Mike seems hellbent on downgrading the reputation of the Comanches as warriors,and building up the eastern tribes.
Well, thats probably me, and I disagree
The saga of the displaced Eastern tribes all across the West is indeed a remarkable one, we could start with the large numbers of Iroquois Six Nations trappers employed in the heyday of the Rocky Mountain fur trade (the largest cohort of trappers if not the majority?) and work our way down.
And the perambulations of a Black Beaver and his ilk are indeed extraordinary.
Likewise, the tactics of Placido and his Tonkawas are well documented, the Tonks being such a persistent and collective pain that Quanah Parker had wanted to strike THEM after that first sun dance rather than the buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls. Osage and Pawnee both were also notable for venturing on raids into Comancheria on foot and coming back mounted.
What is notable too is the large cast of diverse characters who were freely crossing Comancheria even at the height of that tribe's power. A puzzle really that IIRC they never even feinted at shutting down or otherwise collecting tribute from the burgeoning Santa Fe trade which must have been having a visible impact on their heartland.
In those same years, it turns out different parties of Shawnee and Cherokees were already employed as protection for Mexican communities agains Comanches and Lipan Apaches, this practice reaching its peak in the 1850's when Kickapoos, Seminoles and Black Seminoles were all famousy involved and active in this role.
Yet no collective or effective Comanche response to these relatively small communities sitting athwart their raiding trails.
When it came to pitched battles; we know they drubbed Moore when he attacked a camp on the San Saba in '39, but Moore dismounted and handed them the initiative, Moore's Lipan allies STILL ran off most of the Comanche horse herd, and Moore himself suffered only light casualties, even though they faced a long walk home.
The Great Comanche Raid? Initial success against soft targets, repulsion at Victoria, followed by a clever bluff on the much smaller Texan force at Plum Creek, the show of armed resistance evaporating as soon as the Texans charged.
Moore again later that same year inflicting one of the great bloodlettings of the West, nearly 200 Comanche dead on the Colorado, Moore having done everthing right this time.
1840's? A couple of famously lopsided victories by Hays' handful of Rangers against six times their number of Comanches, said Comanches unencumbered by women and children at these fights.
After which it became durn near impossible to draw the Comanches into pitched battle, their forte alway having been soft targets raided for glory and profit. Instead the Comanches turned their attention to the fabulously lucrative and easy pickings in Mexico, Texans apparently shot back too much.
1850's; Jeff Davis' Own, the Second Texas Cavalry, led by Robert E. Lee hisself, rode all over West Texas attempting to draw battle but only drew blood a couple of times, one of which was Lt. John Bell Hood with fifteen men prevailing against a far greater number of Comanches on the Devil's River at close range after Hood was lured in by a flag of truce, said Comanches turning to fight at all only after a gruelling chase by Hood over several days (Hood was guided by a Delaware).
In that same period too, the inimicable RIP Ford succeeded in drawing the blood of Comanche war parties on a number of occasions, but only after much pursuit of a quarry that rarely stood to offer battle. Ford being guided by his indispensible Comanche/Mexican scout Roque.
1860, RIP Ford again, cleans up against Buffalo Hump's band in the Wichitas, Ford's Caddo and Tonkawa allies inflicting the majority of the casualties.
1864, Kit Carson marches approximately 350 enlisted men and about 50 Jicarilla and New Mexican scouts to Adobe Walls into the heart of the Comanche/Kiowa stronghold on the remote Panhandle. At Adobe Walls he discovers as many as SEVEN THOUSAND encamped Kiowas and Comanches. Perhaps at least half of the remaining population of both tribes.
Leaving his infantry behind to guard the supply train, Carson with a fraction of his force riles up at least a thousand mounted Comanche and Kiowa warriors, burns more than 170 Kiowa lodges, kills or seriously wounds about one hundred fifty of the armed and mounted opposition, and successfully extricates himself with a loss of just three killed, twenty-five wounded.
Custer shoulda took notes
...and notable that even as early as 1864 the Comanches and Kiowas in this, the most remote area of Comancheria, were already keeping large herds of cattle.
That same year a combined Confederate/Texas Frontier Militia force of around 500 mounted men, out looking for Comanches, directly contrary to the earnest advice of their Cherokee scout decides to attack a camp of neutral Kickapoos instead (number of combat age Kickapoos unknown, certainly significantly less than the attacking force) and got their a$$es handed to them by the accurate rifle fire from cover practiced by said Kickapoos.
Perhaps thirty casualties among the cavalry/militia, fourteen reported casualties among the Kickapoos. More to the point, the cavalry /militia ended up facing an arduous walk home on account of the Kickapoos also ran off their horses.
Ten years later, it was all over when MacKenzie, following his Shawnee, Delaware, Black Seminole and Tonkawa scouts, relentlessly runs the constantly fleeing Comanches into the ground, ending with that almost bloodless victory at Palo Duro Canyon, the Comanches having scattered on foot.
OK, call that the anti-Comanche take on Texas history, but all true and with only a small amount of cherry-picking
All of which is not to say that the Comanches did not flay the Texas Frontier, Fehrenbach puts the cost at 15 murdered setlers per mile the Frontier advanced, but soft targets almost all, carefully selected and stalked, taken by surprise.
Birdwatcher
