In the summer of 1845, amid mounting concern that the United States and Mexico would go to war over Texas, the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin reported that a Comanche Indian force of “extraordinary magnitude” was preparing to descend upon the “weakened population” of northern Mexico. According to the editors, the whole of the Mexican north would soon be “engulfed in a terrible Indian war.” This fact would “powerfully influence political relations” and “would have to be considered as a new element in diplomatic calculations.” The translated article soon appeared in Mexican newspapers, including Durango's Registro Oficial. The paper's editors admitted that Comanches posed a tremendous threat, but blamed their “philanthropic” American neighbors for that. From Durango's perspective, Americans were “impelling” and “inviting” Indians across the frontier, encouraging “the evils that always attend the depredations of the savage,” all with an eye to acquiring lands that excited the “insatiable greed” of the United States.1