I have read that account and a few similar Birdy. But I think we both notice the annomaliy. Comanches warriors did not like to fight afoot. In fact they really didn't like to do anything that required them not to be on horseback.
A description that later applied to many folks on the Plains where the daily use of a horse was an essential part of life, including cowboys and Texas Rangers, all of whom had rifles too.
The puzzling discrepancy is that a number of accounts, including Hamaleinen's "
Comanche Empire" all state the great importance of firearms and ammuntion as trade items to the Comanches throughout their era.
Comanche rifles figure in both the skirmish outside of Linnville and again at Plum Creek, where we are told they did "most of the execution". Ford too cites a period of time when his rangers "held their breath" every time a skilled rifleman "armed with a Swiss rifle" among the Comanches fired at them, the guy hitting mounted rangers regularly enough to make them nervous.
As for the rest, one wonders how often yer average Comanche actually went up against White folks in open battle. Be pretty dumb to do the "ride-around-in-circles-while getting-shot-thing" twice. Note that not even the 400 warriors on the Great Raid pulled that stunt again after Tumlinson and his men demonstrated their excellent marksmanship the first time around. What happened at Plum Creek was mostly a stalling tactic on their part, which worked.
While we think of ourselves as the be-all and end-all, lots of Comanches likely never even SAW a Texan until the era where the borders of Comancheria had shrunk considerable. And those that did, mostly their experience would have been those innumerable raids involving lifting horses, committing random murders of opportunity, and getting away clean. So AVOIDING any fight at all. Few of these guys were ever brought to account.
Ford relates of his Pecos expedition (guided intitially by Buffalo Hump) what a great curiousity the Whites were to the Comanches, who would gather in crowds just to watch them.
What we do is tend to think of our enemies in simplistic terms, a common human trait.
JMHO and worth every penny.
Birdwatcher
