Great story! Thanks for posting.
The Comanche were some real bad asses. Took the Texans 50 years to conquer them, without the Colt six gun never would have done it.
I believe the role of the revolver is considerably over-stated. For close-quarters combat, sure. The hard part was getting close enough to use one and the PREMIER Indian fighter of his era, Texas Ranger Captain RIP Ford wrote that even then the Comanche bow and the sixgun were evenly matched at such times. Outside of dueling of course, fighting fair is something to be avoided at all costs.
The way to fight Plains Indians was to get off of your horse, take careful aim with your rifle, and shoot the other guy off of HIS horse, a tactic generally employed by the Eastern Tribes when they moved out West, cutting a wide swathe. This was also the usual tactic employed by Ford hisself.
MOST Comanches of course died from diseases, just like pretty much every other tribe, second to that you can make a pretty good case that more of 'em fell to other Indians, especially displaced Eastern Indians than to the Texans.
By the Red River War, MOST Comanches were already on reservations in Oklahoma, getting heavily into the cattle business (Comanches traded more'n 30,000 head of Texas cattle to the Army in New Mexico in 1873), a hothead minority was still out.
Out of desperation this minority faction of Kiowas and Comanches actually put on a Sun Dance in the summer of '74, a rite borrowed from the Northern Tribes and a thing they hadn't done before.
After that religious event Quanah Parker wanted to go against the dreaded and implacable Tonkawas, who had been eating Comanches regularly for more'n forty years by that point and who had repeatedly led Ranald MacKenzie down upon them.
It was actually the Feds as represented by MacKenzie that finally broke these holdouts, capturing many of their women and children and using these hostages as leverage to bring them in. Who actually brought them in was the German Physician JJ "Doc" Sturm who by that time had been looking after the Comanches since the Brazos Reserve days, twenty years earlier. Sturm rode out to the Comanche camps alone, bringing them the Govt terms.
This good and gentle man, whose memory is still esteemed in Comanche country today, in company with the middle-aged Comanche chief Mow-Ray, travelled all over West Texas in '74 and '75, locating and bringing in scattered Comanche refugees.
Interestingly enough, the Comanche Medicine Man Isha-tai, whose bullet proof medicine failed so spectacularly at Adobe Walls, went on to play an active role in reservation politics after the shooting was all over, mostly as a political opponent of Quanah Parker.
As for Billy Dixon's famous shot, I am fully prepared to believe it may have been from the better part of a mile away, mostly because of the testimony of Billy Dixon hisself, who alway said it was a "scratch" ie. lucky shot, almost a fluke. Of course, if he weren't an outstanding shot, the shot would never have connected, lucky or not.
Birdwatcher
