I’m trying to load an online copy of Josiah Gregg’s “Commerce of the Prairies”, an account of his travels along the Santa Fe Trail in the 1830’s.
One return trip his guide was a Comanche married into a New Mexico Mexican community. By the 1830’s it was estimated that one third of Comanches had a Spanish-speaking parent. Lots of child abductions to be sure, but not always.
Same time period, individual Comanches have interactions with individual Tejano San Antonio residents, no surprise as at any given time many Mexican ox-carts were crawling across the plains hauling freight.
It was actually Mexican cart men who rescued Oliver Loving of Goodnight/Loving fame when they found him west of the Pecos with that infected Comanche arrow wound.
In the same way Comanche were supposed to be ineffably hostile to Apaches, yet you have Comanches who can speak Apache, and Quanah Parker himself learns about peyote from camping around Mescalero Apaches.
As far as genetic diversity I believe the Southeastern Tribes were way up there too. Osceola himsel was reportedly part Indian, part Black and part White, not unusual in that part of the world.
When it comes to our Frontier history we tend to draw everything in absolutes, forgetting there were a whole bunch of individuals involved.
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
