[1][page needed] On May 12, 1858, the jacket (likely inherited from his ancestors) failed to protect him, and he was killed on the bank of the Little Robe Creek tributary of the South Canadian River in the Battle of Little Robe Creek where his band of Quahadi Comanches fought a combined force of Texas Rangers and Brazos Reservation Indians led by John S. Ford, Shapley Prince Ross (the father of Lawrence Sullivan Ross), and Plácido, a Tonkawa chief.
In 1840 he likely was one of the leaders dealing, on the Comanche and Kiowa side, with the Cheyenne and Arapaho in the negotiations for the peace and alliance agreement promoted by the Yamparika chief Ten Bears.
[3] The years leading up to the Civil War were particularly bloody on the Texas Frontier, as Iron Jacket, his son Peta Nocona, and other Comanche and Kiowa Chiefs clashed with encroaching white settlers in the Comancheria.
[1][page needed] Ford, who earned his name due to his habit of signing casualty reports with the initials "RIP" for "Rest In Peace", was known as a ferocious and no-nonsense Indian fighter.
[4][page needed] On March 19, 1858, Ford went to the Brazos Reservation, near what today is the city of Fort Worth, Texas, and recruited the Tonkawa into his forces.
Tonkawa Indians, the latter commanded by their "celebrated" chief Plácido, hailed as the "faithful and implicitly trusted friend of the whites" (with limited mention of their cannibalism),[5] undertook a campaign with approximately an equal number of Texas Rangers against the Comanches.
Ford and Plácido 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".
[1][page needed] At sunrise on May 12, 1858,[6] Ford and his joint force of Rangers and Tonkawa began an all-day battle with a dawn attack on a sleeping Comanche village.
In James DeShields' 1886 book, Cynthia Ann Parker, he notes "The trophies of Pohebits Quasho, including his lance, bow, shield, head-dress and the celebrated coat of scale mail, was deposited by Col. Ford in the State archives at Austin".