Frontier life is still shocking to me even after all I’ve seen and heard.

Not for the faint of heart but I’ll give you 2 examples of torture killings by the Comanche that gave me anxiety just reading it

1) they would capture a few unfortunate fellows. Amputate their arms and legs. Cut out their tongues. Stack them on top of each other and set them on fire.

2) cut off a mans eyelids and tie then down on with the heat on an ant hill.

They gave no quarter and expected none. There was no concept of surrender. Captives endured years of torture.

Now the inevitable political take:

The first American settlers in Texas were set up literally as human sacrifice by the Mexican government. They wanted to run cattle but were constantly raided by the Comanche. The solution? Invite bumpkins from Tennessee with nothing to take free land in Mexican territory and provide fresh targets to distract the Comanche.

Whites moving in didn’t really know better. They weren’t land owners till they were gifted a cursed property. The open prairie was so large they often had time to build a home and start a farm before a nomadic tribe would show up at their doorstep angry and ready to kill invaders. Whites that followed heard the horror stories and saw any Indian as a hostile Indian while Indians saw any whites as invading military combatants.

This doesn’t excuse the centuries of abuse and broken treaties suffered by the American Indians but you can understand how fear and revenge quickly took hold whenever their paths crossed.