country from the Rio Grande to the Nueces, killed for the pleasure of
killing and drove into Mexico tens of thousands of Texas cattle. In
1875, one of his raids came within seven miles of Corpus Christi. Truly,
his activities were as fearsome and as costly as were those of the
Indians on the other frontiers of the state. But the United States Army
did little about it, being unable to catch raiders in Texas, and
unwilling to attack them in Mexico. The Texas Rangers, recreated in
1874, began to effectually take care of the matter. Thirty-one of these
men, under their able commander Captain Leander H. McNelly, began to
take a bite out of these raiders in 1875, killing them not only in Texas
but pursuing and attacking them in Mexico itself.
[Illustration: Indians with horses and travois]
General Porfirio Diaz came to power in Mexico about this time and ended
the Cortina troubles by arresting and confining that gentleman to the
environs of Mexico City. The Rangers took care of the rest of the gangs.
Along the upper Rio Grande, the raids into Texas were made by Indians:
the Kickapoos, Lipans and Apaches. These tribes had settled in that
great arid and sparsely inhabited area that extends south of the Rio
Grande from Laredo to El Paso. That part of Mexico was a no-man’s land.
The small Mexican and Indian villages were a law unto themselves. The
Mexicans often joined the Indians on their raids, and the cattle and
horses brought back found a ready market in the Mexican villages.
[Illustration: _G. Catlin_
U. STATES’ INDIAN FRONTIER IN 1840.
_Shewing the positions of the Tribes that have been removed west of
the Mississippi. By George Catlin._]
The Lipans, like the Apaches, were natives of the Great Plains country.
The Kickapoos were easterners, and had been termed “friendly Indians,”
upon their arrival west of the Mississippi River. The term “friendly
Indian” often used in writings and reports of the times referred in the
larger sense to those tribes such as the Kickapoos, Cherokees, Choctaws,
Chickasaws, Seminoles, Delawares and others that had once been powerful
tribes in the eastern United States, but because of the encroachment of
the white settlers, they had, by treaty, coercion or force during the
early 1800’s, been continually moved by the United States Government
from their ancestral or reservation lands in the East. They finally
ended up at various times on reservations assigned them in what is now
Kansas and Oklahoma (Indian Territory). Here they usually encountered
hostility from the native tribes of the Great Plains whose superior
numbers threatened their entire existence. They were considered
intruders and were obliged to turn to the United States troops, where
possible, for protection. Their natural ability as “trackers” made them
a necessary unit in any force of troops that sought to engage hostile
Indians.
The Seminoles from Florida were pretty well mixed with Negro blood upon
their arrival in East Texas, and later in the Indian Territory. The
reason for this was that prior to the Civil War many run-away Negro
slaves had sought and found sanctuary among these Indians, living at
that time in the fastnesses of the Everglades.
During the latter days of the Civil War, December of 1864, a company of
frontier scouts out of Fort Belknap discovered a freshly abandoned
Indian camp west of the ruins of old Fort Phantom Hill. The scouts
estimated that perhaps 5,000 Indians had camped there.
During the preceding fall, Comanche and Kiowa Indians in large numbers
had broken up the settlements on the northern frontier in Young County.
Therefore, it was assumed, and assumed too hastily as it turned out,
that these Indians had occupied the camp and were on the march to find a
permanent spring and summer location from where they could further raid
the settlements.
Actually these Indians were friendly Kickapoos from the Indian
Territory, and as it turned out, they were probably peacefully moving
themselves and their entire tribe to join a tiny remnant of the tribe
that had, years before, settled in Old Mexico, some forty miles west of
Laredo.
The hasty assumption that these Indians were hostile led to the Battle
of Dove Creek fought on Sunday, the 8th of January, 1865. The scene of
the battle was the Indian encampment on the south bank of Dove Creek
about three miles above its confluence with Spring Creek, and fifteen
miles southwest of the present Tom Green County court house.
After the discovery of the abandoned camp near Phantom Hill, the Indians
were trailed by scouts. Confederate regulars had been concentrated at
Camp Colorado, and militia had been moved from Erath, Brown, Comanche
and Parker Counties.
These two columns of troops, numbering some 400 men, concentrated above
the Indian encampment before daybreak. They attacked at daylight. It was
an impetuous charge and was met by deadly fire from the Enfield rifles
of 600 braves, well protected by the underbrush of the creek bottom. The
militia, respectfully referred to by the regulars as the “flop eared
militia,” suffered heavily in their charge. They broke and fled and were
of no more value in the field.
