Doc,
Hamanleinen also gives a figure of 20,000 displaced Eastern Tribes in the Indian Territory by 1831, an era when these folks were still being removed to Oklahoma.
In other words, these new groups, collectively totalling half as many as the total Comanche population at its very peak, began to roam pretty much at will across and around Comancheria. My contention is, based upon accumulated years of recreational reading, that the Eastern Tribes killed far more Comanches in combat over the years than we ever did.
Interesting too that virtually ALL of our successful expeditions against Comanches were guided to 'em by these and other Natives. The only exception that comes to mind is a young Charles Goodnight finding Peta Nocona's camp (and thus Cynthia Anne Parker) in 1860. But then Mr Goodnight was reportedly tutored as a youth by an elderly Caddo living in the Brazos River bottoms.
All of which makes me suspect that truly virtuoso tracking, on the single-bent-blade-of-grass level, was a skill about like becoming a virtuoso on an fine instrument: To be THAT good you really gotta start as a child, the required circuitry literally becoming a permanent part of the developing brain.
A thing which has repercussions even into the modern era, and compelling evidence to keep one's kids off of video games...
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/28/world/fg-bombs-vision28 The best troops he's ever seen when it comes to spotting bombs were soldiers from the South Carolina National Guard, nearly all with rural backgrounds that included hunting.
"They just seemed to pick up things much better," Burnett said. "They know how to look at the entire environment."
Troops from urban backgrounds also seemed to have developed an innate "threat-assessment" ability. Both groups, said Army research psychologist Steve Burnett, "seem very adaptable to the kinds of environments" seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Video game enthusiasts are narrower in their focus, as if the windshield of their Humvee is a computer screen. "The gamers are very focused on the screen rather than the whole surrounding," said Sgt. Maj. Burnett. ...edited to add "..and lifelong bird watchers living and working in a tough urban environment?
Well hey they can spot a ruby-crowned kinglet against a background of gang grafitti...."
Birdwatcher
