny Rodriguez.

Rochette Coreth, son of Franz Coreth and the grandson of Ernst and Agnes Coreth, told Oscar Haas a story about Altgelt Pond. He said that when his grandfather owned the land on which the pond was located, he used the pond for irrigation. There was a certain special kind of clay that he had hauled in by mule carts and placed the clay around the outside of the pond to build it up. He was able to use the flow of the pond for irrigation purposes. The water was then above the level of the surrounding fields and it was possible to use gravity flow to irrigate. The pond became the object of a riparian (water) rights suit. Haas said that a mill owner farther down the Comal Creek had been using the overflow of the pond to turn a waterwheel for his mill. When Coreth dammed it up, water no longer flowed to his mill. The mill owner, and Haas did not name the person, filed suit against Coreth and the suit eventually went to the Texas Supreme Court. The court ruled in favor of Coreth’s rights.

The whole area on which Altgelt Pond is located has its unusual features whether for agricultural purposes or industry. Some old prominent names connected with this land were Meusebach, Altgelt, Coreth, Ogden, Eikel and especially Dittlinger who was the founder of the settlement of Dittlinger in the early 1900s. He and I.A. Ogden began a rock-crushing business on a large scale that has grown to what it is today. Dittlinger created a settlement of houses,a school, a church, stores, and a dance hall for workers at “Las Calera”, or The Lime as it was called by the inhabitants.

The settlement of Dittlinger is no more, agriculture in the area is sparse, but Der Teich refuses to go away. Come to think of it, I might be able to start a new career in investigative journalism.

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