The fact that the Comanches were making 30-40 miles per day argues against them driving cattle, which I doubt could manage even half that pace
Prob'ly I wasn't making myself clear; I wasn't thinking cattle on this raid, but we know that the Comanches and Kiowas beginning in the year 1860 (according to Jones' "Frontier Defense in the Civil War") would progressively switch over to rustling cattle from Texas for sale in New Mexico in a big way, to the tune of 30,000 over just a three month period in 1872.
The fact that they were able to get away with that argues that the prospect of pursuit was mostly non-existent during those years, at least in some places.
Again, I wonder whether the Comanches were simply indifferent to the idea of pursuit due to 200 years' experience of not being seriously pursued after raids.
I would put forward that apart from Mexico (and even then some Mexican and Tejano Vaqueros were formidable in the field), pursuit after a raid was OFTEN the case. It might be that these mega-scale raids were only possible in Mexico, this one into Texas sure seems to have cost more than the Comanches were willing to bear, even though around 90% of 'em must have gotten away.
For the most part, Comanche adversaries were no pushovers even when the Comanches were winning, said tough enemies including the Tonkawas, who Gwynne ("Empire of the Summer Moon") dismisses as "always losing". Texans were no exception, and as Boggy notes, the first thing Comanches usually did after a conventional raid was to put some serious real estate between themselves and the places raided, just as far as horseflesh could stand.
This was exactly the behavior everyone seems to have been expecting the Comanches to follow here before word got out of their actual dispostion, even then haste was patently of the essence.
Birdwatcher
