"Texas Frontier Forts and Indian Campaigns"

Introduction

As the 1870s drew to a close, the full moon - which Texans had always referred to as the "Comanche Moon" - continued to rise each month over the Llano Estacado and the TransPecos. While the moon itself had not changed, it was nonetheless different - it no longer struck sheer terror into the heart of the Anglo frontiersman. Texas was different. Gone to the reservation were the Comanches, who had once raided and killed with the full of the moon from the Arkansas River to the Rio Grande. Gone too were the millions upon millions of buffalo that had once proliferated on the Plains, wiped out by the American hunter in a decade-long frenzy of slaughter. Gone as well were the cavalry troops - white and black - who had waged unrelenting war against the Amerinds throughout the 1870s. The military forts of the Texas and Indian frontier stood silent now, abandoned relics of a bygone era. What a chapter of history, however, they had all written together!

The Comanche and the Comanche Way of Life

The Comanche had originally lived in the high mountainous country of the Upper Yellowstone and Platte Rivers. Here they hunted and trapped small game, living a life that had been lived for countless generations since their ancestors had crossed the land bridge to North America from Asian Siberia.

The Comanches lived in small tribes and bands rather than in one large monolithic group. The tribes most important in Texas history were the Quahadi (Antelope Eaters) of the Llano Estacado and the Penateka (Honey Eaters) of the southwest Hill Country.

After moving to the Southern Plains, the Comanches were totally nomadic hunters who never lived long in any one location. They moved, especially during the spring, summer, and early fall, with the concentrations of buffalo.

The abundant buffalo provided the Comanche with meat, clothing, housing, tools, etc. One anthropologist claims one hundred and fifty separate uses or products that the Comanche derived from the buffalo.

The males' status in the tribe depended on their skills and success in two areas - hunting and warfare.

The Comanche way of life was transformed by the acquisition of the horse from the Spanish who had come to North America. Horses allowed them to hunt the buffalo more successfully, traverse and dominate a much greater range, and made them savage warriors in battle. They would become adept horse thieves - taking from the Spanish, Mexicans, Americans, and other Indians.

The Comanche successfully resisted control by the Spanish and Mexican governments and long delayed conquest by Anglo-Americans.

The Comanche got arms and ammunition from the Comancheros, Mexican traders located in the wilds of New Mexico, in return for goods/cattle taken from the settlers of the frontier. Often the Comanche had newer and better weapons than the American military troops they faced in battle in the 1860s and 1870s.

The Comanche were so successful in battle because they always tried to attack and retreat before their adversaries had time to react in any organized fashion. Given the fact that they knew the Plains better than any of their foes, they often went unpunished for depredations because they simply couldn't be located.

At their peak, the Comanches' range - known as Comancheria - stretched from central Kansas southward to the vicinity of Austin, from present-day Oklahoma City to Raton Pass in New Mexico.

By the 1860s and 1870s, the Comanches faced a number of threats to their existence. Diseases to which the Comanche had no immunity had decimated their numbers. The Comanches were being pressured by seemingly ceaseless American westward expansion. Finally, the very foundation of Comanche existence was threatened by American buffalo hunters who were exterminating the bison with ever increasing rapidity.

Texas Frontier Forts

Fort Richardson - Located in Jacksboro, this installation was established in 1867. It was the northernmost of the line of federal forts built following the Civil War. It was located so that troops could both protect frontier settlers and guard the Butterfield Overland Mail Route over which government dispatches traveled all the way to California. Troops from Ft. Richardson tracked down the Indians responsible for the Salt Creek Massacre and participated in the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon. The fort was abandoned in 1878 after the subjugation of the Comanche.

Fort Griffin - Located just north of present-day Albany, Ft. Griffin was established in 1867. Troops stationed at the fort were responsible for escorting government mail, protecting surveying parties, cattlemen, buffalo hunters, etc., and pursuing and punishing Indians raiding the frontier. "The Flat," a helltown located adjacent to the fort, was one of the most active and important embarkation and supply points for buffalo hunters. The fort was abandoned in 1881 after the end of Indian raiding and the rapid advance of settlement made it unnecessary.

Fort Concho - Located in San Angelo, Ft. Concho was established in 1867 to protect the settlers of West Texas from Indians and to keep the roads leading to El Paso del Norte open. The fort was at the center of the line of posts to the northeast but was also a part of the southern chain to the mouth of the Rio Grande River. Troops stationed at Ft. Concho included elements of the Fourth and Tenth Cavalry, among them black "buffalo soldiers" that comprised one-fourth of the United States cavalry between 1867 and 1890. These troops, led by Ranald Mackenzie, participated in the war against the Comanches in the early 1870s. Decommissioned in 1889, Ft. Concho is restored today and open to the public.

