Early Life
Not much is known about Iron Jacket's early life. He was born in the 1780s or 1790s. He became a chief among the Noconi, or Wanderers, Band of the Comanche. He appears to have been both a hereditary chief and a War Chief. Little else is known about Iron Jacket, except that he led dozens of terrifying raids on settlers from the 1820s to the 1850s in Texas and Mexico.
It is believed today that he was a hereditary chief of the Comanche, and for decades the white and Mexican victims of his raids considered him a supernatural being because of his seeming invulnerability to any harm. Members of the Rangers, posses and the military on various occasions insisted that they shot the chief dead center without harming him.
Evidently, this was because of the coat of old Spanish mail the chief wore, which appears to have protected him from light weapons fire. In any event, he was a feared and dangerous figure along the Texas and Mexican border, and in the Comancheria in the decades leading up to the American Civil War.
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