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The Texas-Indian Wars were a series of conflicts between the European settlers of Texas and the Native American peoples of the Great Plains which occurred from 1820 to 1875. European settlement began with the Spanish colonization of Tejas during the late 1600s, reaching Nacogdoches around 1721.

In the late 18th century, the Comanche tribe's adoption of horses enabled them to move into northern Texas, expanding the domain the Spanish called the Comancheria, and becoming known as the "Lords of the Plains". The Comanche became so powerful that European settlement in Texas was incredibly hazardous, and the collapse of colonial power during the Mexican War of Independence led to Mexican resistance to Comanche attacks collapsing. The newly-independent Mexican government responded by encouraging American ("Anglo") settlers from the United States to settle in Texas to defend the frontier against the Comanche, and several hundred American families, led by Stephen F. Austin, settled in Mexican Texas throughout the 1820s. In 1824, Austin allied with the Tonkawa and Lenape people against the bellicose Comanche, and the American settlers formed full-time militia ranger companies to fight off Comanche raids.

At the same time, the Americans' opposition to the Mexican government's 1829 abolition of slavery and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's centralization of government power from Mexico City led to the Texas Revolution of 1835-1836. On 19 May 1836, a war party of Comanche, Kiowa, Wichita, and Lenape attacked the colonial outpost of Fort Parker and massacred the local settlers; they did not discriminate between Anglos and Mexicans when they attacked the European settlers. The independent Republic warred with the Comanche over the next several years, and the President of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, ordered the Texian Army to invade the Comancheria, burn villages, attack and destroy several warbands, and rescue thousands of Anglo captives taken by the Comanche. While Lamar's predecessor Sam Houston, a friend of the Cherokee, had granted the Cherokee tribe rights to the land in Texas on which they lived, Lamar also expelled the Cherokee from East Texas in 1839. Lamar's success in ethnically cleansing the Cherokee emboldened him to embark on a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Plains Indians in a series of bankrupting wars. Houston returned to the presidency in 1841 because of the failure of Lamar's policies, and he disbanded the vast majority of regular Texian Army troops and raised new Texas Rangers companies. In 1844, Houston made peace with the Native tribes, who agreed to return their white captives.

Texan soldiers firing on Native gatherers

Texan soldiers firing on Native gatherers

In 1845, the United States annexed Texas, providing the Anglos with the weapons and manpower necessary to "remove" the Natives. The US Army launched the Antelope Hills Expedition in 1856-1858 and invaded the heart of the Comancheria, marking the beginning of the end for Comanche resistance. The American officer John Salmer "Rip" Ford was infamous for killing Indian women and children in every one of his attacks on Comanche villages, most notably at the 1858 Battle of Little Robe Creek, epitomizing the nature of the Texas-Indian Wars from then on. The American Civil War, the defection of most Rangers to the Confederacy, and the withdrawal of the Union Army garrisons from the state allowed for the Plains Indians to recover, but the Indian population was not high enough to entirely repopulate the Comancheria.

US troops fighting Indian villagers along a stage route

US troops fighting Indian villagers along a stage route

In 1864, the Union Army under Kit Carson was defeated at the First Battle of Adobe Walls, but the end of the Civil War led to the US Army launching the Comanche Campaign to subdue the Comanche tribe. The 1874 Second Battle of Adobe Walls marked the last major instance of Native American resistance to the US Army's conquest of West Texas, and the Comanche chief Quanah Parker surrendered to the Americans at Fort Sill, Oklahoma on 2 June 1875. The "worst" Comanche warriors were deported to Fort Marion, Florida, while Quanah Parker worked to adapt his people to the Anglo world. The effect of the Texas-Indian Wars was to nearly annihilate the Native population of the state; the Native population shrunk from 20,000 Comanches and thousands more other tribes in 1836 to a mere 8,000 Indians in 1860, while the number of Anglo colonists and mestizo settlers rose from 30,000 in 1836 to 600,000 in 1860.

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