Fort McKavett - Located in Fort McKavett, Tx., this installation was originally founded in 1852, abandoned during the Civil War, and then reestablished in 1868. Ranald Mackenzie rebuilt the fort and used it temporarily as his headquarters. After the subjugation of the Indians of the Panhandle, the fort was no longer needed and was abandoned in 1883. Today the fort has been restored by the State of Texas and is open to the public.

Fort Davis - Located at Ft. Davis in the TransPecos, Fort Davis was originally established in 1854 to protect a route with water to California. From its founding until it was abandoned during the Civil War, its troops saw constant warfare against both the Comanches and Apaches. Troops at Fort Davis, including buffalo soldiers of the Tenth Cavalry, saw a great deal of action. They protected the "horse-and-ox driven, high-wheeled wagons to and from Mexico and westward to El Paso and California. They protected cattlemen driving herds to the Far West." They saw action against the Comanches during the 1870s but probably saw most of their action against the Apaches. They were responsible, for instance, for protecting the TransPecos area from Vitorio who led the Mimbres Apaches in terrorizing both the United States and northern Mexico. The fort, which was abandoned in 1891 following the subjugation of the Apaches, is now open to the public as a restored national historic site operated by the federal park service.

Fort Clark - Located at Bracketville, Fort Clark was originally established in 1852. Its mission both before and after the Civil War was the defense of the Rio Grande border between Fort Davis and Fort Brown at Brownsville/Matamoras. It remained operative in one form or another until the 1940s.

The Treaty of Medicine Lodge and the Quaker Peace Policy

The policy of the American government during the 1860s and the very early 1870s was to try to make peace, if at all possible, with the Indians of the Great Plains.

This policy, known as the Quaker policy, was the product of pressure on the government by religious groups to let them deal with the Indians in a moral, loving fashion. It, more practically, resulted because the demands of Reconstruction prevented the government from stationing sufficient cavalry troops on the western frontier to either subjugate or eradicate the Plains Indians militarily.

While logical given these constraints, the Quaker policy caused tremendous problems for Anglo frontiersmen. It left them to fend for themselves against any Indians, and there were many, who refused to be peaceful.

Of real importance was the Treaty of Medicine Lodge (1867) which initiated the Quaker peace policy toward the Comanches. It is important to remember:

Not all of the Comanche bands or tribes were present at the negotiations which produced the treaty. In fact, up to one-third of the Comanche tribes were absent. Nonetheless, the government maintained that they were all bound by the terms of the treaty.

The Comanche who were present signed the treaty out of resignation to the inevitable or to receive government gifts though they didn't agree with the terms of the document.

Though the Comanches present griped about Anglo encroachments and maintained that they couldn't survive without the buffalo of the Texas Panhandle, Medicine Lodge forced the Comanche to cede back, the Panhandle to the government and restricted them to a new reservation lying west of the 98th meridian and bounded by the Washita and Red Rivers.

While the federal government agreed to prohibit Anglo hunters from the Panhandle, it really couldn't do it because the land was owned by the State of Texas and, further, it didn't have the troops necessary to enforce the ban.

The Treaty of Medicine Lodge and the Quaker peace policy were failures. Not all of the Indians went to the reservation to begin with. The government didn't use force to make the Comanches go to the reservation or keep them there if they ever decided to leave. Thus, many Indians stayed on the Fort Sill, Oklahoma reservation during the winter and accepted food and supplies from Indian agents. However, when the spring arrived and the new grasses grew, many Comanches left the reservation to hunt buffalo and raid Texas frontier outposts. When troops or lawmen sought to track down and punish the raiders, they were barred from the reservation by law and the Quaker Indian agents. This made the reservations privileged sanctuaries for the Indians - they were untouchable there.

From the reservation Comanches' perspective, reservation life had been forced upon them against their wishes and, because of government chinchiness or snafus or graft, food and supplies either were of insufficient quantity and quality, were late or never arrived at all, and were manipulated by Indian agents to force acceptable behavior. The reservation Indians also looked with envy at the Comanche who had refused to come to the reservation and still lived the "old life" out on the Plains. Reservation Comanches began to realize, as well, that the government only parlayed and gave gifts to troublesome Indians; those who submitted meekly were allowed to starve in obscurity on the reservations.

