You have a point there BN.
"Texas had the manpower, it had the horsemen and it had the weaponry to decisively take out the Comanches but it never mustered the collective will to do so. I mean, by the 1870's the Comanche and Kiowa remnants were driving off whole herds of COWS fer chrissakes, holding up settlement of nearly half the land area of the state.
Musta come down to the fact that, from quite early on, MOST people simply didn't have to deal with Indians. As was pointed out, people would go out to round up the cows or whatever not expecting anything to happen."
As BN points out east of the Brazos by the time the frontier got hot it was all settled country. Relatively speaking heavily settled and Indians were a forgotten problem. The eastern tribes were all dead or long gone. Save for the Kronks they never were very warlike anyway. Even the Kitchi and the Kickapoo had moved on except for some stragglers.
Personal example from my family. My G-Grandfather settled in Leon county in 1855 on the same place where I live. Acording to family stories passed down that I heard my grandfather tell every fall a bunch of indians would camp on a creek about a half mile from his house. A place called the glade. Probably an extended family group and probably Baidi as there was a settlement of them down at Navasota that lasted until the 1870's.
My g-grandfather would give the "chief" a beef to eat when they came through. The indians were picking up pecans, chinquipins, hickory nuts, walnuts and harvesting/drying persimmons and would stay about a week or ten days before moving on so I was told. Never had a minutes trouble out of them nor did they ever steal anything that my folks knew of. Was said that they never knew when they would look up and see one looking in the window just watching the white people.
I know this is just anecdotal and a minute sample but I'd be willing to bet you it was the same anywhere east of the Brazos river. Indians were no problem just a nusience and the frontier was a long way off. Just like today folks tend to mind their own business and not go chasing off trying to settle other folks problems. Most especially if you are trying to scratch a living out of the ground as most folks were.
You ever get over here Birdy I'll show you the "glade". Must have been used for a long long time as I have found lots of "arrer heads" on the hills around it.
