Warriors from several tribes, including Placido and his Tonkawa, joined in James Long's venture and gained horses, other plunder, and scalps in battles with the Spanish army.
[1] Texas Governor Hardin Runnels had campaigned for office in 1856 on a platform to put an end to the continuing Comanche and Kiowa raids from those bands of both tribes off the reservation.
The end result was that on January 27, 1858, Governor Runnels appointed John Salmon "Rip" Ford, a veteran Ranger of the Mexican–American War and frontier Indian fighter, as captain and commander of the Texas Ranger, Militia, and Allied Indian Forces, and ordered him to carry the battle to the Comanches in the heart of their homeland on the Comancheria.
[4] Ford, whose habit of signing the casualty reports with the initials "RIP" for "Rest In Peace," was known as a ferocious and no-nonsense Indian fighter.
Tonkawa Indians, the latter commanded by their "celebrated" chief, Placido, are hailed today as the "faithful and implicitly trusted friend of the whites" (with limited mention of their cannibalism).
[5] After recruiting Placido, Ford undertook a campaign with approximately an equal number of Texas Rangers and Tonkawa Warriors against the Comanches.
Ford and Placido were determined to follow the Comanche and Kiowa up to their strongholds amid the hills of the Canadian river, and into the Wichita Mountains, and if possible, "kill their warriors, decimate their food supply, strike at their homes and families and generally destroy their ability to make war".
[4] On April 15, Ford's Rangers, accompanied by Tonkawa warriors, and Anadarko and Shawnee scouts from the Brazos Reservation in Texas, crossed the Red River into Indian Territory.
[4] Ford and his joint force of Rangers and Tonkawa began an all-day battle with a dawn attack on a sleeping Comanche village.
He used every trick available to him, including attempting to lure the Rangers and Tonkawas into individual duels, to delay the enemy so the villages upriver would be able to withdraw safely.
Indeed, once a settler accused two Tonkawa warriors of killing a man, and Plácido fled, seeking refuge with other Indians—all of whom refused him sanctuary.
In October 1862, when Confederate Indian agents arrived at the reservations, only the Tonkawa welcomed them, as Placido saw the Confederacy as an extension of his beloved Republic of Texas, which had valued his people.
After the 1862 slaughter of much of their tribe, the survivors, led by Plácido's son Charlie, fled to Fort Belknap, Texas, and remained there until the end of the Civil War.