When Sul Ross rescued Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been captured at the age of 9, at Pease River, he observed that this event would be felt in every family in Texas, as every one had lost someone in the Indian Wars.

In contrast to the neglected military capabilities of the Mexicans, authorities considered Americans extremely aggressive in combat, and they were subsequently encouraged to establish settlements on the frontier in present-day Texas as a defensive bulwark to Comanche raids further south.

Although such events would have proven catastrophic in early years as the Comanche raided towards Mexico City, the presence of American militias obstructed such attacks, thereby encouraging the Mexicans to become dilatory in payments.

Completed in March 1834, it had been regarded by the colonists as a stronghold, sufficient to protect them from any Native Americans not observing the peace treaties Elder John Parker had negotiated with local Indians.

It was the first treaty made by the Republic of Texas,[28] signed by allied tribes including Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Quapaw, Biloxi, Ioni, Alabama, Coushatta, Caddo, Tahocullake, and Mataquo.

After the battle, the Cherokee fled to the Choctaw Nation and northern Mexico, meaning East Texas was virtually free of organized communities of Indians, and their lands guaranteed by treaty were given to American settlers.

Cheyenne and Arapaho attacks along the northern border of Comanche territory coupled with huge losses in the two preceding generations in several smallpox epidemics had the Penateka chiefs convinced a treaty might be in their best interests.

Secretary of War Albert Sidney Johnston issued instructions which made clear that Lamar expected the Comanche to act in good faith in returning the hostages and to yield to his threats of force.

[44] As revenge for the killing of 33 Comanche chiefs at the Council House Fight, all but three of the remaining captives held by the Indians were executed slowly by torture; the three who were spared had been previously adopted into the tribe.

Several hundred militia under Mathew Caldwell and Ed Burleson, plus all Ranger companies and their Tonkawa allies, engaged the war party in a huge running gun battle.

By the end of his second term as president, Houston had spent less than $250,000, brought peace to the frontier and a treaty between the Comanches and their allies, and the Republic awaited only the United States legislature's ratification for statehood.

[55] The attacks in the Antelope Hills showed that the Comanche no longer were able to assure the safety of their villages in the heart of the Comancheria[22] Other Indians never forgot the Tonkawa's allying with Texan colonists.

[53] Allegedly not aware that Buffalo Hump's band had recently signed a formal peace treaty with the United States, Van Dorn and his men killed eighty of the Comanches.

According to the son of Peta Nocona, Quanah Parker, his father was not present that day, and the Comanches killed were virtually all women and children in a buffalo hide drying and meat curing camp.

In any event, all parties agree that at sunrise on December 18, 1860, Rangers and militia under Sul Ross found and surprised a group of Comanche camped on Mule Creek, a tributary of the Pease River.

As the cavalry left Indian Territory for other battles, and many Rangers enlisted in the Confederate Army, the Comanche and other Plains tribes began to push back settlement from the Comancheria.

[2] In the late fall of 1864 in Young County, Texas, a war party of between 500 and 1,000 Comanche and Kiowa headed by Kotsoteka chief Kuhtsu-tiesuat ("Little Buffalo") raided the middle Brazos River country, destroying 11 farms along the Elm Creek, stealing virtually every cow, horse, and mule in the area, and besieging the citizen stronghold of Fort Murrah.

[2] Black scout Britt Johnson, whose wife was among the stolen women, went out to look for the prisoners and managed to rescue all of them, with the aid of the friendly Penateka chief Asa-havey (who, after this, became a specialist in this job).

On November 12 Carson's force, supplied with two mountain howitzers under the command of Lt. George H. Pettis, twenty-seven wagons, an ambulance, and forty-five days' rations, proceeded down the Canadian River into the Texas Panhandle.

Inclement weather, including an early snow storm, caused slow progress, and on November 25, the First Cavalry reached Mule Springs in Moore County, approximately 30 miles west of Adobe Walls.

On May 18, 1871, travelling down the Jacksboro-Belknap road heading towards Salt Creek Crossing, the supplies wagon train encountered General William Tecumseh Sherman, but less than an hour later the teamsters spotted a large group of riders ahead.

[68]: 80  The previous night, Mamanti ("He Walking-above"), the powerful shaman rival of Tene-angopte's friend Napawat ("No Mocassins"), had prophesied that this small party would be followed by a larger one with more plunder for the taking.

Satanta was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, as was Big Tree; but Texas Governor Edmund Davis, under enormous pressure from leaders of the so-called Quaker Peace Policy, decided to overrule the court, and the punishment for both was changed to life imprisonment.

Thanks to the stubborn behaviour of Guipago, who forced the U.S. Government to agree seriously threatening a new bloody war, Satanta and Big Tree were freed after two years of imprisonment at the Huntsville State Penitentiary in Texas.

General Christopher C. Augur, commander of the Department of Texas, sent a detachment from Fort Concho under Captain Napoleon Bonaparte McLaughlin on a two-month reconnaissance patrol in the spring of 1872.

Nokoni chief Horseback, who had family members among the Indian prisoners, took the initiative in persuading the Comanches to trade stolen livestock and white captives, including Clinton Smith, in exchange for their own women and children.

[73]The Second Battle of Adobe Walls came during the Red River War as the Plains tribes realized, with increasing desperation, that the buffalo hunters were killing off their food supply and thus the very means of survival for their people.

A combined force of Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and other Plains tribes raised almost 700 warriors and made an attempt to attack the buffalo hunters encamped at the old ruins at Adobe Walls.

Anthropologist John C. Ewers has identified no fewer than thirty major epidemics, consisting mainly of smallpox and cholera, which took place between the years 1528 and 1890, which he believes responsible for wiping out close to 95% of Texas Indians.

Certainly the Spanish, then the Mexicans, and later the Texians had learned that single-shot weapons were not enough to defeat the deadly Comanche light horse, whose mastery of cavalry tactics and mounted bowmanship were renowned.