It was constrained.

It was transformed into something different from what it had been on the open Plains.

But the Comanche and Kiowa relationship with horses — the knowledge, the skill, the tradition — survived the destruction of the Palo Duro herds.

The approximately 1,000 horses shot south of the canyon were the animals that Mackenzie calculated the families were most likely to recover.

By driving them far enough from the canyon and shooting them rather than simply scattering them, he prevented the most immediate and dramatic horse recovery that would otherwise have been possible.