I reckon if you eat a feller, it's not a good idea to settle next to his kinfolk.
The thing is about Tonkawas is that there were never vary many, and after the Comanches arrived they lived entirely within the reach of Comanche war parties, yet more'n thirty years after Plum Creek there they still were; guiding Ranald Mackenzie's cavalry down on the last free Comanches.
RIP Ford recruited a 100 Tonkawas of the Brazos Reservation in 1860 to go with his rangers against Buffalo Hump's Comanches in the Wichita Mountains. Notwithstanding their grizzly reputation he called 'em superior men with an encyclopedic knowledge of Western geography. Point of trivia; it was a Tonkawa armed with a .54 cal. Mississippi Rifle that dismounted to shoot the famous Comanche Iron Jacket off his horse in his shirt of Spanish mail.
After that Comanche/Kiowa sundance in the summer of '74, Quanah Parker had wanted to go against the Tonkawas but was outvoted, and they ended up going against Adobe Walls instead.
Birdwatcher
