Indian, man or woman, he could find. Runnels issued explicit orders to Ford: "I impress upon you the necessity of action and energy. Follow any trail and all trails of hostile or suspected hostile Indians you may discover and if possible, overtake and chastise them if unfriendly." Ford then raised a force of about 100 Texas Rangers and state militia. Realizing that even with repeating rifles, Sharps rifles and Colt revolvers, he needed additional men, so he set out to recruit ones he did not have to pay, as he did his Rangers and militia. Recruiting Indian allies Among the traditional enemies of the Comanche were the Tonkawa Indians, then living on a reservation on the Brazos River in Texas. The books that immortalize and praise the Tonkawa as friends and allies of the settlers generally downplay the fact that the Tonkawa were cannibals, whom the Comanche and virtually every other Indian tribe loathed. Ford, however, had no reservations about using cannibals to help him, as long as they were eating Comanches, not Rangers. On March 19, 1858, Ford went to the Brazos Reservation, near what today is the city of Fort Worth, Texas, to recruit the Tonkawa to join him. Indian agent Captain L.S. Ross, father of future governor of Texas Lawrence Sullivan Ross, called Chief Placido of the Tonkawa to a war council, where Ross stirred Placido's anger against their mutual enemy. He succeeded in recruiting 120 or so Native Americans in this campaign, 111 of whom were Tonkawa under Chief Placido, hailed as the "faithful and implicitly trusted friend of the whites", the others being Anadarko and Shawnee. They joined with roughly an equal number of Texas Rangers to move against the Comanches. Ford's orders from Runnels were to follow any and all trails of hostile and suspected hostile Indians, inflict the most severe punishment (kill them and their families, destroy their homes and food supplies) and allow no interference from "any source". ("Any source" meant the United States, whose Army and Indian agents might try to enforce federal treaties and federal law against trespassing on the Indian territories in Oklahoma). Expedition Advancing from Texas to Oklahoma Scouts were sent to locate Comanche camps north of the Red River in the Comancheria. In April 1858, Ford established Camp Runnels near what was once the town of Belknap. Ford and Placido were determined to follow the Comanche and