Friends And Allies:The Tonkawa Indians And TheAnglo-Americans, 1823-1884

H istorical models of Indian-white contact on and inexorable decline, during which they were the frontier emphasize conflict and hostility, forced into increasing dependence on the yet historians are not unaware that whites and whites for survival. For the military forces of Indians interacted in many different ways in Texas and the United States, the Tonkawas' different regions and time periods. Even in assistance meant a sometimes decisive improve cases of Indian-white conflict, it was not at all ment in their ability to cope with the Coman uncommon to find Indians fighting beside the ches and other tribes of the southern plains, whites against other Indians, often greatly The reason for the Tonkawas' peculiar enhancing the capabilities of the white forces. relation to the whites lay in their status in rela Some tribes were notable for their long-standtion to other tribes in the region. According to ing alliance with whites against other Indian eighteenth-century Spanish officials they were tribes; examples include the Catawbas of South "disliked and even abhorred" by other Indians, Carolina, the Pawnees of Nebraska, the Wyoalthough they were sometimes included in ming Shoshonis led by Chief Washakie, and the alliances of convenience. In the nineteenth Crows of Montana. century Captain Randolph Marcy described A particularly striking example is the Tonthem as "renegades and aliens from all social kawa tribe of Texas, whose military cooperation intercourse with the other tribes." Captain with the Anglo-Americans, though intermittent, John Ford of the Texas Rangers noted that covered more than half a century. For the they were the "black beasts" of the Brazos Tonkawas it was a period of repeated disasters River Reservation in the 1850s, blamed by the other tribes located there for causing, through sorcery, various unfortunate occurrences. Even , , „ , . , . in the twentieth century older members of Dr. Thomas W. Dunlay is the editorial assistant . . r ,j , i r .i , ■ i /-./ i c various southern plains tribes described them as for the Journals of the Lewis and Clark bxpe^ r dition project sponsored by the Center for witches. Great Plains Studies. His book, Indian Scouts Why was this small, nomadic hunting tribe and Auxiliaries, has been accepted for publicain such bad repute with its neighbors? The tion by the University of Nebraska Press. obvious and often-cited reason was their known