WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Indians in Texas?

I will attempt to use tribal names when possible. I ask for your understanding when space begs that I use the briefer reference of Indians rather than the more proper Native Americans. The western plains of Texas were rich hunting grounds for the Comanche, Apache and Kiowa tribal bands seeking the herds of bison. Hunting was fiercely competitive and ceremonial. The warrior chiefs wore their elaborate feathered head-dresses to hunt. Some chiefs had dozens of wives doing domestic work. Buffalo meat was hung, dried and soup was made. Butchering was done by women who also stretched hides on large frames to cover tepees and make blankets that were stacked for beds on which the men lounged and the children slept. The women in charge were distinguished by the clothing they wore. They often wore a blanket over their deerskin dresses and were adorned with handmade jewelry. Horses had been brought and left in the new world by the failed Spanish explorers looking for gold and the returning Spanish priests who had hoped to make Christians from the pagan natives. This changed the lives of hunters and warriors as much as Henry Ford’s automobiles had improved white men’s lives. Especially the Comanche were the benefactors of horses. They were the latest indigenous group to arrive in Texas and they became breeders of horses and astonishingly accomplished riders. Wealth was determined by the number of horses that were owned. Fierce raids to acquire more were made and that was a white settler’s dilemma The population count of Native Americans in Texas was reported to be 30,000 in 1820. In ten years the addition of the “Immigrant Indians” mostly from the north, had reached 40,000 Other tribes were not as mobile or fierce as those marauding tribes listed in the first paragraph. Their hunting, limited for sustenance, was not so ceremonial. Cherokees in northeastern Texas built towns, farms and schools. The Karankawas along the coast were fishermen but when celebrating they had a reputation of being carnivorous as were some Mexican tribes. The Caddos, Wichitas and Tonkawas were known to scout for Texas Rangers and U.S. soldiers and occasionally were guides for incoming settlers. In 1830, under Andrew Jackson’s presidency, the U.S. Congress passed a bill to remove Indians to reservations in Oklahoma. The Texas Legislature denied American Indians the rights to any of the lands. The red men, especially the Comanche, resisted their removal to reservations but their final defeat came in 1870 in the Palo Duro Canyon. Carole Sikes 3/202 Reference: The Conquest of Texas, by Gary Clayton Anderson. Anderson claims that his history of Texas is a central history balanced between two other histories: T. R. Fehrenbach’s hailing the triumph of Texas over the savage red men and David E. Standard’s history calling the treatment of the Indian, an American holocaust.