The Raiding Zone

Came across this map of Comancheria, the homeland of the Comanche, showing the extent of the tribe's raiding areas into the 1870s.  The tribe dominated this region for almost two centuries, holding off the Spanish, Mexicans, and Anglos.  Their arrival in the early 18th century also drove the Apaches off the plains and into the mountains of New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico.

The deeper red area, covering the Texas panhandle, the Midland-Odessa area, and slices of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas was the heart of Comancheria, a no-go zone for outsiders.  The raiding area is much larger, in the east extending to Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio.  In the 1840s, a Comanche raid even reached the Gulf Coast near Corpus Christi.  Comanche raids also extended well into Mexico.

In 2018 we visited the homestead of Lyndon Baines Johnson's parents and grandparents, about 60 miles west of Austin, and learned how family members narrowly escaped capture during a Comanche raid in the early 1870s.