Years of building tensions on the southern plains culminated in the Red River War of 1874-1875. The large-scale theft of horses and cattle was one of the leading causes of the conflict. Systems of theft overlapped and reinforced each other. Comanches and Kiowas from the Staked Plains and their reservation in Indian Territory raided frontier herds with growing intensity during the late 1860s and early 1870s. New Mexican traders and government officials helped incentivize these forays by offering a reliable market for stolen stock. Simultaneously, white rustlers from Texas struck Indian herds north of the Red River. Stock thieves from Kansas also wreaked havoc on the Cheyenne and Arapaho Reservation. Until 1874, the federal government was largely ineffective at suppressing the theft of horses and cattle on the southern plains. Rivalries over jurisdictional boundaries, vigorous policy disagreements, and market economics combined to limit the government's effectiveness in dealing with the emerging crisis. Not until the army crushed the military power of the Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas would horse and cattle herds in Indian Territory and northwest Texas be relatively safe from large-scale rustling.
Meet David Beyreis
David Beyreis is a historian of the Great Plains and Southwest borderlands. He is the author of Blood in the Borderlands: Conflict, Kinship, and the Bent Family, 1821-1920, which received the Gaspar Perez de Villagra Award from the Historical Society of New Mexico and the Louise Barry Writing Award from the Santa Fe Trail Association. His journal articles have received the Coke Wood Award for Best Historical Monograph or Article from the Westerners International, Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Center, and Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. His current book project is tentatively titled Soldier Girls: Native Women and the Wars for the Great Plains and is under contract with the University of Nebraska Press. He teaches history and government at Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a member of Fort Worth Westerners.