The way things used to be in West Texas

While reading about Justiceburg, Texas, and then the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River, I read this: 

“In August 1873 about 20 miles west of Double Mountain Fork Surveyor expedition Capt J.E. Elgin found the body of a scalped girl about 8–9 years of age hanging from a tree. He had the remains of the corpse buried.” – From The Weekly Democratic Statesman, Aug. 28, 1873.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Mountain_Fork_Brazos_River

The complete story:

“While on his recent surveying expedition, Capt. J.E. Elgin found a little girl about nine or ten years, that the Indians had hung. When he found her, she was hanging to a tree, about twenty miles west of Double Mountain, in Young Territory. The birds had picked her eyes out and had commenced on other parts of her extremities. From appearances she had evidently been scalped before they hung her. All of her hair was taken clean, excepting two small locks of a light color. He gave her a respectable burial, and marked the place on his map, so that the grave can be easily found. The captain informs us that the section of the country on the head waters of the Brazos and Colorado rivers is alive with Indians. It is his opinion that they intend on making an extensive raid on the frontier at no distant day.” – West Texas Argus.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83021327/1873-08-28/ed-1/seq-2/

First guess would be the girl was murdered by Comanche or Kiowa. Discovery of the girl’s body brings up all kinds of questions, of course. Who were the girl’s parents? What happened to them? Were they passing through, or were they part of a ranch family in a place they should have known better than to be?