The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 51, July 1947 - April, 1948 Page: 313

rhe exras Comaehe
treaty of 1846
GRANT FOREMAN
ACENTURY has passed since the execution of the most impor-
tant Indian treaty in the history of Texas. For years
Texas was unable to defend her vast and thinly settled
frontier against the prairie Indians, and several abortive efforts
were made to induce them to enter into treaties of peace. Texas
looked to the United States for aid in this undertaking before
she became a state of the Union. This government was willing
to assist her and, with Fort Gibson in the present Oklahoma as
a point of departure, dispatched several expeditions to Texas
for this purpose.
Pierce M. Butler, former governor of South Carolina, then
Cherokee Indian agent in Fort Gibson, was the instrument
through whom these efforts were made. He headed or directed
from his post a number of expeditions to Texas in an effort to
induce the wild Indians to enter into a treaty. The first of these
expeditions, headed by Governor Butler, with a small military
escort, proceeded to the Indian council ground on Towakoni
Creek, where on March 28, 1843, a council was begun with
representatives of nine Indian tribes. Nothing of importance,
however, was achieved at this council. Another was planned in
the autumn.1 Late in November of the same year Governor
Butler departed with an escort of eighty men commanded by
Colonel William S. Harney. The plans were to hold the confer-
ence on Red River, at the mouth of Cache Creek, but as the
Comanches refused to attend, the meeting was again postponed
to the following April.
In the autumn of 1844 a third attempt was made under the
direction of Captain Nathan Boone, a son of Daniel. The ren-
dezvous designated was on Towakoni Creek, where chiefs of a
few of the tribes met with commissioners from Texas and en-
1An account of these councils appears in Grant Foreman, Pioneer Days in the
Early Southwest (Cleveland, 1926), 293 ff.