THE ROMANCE OF DAVIS MOUNTAINS AND BIG BEND COUNTRY ...

By Carlysle Graham Raht. This is a 1963 reprint of his circa 1918 original, when the main man was still very much around!

Adapted from pages 64 - 65, where he is talking about the Great Comanche War Trail that ran from Texas 'way down into Mexico....

"Among the habitual tenants of this great trail, the Comanches were easily the lords.

"Their flag of sovereignty was lowered to one necessity only -- the lingua franca of the Trail, the Spanish language.

"This concession was granted because the Kiowa, the Utah, the Cheyenne, the Apache, and Comanche, each in time, learned some Spanish from his Mexican captive while the captive in turn became a good Indian, and at the same time a good intrepreter.

"[S]o it came about, as has often happened among the languages of the world, that the tongue of the vanquished became the tongue of the warrior.

"This was aided in many ways by the language common to the Indians of the Spanish Southwest, so that on the trail these Indians of divers races and tongues had a common language which was foreign to each one of them."