Fact vs. Fiction: Jedediah Smith Killing

The death of Jedediah Strong Smith, occurring enroute to
Santa Fe at the hands of Comanche Indians on 27 May 1831,
is a much-venerated account - the event transpiring fully 185
years ago - withstanding, thus far, any attempt to challenge
the circumstances of such atrocity. For the sake of reiteration,
the earliest accounts of the demise of Jedediah Smith are
herein provided, excerpted from the content of two letters of
the same date, 24 September 1831, both written by Austin
Smith, brother to Jedediah Smith; a third document of same
date written by William Sublette to William H. Ashley; and,
last, a fourth account, published but one month hence, on 29
October 1831, in the Illinois Intelligencer.
The first Austin Smith letter, written from Walnut Creek,
east of present-day Great Bend, Kansas, on his return to St.
Louis from Santa Fe, was directed to his father, Jedediah
Smith, Sr., addressed “Ashtabula Co. Ohio,” excerpted as
follows:
Your son Jedediah was killed on the semerone the
27th of May on his way to Santa fé by the Curmanch
Indians, his party was in distress for water, and he
had gone alone in search of the above river, which
he found, when he was attacke’d by fifteen or twenty
of them - they succeeded in alarming his
animal, not daring to fire on him so long as
they kept face to face, so soon as his horse
turned they fired, and wounded him in the
shoulder he then fired his gun, and killed
their head chief it is supposed they then
rushed upon him, and despatched him -1