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roaming the southern plains as far as the Rio Grande and beyond in search of the great herds of buffalo, their staff of life—and in search of more horses, as well as captive women and children to replenish their numbers. They had driven the less populous Apaches out of the south Texas area and terrorized the Spanish inhabitants for a century. For the most part, they remained north of El Camino Real, the “Royal Road” of the Spanish empire that belied its name: a simple cart path that arced from the Rio Grande through Béxar all the way to Nacogdoches in east Texas and beyond.
    If the Comanches had been better organized and their resistance better planned, colonization in Texas would have been impossible against ten thousand motivated horse soldiers. One measure of the Comanches’ ferocity could be found in their elite warrior society, the Lobos (Wolves), who were not allowed to retreat from the scene of a battle, not even when they were vastly outnumbered—each brave had pledged to die rather than surrender his ground, even if the other warriors were in full retreat. But the Comanches possessed no form of government, roaming the country in nomadic bands that had little contact with each other. The immigrants, on the other hand, as their own numbers increased, turned to collective action for strength. Some organized militias to defend themselves against the Indians. More often, “ranging companies”—the precursors of the Texas Rangers—would venture far from home in search of Indians. These sweeps proved effective, and some smaller bands and tribes negotiated truces or gave the Anglo settlements a wide berth. The Comanches continued their raids on outlying or vulnerable farms or settlements, though some would trade with white men for goods they needed.
    After a decade of empresario -induced immigration, settlers had little to complain about aside from intermittent Indian attacks. They were slowly but steadily taming the Texas wilderness, and some were doing more than just surviving. Farms throughout the territory were producing enough crops to feed families and take to market for sale or barter. Near the coast, extensive river-bottom plantations were springing up to take advantage of a highly profitable cash crop: cotton. These large enterprises required plenty of manpower, and that meant, for optimum results, slave power.
    Slavery had recently been made illegal in Mexico, and that included Texas. (Never mind that Mexico had its own “peculiar institution”—its peonage system—in which dirt-poor peasants toiled on huge haciendas with little chance of earning freedom. They were burdened with massive debt, and, like southern slaves, endured hopeless conditions such as corporal punishment and severe penalties for escape. The sale of these human beings resembled slavery to a discomfiting degree.) But this abolition was roundly ignored by Texians, as they called themselves, most of whom had come from southern slave states, and it was not long before they figured a way to get around it legally: a slave owner would force his chattels to enter into contracts as indentured servants, whose length of service—usually ninety-nine years—and pitiful rate of compensation made it impossible for them to earn their freedom. Even without such pretense of legality, slaves were openly bought and sold, and advertised in the colonists’ newspapers. The Mexican authorities made no effort to police these widespread violations. Though slave-owning colonists were in the minority, by the mid-1830s slaves would make up a tenth of the Texas population.
    In this and other matters, the distant Mexican government interfered little with the affairs of their new citizens, and for the most part this laissez-faire approach was appreciated by the colonists. True, there was little in the way of government services or infrastructure, such as good roads, public schools, a just and efficient court system, and other necessities that Americans were