Thus the Quaker peace policy and the reservations they maintained were largely unsuccessful. The army and Indian agents were locked in a bureaucratic policy struggle over who best could deal with the Plains Indians. This struggle was resolved only in the early 1870s by public and government reaction to the Salt Creek Massacre and later to the Battle of Adobe Walls.

Salt Creek Massacre

In May of 1871 a group of one hundred and fifty reservation Kiowas and Comanches left the Fort Sill reservation under the chiefs Satanta and Big Tree. All of these Indians were following a young Kiowa medicine man known as Do-ha-te or Owl Prophet. After crossing the Red River into Texas, the war party went to a location on Salt Creek Prairie overlooking a trail to Fort Richardson and Jacksboro. Here Owl Prophet had a vision and told the warriors that two groups of white men would come down the trail. They must not harm the first group but the second should be massacred. Sure enough, two groups of Anglos passed by - the first was allowed to pass and arrived at Fort Richardson unmolested, the second group - ten white teamsters driving wagons full of supplies - was fallen upon by over one hundred of the warriors.

The teamsters were quickly overwhelmed but not before one of them had shot an Indian in the face at close range. The warriors pulled this wounded teamster out of a wagon and lashed him face down on a wagon wheel. After pulling out his tongue, they built a fire under his face. "They found axes in the wagon, and chopped and smashed the corpses of the six dead white men. The bodies were cut apart, and arrows were shot into some of the pieces. Then, when the tortured teamster was dead, his head turned black, they loaded the loot from the wagons on the mules and departed quickly."

As it turned out, Owl Prophet should have ordered the braves to attack the first group to pass by. It included General of the Army William T. Sherman and Major General Randolph Marcy, who were on an inspection tour of the West Texas frontier and forts. General Sherman, who had to this point felt that Texan complaints about the Indian menace were exaggerated and overblown, now witnessed first-hand what "peaceful reservation Indians" could do. Sherman now ordered Colonel Ranald Mackenzie to pursue the fleeing Indians with four companies of the Fourth Cavalry. Mackenzie, who had earlier served at Fort Concho and was now at Fort Richardson, trailed the Indians all the way back to the Sill reservation. When questioned, Satanta and Big Tree not only admitted the raid, they boasted and gloated over it because they felt immune from punishment on the reservation. General Sherman ordered their arrest and return to Texas, where they were found guilty of murder and sentenced to die. Politics intervened at this point - Governor E. J. Davis commuted their sentences to life imprisonment and later paroled the chiefs back to the reservation from which Satanta would raid again.

The major importance of the Salt Creek Massacre was the unleashing of Ranald Mackenzie by the United States army, with the tacit ësub rosa' backing of President Ulysses S. Grant. The president, an old militaryman himself and friend of Generals Sherman and Sheridan, was infuriated by the massacre and the subsequent freeing of Satanta and Big Tree. Convinced that the Quaker peace policy was a failure, he felt only aggressive Army actions would suffice and quietly ordered the generals, in charge of the Army in the west, to "clean up the mess in Texas."

Over the next several years Mackenzie and his buffalo soldiers operating out of Forts Richardson, Griffin, and Concho would hound the Comanche hostiles without break. There were constant patrols - not around the forts but into the heart of the Llano Estacado where no Army troops had heretofore ever ventured. Again and again, Comanche villages were attacked. Mackenzie ordered everything burned - lodges, poles, hides, blankets, and drying buffalo meat crucial for the winter months - and all Indian ponies shot. Mackenzie realized that Comanches without food and without horses would eventually be forced to accept reservation status. This was a doubly effective policy because in the early 1870s American buffalo hunters were rapidly exterminating the bests of the Plains.

While shooting buffalo for sport from trains had been an American pastime for years, the real slaughter began in 1870 when the American leather industry developed processes for tanning buffalo hides and merchants found that consumers would buy garments fashioned from the animal's pelt. By 1872 a raw buffalo hide brought $3.75 on the industrial market and Americans quickly began to exploit this natural resource in such incredible abundance on the Plains.

Hunters began moving out onto the Plains in ever greater numbers, with tons of ammunition and skinners in tow. Buffalo hunters were so effective because the buffalo didn't stampede with the first shots, there were so many buffalo, and the specialized weapon of the hunters was so deadly. They wielded .50 caliber Sharps rifles, referred to by the Comanches as "gun that shoots today and kills tomorrow." The 600-grain bullet, driven by 125 grains of black powder, could knock down a full-grown bison at distances in excess of 600 yards. The gun could be fired so continuously that it had to be shot off a tripod because the barrel turned red hot and could not be hand-held.

