Indian Warfare Between Texas and Mexico

Barracks of Fort Gibson

Major Chouteau’s expedition in 1836 sought to engage with the Wichita, Kiowa, and Comanche tribes, revealing their growing tensions amid ongoing warfare. After an arduous journey, he established connections but faced challenges as the Kiowa did not honor agreements to visit Fort Gibson. Reports indicated Mexican influence inciting prairie tribes against settlers, necessitating treaties to ensure peace and safety for traders. By May 1837, Chouteau successfully negotiated a treaty with the Kiowa and others, aiming to quell rising conflicts and stabilize the region.

Colonel Dodge Reaches Villages of Western Indians

Trailing through broad and verdant valleys, they went, their progress often arrested by hundreds of acres of plum trees bending to the ground with tempting fruit; crossing oak ridges where the ground was covered with loaded grapevines, through suffocating creek-bottom thickets, undergrowth of vines and briars, laboring up rocky hillsides and laboring down again, the horses picking their way through impeding rocks and boulders, until on the twenty-ninth of the month, two hundred miles from Fort Gibson, General Leavenworth and his staff reached Captain Dean’s camp, a mile or two from the Washita, where there were quartered two companies of … Read more