He set marching orders, assigned scouting and sentinel duties, chose camp sites, selected raid objectives, developed and directed attack strategies and divided plunder. On the trail, a leader commanded unquestioning obedience of his followers. A leader, with dreams of plunder and glory rising from a vision, summoned followers to a raid, which began with ceremony, ritual, chants and dance.Īs he prepared his weapons and horses to leave, a Comanche warrior sang: They passed east of the Chisos Mountains and could see the pinon pine and juniper growing on the lower slopes and ponderosa pine and Douglas fir growing on the highest peaks.Īfter fording the four-foot deep Rio Grande at Grand Indian Crossing, which river explorer John Love described as "very wide, well beaten… a much traveled thoroughfare…," the war parties branched off, some pushing hundreds of miles south or west to raid the Mexican settlements.Ĭomanche and Kiowa warriors, the progeny of warring peoples with warring traditions, raided for treasure, captives and fame. It forded the Rio Grande at the Grand Indian Crossing, a major Comanche and Kiowa gateway to Mexico.Īs they crossed the desert, the raiders rode over rocky slopes covered with creosote and over flats populated by mesquite, prickly pear cactus and yucca. ![]() ![]() Comanche Springs, said early trail breaker Captain Whiting, emerged from the desert floor as "a clear gush of water…unperceived until the traveler is immediately upon it." Leon Springs, said another traveler, consisted of "two bodies of water welling up from the bosom of the earth…"įrom Leon Springs, the Comanche War Trail turned south for nearly one hundred and fifty miles across the desert, through the heart of Texas’ Big Bend country, past San Francisco Creek, Persimmon Gap, Bone Springs and the Chisos Mountains. Frank Dobie, "…infested with rattlesnakes… the Pecos country was tough."įrom Horsehead Crossing, the trail ran thirty miles southwest to Comanche Springs (now Fort Stockton, Texas) and eight miles west to Leon Springs. Fowler in 1853, "that nothing but sand is to be seen, until winding through a circuitous route you can see the tops of the Lone Willow: there is that pure beverage God gave to man…what a blessing and comfort."įrom Willow Springs, the trail led fifty miles south southeast to the Pecos River’s Horsehead Crossing, in an area as "hot and dry as Yuma," said folklorist J. It turned southwest, across the southern end of the Great Plains to the Monahans sand dune field and its sequestered Willow Springs, the area which marked the northeastern margin of the Chihuahuan Desert. Raiding parties followed tributaries from southwestern Kansas, western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle to the Comanche War Trail’s main trunk, which ran south along the eastern escarpment of Texas’ Caprock Plateau, the High Plains. Wild plums, berries, cactus fruit and other plant foods had ripened. Grazing remained plentiful and nutritious. Frantic settlements would post guards, gather arms, shelter families, secure homes, and pen and tether livestock.Ĭomanche and Kiowa warriors favored the fall for raiding in Mexico. ![]() The word rippled from north to south across Chihuahua. ![]() When the raiding parties appeared on the trail, the Mexican sentinels would torch their wood piles to raise signal fires and smoke columns to warn of the coming danger, the human thunder from the north. They knew that Comanche and Kiowa raiding parties would come soon, like schools of barracuda on the hunt, following the infamous Comanche War Trail from Texas’ High Plains into Chihuahua’s desert lands to steal livestock, plunder homes, kidnap children and young women, kill and scalp men and older women, and win battle glories and honor.
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