A Spanish account estimates 100 Delaware families settled in far Northeast Texas in 1820, with larger numbers in neighboring Missouri and Oklahoma.
And you are right, they DID get around. One source has it that by the time Jedediah Smith found a route to California in 1826, there were Oklahoma Delawares who had already made that same trip several times. A thing almost to be expected when you read up on the mobility of individual Natives all over.(I mean, Lewis and Clarks were guided about half-way across the Continent by an illerate teenage mother).
Maybe if'n the Indians had newspapers and books by then, they would have been making a big deal out of all their "discoveries" too.
RIP Ford used Delawares as scouts, as did Robert E. Lee hisself. Which brings up another must-have Texas history book...
Jeff Davis's Own: Cavalry, Comanches and the Battle for the Texas Frontier http://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Daviss-Own-Comanches-Frontier/dp/0471333646The Second US Cavalry, Jeff Davis's project, and THE prototypical Western cavalry outfit.... modelled after the French experience in North Africa (Davis brung in camels too).
Has to be said though, despite all their considerable perambulations, this outfit seems to have intercepted considerably fewer Comanche raiding parties than did the Seminoles and Black Seminoles working South of the Border under treaty to the Mexicans during that same time period.
Birdwatcher
