WHEN SOLDIERS CAME FOR THE COMANCHES
In the late 1850s settlers on the Texas frontier lived their daily lives in terror, as Comanche and Kiowa warriors regularly raided south across the Red River, burning and killing with little interference from the U.S. Army. In 1853, up in what soon became Kansas Territory, these southern Plains Indians had signed the Fort Atkinson Treaty, pledging peace with their American brothers. Attacks along the Santa Fe Trail did drop off for a while. But Texas was a different matter. The war chiefs later claimed they had not realized it was part of the United States, even though bluecoat soldiers had been chasing their raiding parties across west Texas. Fact is, Comanches and Texans had been in a war to the death for control of the southern Plains and its vast buffalo herds ever since the defeat of Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna in 1836. No piece of paper agreed on in Kansas was going to halt their generational warfare.
U.S. Army Brevet Maj. Gen. David E. Twiggs, a 68-year-old veteran of the War of 1812 and Mexican War then commanding the military Department of Texas, had been ordered to present a passive defense against Comanche raiders whenever they entered the state. So in early 1858 incoming Governor Hardin Runnels took matters into his own hands, authorizing a spring expedition by Texas Rangers against the marauding Comanches. The governor asked Twiggs for a supply of the Army’s latest Colt pistols in order to arm the Rangers. Twiggs could only refuse, as the Texans were not authorized federal troops. Though it didn’t halt the Comanche raids, the Ranger strike deep into Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) was daring and punishing.
Humiliated into action, Twiggs sought permission to go on the offensive and soon received new orders from Brevet Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, senior officer of the U.S. Army: Go after the raiders.
The thinking was simple enough: Army brass believed that by stepping up its operations in Indian Territory, Comanche fury would shift to the federal troops, thus giving Texas a breather. Several companies of the and online at ). By summer’s end Ross had mustered 135 friendly Indians to scout for Van Dorn, who fielded four companies of the 2nd Cavalry and a company borrowed from the 5th U.S. Infantry.
