Been close to ten weeks since this thread went dormant. About the time it took for a wagon train to move down the Santa Fe trail, across the other side of Comancheria.
Back on the eastern fringe, in the 1830's and 1840's an unstoppable tide of American immigration. Out West seemingly yet remote, but George Bent was already influential enough to broker a major truce between tribes in 1840 while serving an Indian costomer base of perhaps 30,000, taking in buffalo hides, furs and horses in return for Euro consumer goods.
Unexpected destruction coming down that trail too in terms of diseases; livestock and human.
We are lucky in having a great source for the Santa Fe trail at this time online, the journals of Josiah Gregg....
COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES Gregg came to the Plains from Tennesse by way of Missouri, choosing the region for its effect of health, him suffering from a serious case of tuberculosis at the time. In his case it worked, Gregg remaining out west for the better part of twenty years.
Better yet he wrote all about it, publishing this account in 1844. IIRC he later worked as a newspaper correspondent in the Mexican War but was killed in a fall from his horse in the 1850's while on an expedition.
Birdwatcher
