Ford returned to Texas and requested that the Governor immediately empower him to raise additional levies of Rangers, and return north at once to continue the campaign in the heart of the Comancheria. However, Governor Runnels had exhausted the entire budget for defence for the year, and disbanded the Rangers.
Although Ford was unable to continue this campaign, it changed the face of Indian fighting on the plains and marked the beginning of the end for the Comanche and Kiowa.[1] Only the Civil War delayed the inevitable). For the first time, Texan or American forces had penetrated to the heart of the Comancheria, attacked Comanche villages with impunity, and successfully made it home. The U.S. Army would adopt many of Ford’s tactics – including his attacking women and children as well as warriors, and destroying their food supply, the buffalo,[1] in their campaigns against the plains tribes after the Civil War.
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