Quickly, the Delawares earned a reputation for being trustworthy and loyal, as well as uncommonly brave. And their services were eagerly sought by those venturing into the wilderness.

In 1833, famed mountain men Kit Carson and Joseph Meek, together with another trapper and three Delaware companions, rode out of the Rockies to hunt in the Texas Panhandle.

On the open plain, they were surrounded by 200 Comanches thirsting for their blood. The small party cut the throats of their mules and used the bodies as a natural fort.

Time and again, the Comanches charged the tiny fort. But their horses shied off when they caught the scent of mule blood. And the hunters’ barking rifles caused 42 Comanche casualties.

When night fell, Carson and Meek led the way on foot, and the six men slipped past their besiegers and escaped. The white men always claimed they wouldn’t have lived without their steadfast Delawares.

Such incident happened often on the frontier: whites and Delawares fighting like brothers, side by side. Just a generation earlier, they had been killing each other.

Lt. Richard Smith Elliott, who came to New Mexico in 1846, wrote that the Western tribes gave the Delawares no quarter, killing them on sight. In part, that was because of their friendship with the Americans.