Iron Jacket

Who was Iron Jacket?

Iron Jacket was a Native American War Chief and Chief of the Comanche Indians.

Iron Jacket was a Comanche chieftain and medicine man whom the Comanche believed had the power to blow bullets aside with his breath. His name probably resulted from his habit of wearing a Spanish coat of mail into battle, which protected him from most light weapons fire.

On May 12, 1858, the jacket failed to protect him, and he was killed on the bank of the South Canadian River in the Battle of Little Robe Creek where his band of Comanches fought a combined force of Texas Rangers and Brazos Reservation Indians led by John S. Ford, Shapley P. Ross, and Placido, the Tonkawa chief.