The average hunter killed twenty-five to forty buffalo a day though some hunters were more proficient. For instance, Wylie Poe working out of the Fort McKavett region "once killed ninety animals in a single stand without moving." "Brick Bond normally killed two hundred and fifty beasts a day." After the shooting had been done, the skinners moved in. They stripped off the hides as quickly as possible, leaving the carcasses to rot. No attempt was made by Anglo hunters to utilize and market buffalo meat until the very last days of the slaughter. As historian T. R. Fehrenbach described the aftermath of a hunt:

Wagons filled with bloody hides rumbled into Fort Griffin, Fort Worth, and went on to Dodge City, for shipment over rails. Behind them, for miles and miles, the high plateaus swarmed with circling vultures, which left acres of whitening bones. This was neither senseless nor sport; it was butchery for a profit. Within fifteen years the number of American bison fell from well over an estimated fifteen million to just several thousand.

The extermination of the buffalo alarmed some Texans who demanded state legislation to protect the animals. The proposed legislation might well have been enacted had it not been for the United States army and General Philip Sheridan, commanding the Southwest Military District. In speaking to the Texas legislature against the bill, he made the Army's case that the buffalo's liquidation played a crucial part in efforts to subjugate the Indians and thus continue Anglo expansion on the frontier. He said:

White hunters assist the advance of civilization by destroying the Indians' commissary; and it is a well known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them power and lead, if you will, but for the sake of a lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle and the festive cowboy, who follows the hunter as a second forerunner of advanced civilization. So it was that the Plains Indians, including the Comanche, were just as certainly starved onto the reservation as they were ever forced to accept such status by the United States military. And the Comanche certainly knew what was happening to the buffalo and what it portended for them. "Their world was filling with deep shadow. The bands were unsure of everything except their fear of reservation life and their hatred for the tejanos." "Many warriors had a paralyzing suspicion - which could not yet be breached openly - that the medicine of the white man was more powerful than that of the Amerindians." The Indians of the Southern Plains, seeing the buffalo being slaughtered, seeing the Anglos advancing in ever larger numbers, and questioning their own supremacy, were ripe for the emergence of a messiah.

The Battle of Adobe Walls

The Comanches' messiah was a young brave named Eeshatai, which meant Coyote Droppings. His appearance as a savior who would make everything right like it used to be was almost inevitable given the situation. Other Indian messiahs had preceded him and others would follow. Eeshatai pointed out to the Quahadi Comanche that all the Indians who had succumbed and followed the white man's way were in decline and slowly vanishing. He counseled aggression. If the Comanche united with the Kiowas, the Cheyenne, and the Arapahos, they would be an invincible force. They would fall upon and annihilate the whites and the buffalo would return to the Plains. "Everything would be again as it had been; the People could not fail, for the power of Eeshatai would protect them; he would lend them his own invulnerability."

Thus it was that these Indian groups formed an alliance in the spring of 1874, chose Quanah Parker, a chief of the Quahadi, as their paramount war chief, and determined that the first blow against the Anglos would be against the buffalo hunters who used the old trading post in the Panhandle known as Adobe Walls. Over seven hundred warriors, including Quanah, Lone Wolf (a chief of the Kiowa), and the prophet Eeshatai, arrived at the Panhandle landmark before sunrise on June 27, 1874 expecting to surprise and overwhelm the Anglo hunters. However, a ridgepole in the structure had broken during the night and most of the hunters were up trying to fix it when the Indians charged at dawn. The twenty-eight men and one woman repelled the first Indian charge losing only two of their number. One other was killed in subsequent Indian charges on the first day.

The Indians could have overwhelmed the hunters by sheer numerical superiority had they mounted an all-out assault. This had never been their way, however, and the battle degenerated into a four day siege. While vastly outnumbered, the buffalo hunters enjoyed the advantage after the first charge. They were professional sharpshooters and their big buffalo guns forced the Indians to withdraw past the effective range of their Spencer repeaters. During the second day of the battle, Eeshatai conferred with some of the Indian leaders on a ridge far from the battle. As they argued about what to do next, a Sharps ball knocked one of the warriors sitting beside Eeshatai from his horse. William Billy Dixon, one of the buffalo hunters inside Adobe Walls, had fired the shot - killing the Indian at a range (it was claimed) in excess of fifteen hundred yards.

