ABSTRACT
A profound fatalism about cross-border Indian raids seems to have gripped the population of the Mexican states bordering on Texas, as reported, if with some exaggeration, by a North American traveller, George F. Ruxton, in the 1840s. Describing the reaction of the people of the state of Chihuahua to Comanche raids, Ruxton found it ‘unbelievable’ that so little effort was made to resist the incursions, ‘since Comanche invasions were seasonal and along known routes and should not have caught the people unprepared’. Part of the problem, Ruxton believed, was that most Chihuahuans were not allowed to own weapons and therefore did not know how to use them. Knowing this, he said, the Comanches ‘never hesitate to attack superior numbers’. The usual outcome, as he reported it, was pitiful.
