Robert Neighbors - Return As An Indian Agent

Return As An Indian Agent

In those days, appointments for such posts as federal Indian Agent were determined in great part by the political party in power, and the political affiliation of the agent. Neighbors was a Democrat, so his services as Indian agent were terminated by the elections and subsequent national Whig administration in September 1849. Neighbors stayed in public life however. Appointed as a Texas commissioner, he was sent by Governor Peter Hansborough Bell, to organize El Paso County in February and March 1850. He then attempted, without success, to organize counties in New Mexico as a part of Texas.

As a member of the Fourth Texas Legislature under the United States sitting from 1851 to 1853, he was able to convince his fellow legislators to establish reservations for Indians, and he then successfully sponsored a law that opened the way for establishing those Indian reservations. He became a presidential elector in 1852, and shortly following the election of Franklin Pierce he was again appointed a federal Indian agent. In 1853 he was made Supervising Federal Agent for the Texas Indians. The following year in 1854 he joined Capt. Randolph B. Marcy and a unit of the United States Army to travel to Northwest Texas in search of recommended sites for Indian reservations. The Penateka Comanches were located on a reservation in what is now Throckmorton County, and the other Texas tribes, the Caddo, Lenape, and Tonkawa, at a second site now in Young County.