Eeshatai's medicine had failed. The Indian alliance, just barely formed, broke up over the failure at Adobe Walls. After four or five days the various groups split up, never to combine their efforts again. Some gave up the war against the Anglos and returned to the reservation. Others, in small bands, lashed out savagely at all whites in the summer of 1874. Buffalo hunters abandoned the Panhandle for the rest of the season; Adobe Walls might have been a victory but it was too dangerous, given the Indians' wrath, to hunt on the Plains.

Public opinion in the aftermath of Adobe Walls also demanded a war of retribution. Feeling this change in the citizenry's attitude, "President Grant authorized the Army to move immediately ëto subdue all Indians who offered resistance to constituted authority'." This was an official change in public policy, not just President Grant overlooking what the Army did. Now peace would be imposed on military terms. "All restrictions were lifted from the Army of the West. Any Amerindians found off their reservations would be considered hostile, and to be pursued. If they surrendered, they were to be considered prisoners of war. If they resisted, they were to be destroyed. The 1874 change of policy was complete and final."

Ranald Mackenzie, now facing no restrictions and under explicit orders to attack, marched from Fort Concho with elements of the Fourth and Tenth Cavalry and supporting infantry troops into the Llano Estacado. His mission was to force the Quahadi Comanche led by Quanah Parker onto the reservation. Throughout fall and into the winter he attacked villages wherever he could find them. While Quanah eluded Mackenzie for a while, the Comanches were constantly harassed. "Continually pursued and on the run, the Comanche Indian had no time for hunting winter meat, and his bases were in constant danger."

The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon

Try as he had over the last three years, Mackenzie had never been able to locate and attack the largest band of the Quahadis led by Quanah. This changed when the cavalry captured a Comanchero trader named Jose Tafoya. Remember that the Comanche had obtained rifles and ammunition from the Comancheros through the years. Mackenzie ordered his troops to lash Tafoya against a wagon wheel. Facing possible torture, the Comanchero talked, divulging that the main body of the Quahadi were encamped in Palo Duro Canyon.

Within days the cavalry was there and spied the Indian camp down on the floor of the canyon. On September 28, 1874 the cavalry entered the great chasm. Part of the troops went for the Indian horse herd while Mackenzie led the assault on the teepees. The Quahadi had been caught totally by surprise. The Indian ponies were stampeded down the canyon and the Quahadis took to the rocks, scrambling up the slopes to the plateau above on foot from which they made their escape.

While the Indians escaped, the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon was the tolling of the bell for "the People". Mackenzie had captured all the Indian ponies, tents, and supplies. "In the abandoned encampment he found tons of flour, sugar, blankets, and cured bison meat. There were also crates of new carbines and ammunition. Mackenzie ordered everything burned. The black smoke marked the end of Quanah's hopes, as the retreating Indians saw it rise from out of the prairies." Over one thousand ponies were shot to death to prevent them from ever again falling into Indian hands. At the cost of a few wounded, "Mackenzie had destroyed Quanah and the Comanches as surely as if he had shot them with their horses. A dehorsed Plains warrior was a pitiable creature, unable to fight, unable to hunt, unable even to move across the prairie." After the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, the Quahadi had no food or supplies to face the upcoming winter.

The war was over for all intents and purposes. Mackenzie transferred out to another region of the country to fight other Indians. The buffalo hunters returned and resumed their extermination of the bison, which were growing scarcer with each passing day. The Comanche bands started surrendering. "By April (1875), all the bands but Quanah's had given up." In the spring of 1875, cavalry representatives and surrendered Comanches sought out Quanah, who along with his band had survived the winter eating nuts, grubs, and rodents. The last great Comanche war chief, with the Comanche way of life in shambles, "was given the government's terms: the reservation, or war to the knife."

An era of Texas history truly ended in June, 1875 when Quanah Parker and all the Comanches he could find came onto the Sill Reservation. Within eight years the buffalo were all gone - replaced by Anglo cattle. The railroads came, bringing Anglo farmers with them. The frontier forts were deactivated and the cavalry and infantry troops who had manned them transferred elsewhere.

A new and more "civilized" Texas had dawned but oh what a memorable chapter of history it had been.

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All quotations unless otherwise noted are from T. R. Fehrenbach's Comanches: The Destruction of a People , Alfred A. Knopf (New York, 1986).