How Did Texaans Respond To Native Americans

The 1800s were a difficult time for the Comanche tribe. As aspiring Americans moved westward under the premonition of Manifest Destiny, Plains Indians were faced with great tensions and pressures from the United States to cede their land for American benefit. Nowhere was this event more prevalent than in Texas, where an influx of white Americans settled following its annexation in 1845. This soon led to American encroachment upon the lands of numerous tribes, including the Comanche, leading to disputes and conflicts between the two cultures. With events such as the Council House Fight and the Great Raid of 1840, which led to the deaths of numerous Comanche chiefs and tribal members, many people today look on the period as an attack on the rights
For the Comanche, their numerous raids and conflicts with the new settlers were due to two factors: self-defense and recovery. As Americans migrated to Texas in search of new lands and possibilities, they slowly intruded on the sacred territory of the Comanche tribe, Comancheria. As a result, the Indians waged numerous raids and acts of violence on the settlers. While Americans at the time saw these occurrences as acts of ferocity and savagery, today many historians show that the Comanche were justified in the sense that they were “fighting for retrieval of the land they felt was theirs.” Another source of the Indians’ ferocity originated in the Comanche tribe’s need for recovery. Following their introduction to European settlers and explorers, the Comanche population sharply declined, as many were captured as slaves by the Europeans and introduced to new diseases, such as smallpox and cholera, “cutting the population in half.” To regain their population size, the Comanche began to utilize the practice of taking captives from neighboring tribes and groups, and they would be assimilated into the Comanche culture over time. This inevitably carried over to their raids conducted on the Texan settlers, with the Comanche taking many American captives from the towns and villages they ransacked, in hopes of assimilating them into the Comanche culture and increasing their population. As a result of this practice, the Texan settlers became angered, leading to numerous violent conflicts with the Natives, such as the Council House Fight, which was originally organized to convince the Comanche tribe to return their American captives. The need for recovery among