Confederate Texas was unable to secure its territories and was defeated by the Comanche and Kiowa at the First Battle of Adobe Walls, and the Kickapoo at the Battle of Dove Creek. As a consequence, white settlers retreated eastward throughout the war. But after the end of the war in 1865, immigrants from the war-torn southern States decamped for Texas, where many of them became cattle herders. Those herders followed routes like the Goodnight–Loving Trail, established in 1866 on the Butterfield route – which brought large volumes of cattle through the Concho valley.