DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do it justice. Now, out here in Briscoe County, near the Quitaque area, there was a trade network humming along long before most folks ever put a name to it. The traders were called Comancheros — peddlers operating deep in Comanche domain — and they came riding out of New Mexico with flour and other goods, ready to do business in some of the most unforgiving country on the continent.
This barter had been going on since the seventeen hundreds. But if you want to know when it really cooked, when it reached its absolute peak, that window was eighteen sixty-four to eighteen sixty-eight. And what was being traded?
Well, the Apaches, Comanches, and Kiowas had been rustling horses and thousands of cattle — thousands — down in Texas. That was your currency. That was what changed hands.
Now, among all the Comancheros working this territory, one name rises up above the rest: Jose Tafoya. This man wasn't just running pack mules through the brush. He had wagons.
Actual wagons. And he was selling guns to Indians. Right up until eighteen seventy-four, when the U.S.
Army caught him. And here's where the story turns on a knife's edge — they threatened to hang him. That was the choice laid before Jose Tafoya: the rope, or enlist as a frontier scout.
He enlisted. There were many other Comancheros out here, the marker is clear about that, but Tafoya stands as the example — the one who, in the end, helped rid Texas of Indian marauders. From trading in the shadows to scouting for the Army, all of it happening right here in this corner of the Llano Estacado.
The land doesn't forget a thing.
What the marker says
In Quitaque area, Comancheros (peddlers in Comanche domain) from New Mexico traded flour and other goods to Indians. The barter (begun in 1700's) reached peak in 1864-1868, when Apaches, Comanches and Kiowas rustled horses and thousands of cattle "down in Texas", to use in trades. Jose Tafoya, who had wagons as well as pack mules, sold guns to Indians until U.S. Army caught and threatened to hang him in 1874 unless he enlisted as a frontier scout. There were many other Comancheros. Tafoya is an example of one who helped rid Texas of Indian marauders. (1969)