The regulars, now badly outnumbered and outflanked, were slowly forced
back and withdrew towards Spring Creek, fighting from the shelters of
the oak groves as they retired. This action continued all day, and they
encamped that night with all their wounded and the reformed militia on
Spring Creek, about eight miles from the original battle ground. They
left twenty-two dead on the field and carried away about forty wounded.
The long retreat to the mouth of the Concho River started the next
morning in a blinding snow storm that made pursuit by the Indians
impossible. They resorted to captured Indian ponies as food supply.
It had been a most unfortunate affair. The Kickapoos crossed the Mexican
border in the Eagle Pass area and settled down about forty miles inland.
Always irked by memories of the unprovoked Dove Creek fight, they
thereafter heartily joined future raids into Texas. They were no longer
“friendly Indians.”
It was this matter of raids into Texas in the upper Rio Grande country
that attracted General Sherman’s attention in March of 1873, when he
ordered Colonel Mackenzie and his 4th Cavalry to Fort Concho. From
Concho they moved to Fort Clark, only about thirty miles from the
Mexican border. At Fort Clark a conference of high ranking officials was
held, including apparently the Secretary of War, General Phil Sheridan,
Mackenzie and others. No orders were issued but after the conference was
over, the “brass” reviewed the 4th Cavalry. The “ten-year” men in the
regiment knew that something big was brewing.
Dark and early, on the morning of May 17, 1873, Colonel Mackenzie led
400 men of his 4th Cavalry and twenty or thirty Seminole scouts under
Lt. John L. Bullis, on a drive across the Rio Grande into Mexico.
After four days and night of continuous riding and fighting, the small
expeditionary force, carrying their supplies in their pockets and with
no time taken out for sleeping, recrossed the river and were back on
friendly Texas soil. They had covered some 160 miles and had burned
three Kickapoo and Lipan villages, killed a considerable number of
braves, captured forty women and children, plus the chief of the Lipans,
and had driven the remainder of the tribes into the Santa Rosa
Mountains.
Washington and Mexico City both hit the ceiling over this invasion of a
friendly nation. Mackenzie could show no written orders for the action.
Had he failed, he would have been court-martialed, and he knew that
beforehand. But President Grant stood by his officer, and the incident
soon blew over. In fact a year or two later most of the remaining
Kickapoos were persuaded to accept Uncle Sam’s hospitality. They went
from Mexico to Fort Sill, by way of Fort Concho, and were given a cozy
place on a reservation in the Indian Territory.[9]
By this time it is apparent that our Colonel Mackenzie was the
fair-haired boy of President Grant and Generals Sherman and Sheridan.
During the Civil War, Grant had regarded him as his ablest young
officer. Now if things got out of line, you would simply “dress on
Bobs.”
Truly, things were about to get out of line again. Some foolish policy
of appeasement was still rampant in Washington, so Satanta and Big Tree
were released from the penitentiary. This combined with other factors,
such as the restlessness of the Indians on the reservations, and the
slaughter of the buffalo, united the efforts of the Comanche tribe.
Along with the Kiowas, now aided by the Cheyennes, they started trouble
all over again. Once more the raids, during the spring of 1874, hit the
Texas frontier, and as usual the soldiers while sleeping, had their
horses stolen. Buffalo hunters in their lonely camps on the Panhandle
plains were murdered and scalped.
Just east of the old Adobe Walls ruins, on the north side of the
Canadian River in what is now northeastern Hutchinson County,
twenty-eight men and one woman fortified themselves in three new adobe
buildings that had just been completed as a trading post in anticipation
of the northern migration of the great buffalo herds.
They were awakened before daylight on the morning of June 27, 1874, by a
sharp cracking noise. The newly cut cottonwood ridge pole that supported
the roof on one of the three buildings had settled, and the sod-covered
roof threatened to collapse at any moment. Fifteen men worked until
daylight propping up the roof. That accident saved the lives of all at
the Walls, for just as daylight came, being awake and outside, they saw
to the eastward, an estimated 700 mounted Indians riding hard for the
settlement. The attacking force was less than half a mile away when it
deployed in a great converging arc.
Billy Dixon, the buffalo hunter and frontier scout described the charge
in a dramatic manner:
“There was never a more splendidly barbaric sight. In after years I was
glad that I had seen it. Hundreds of warriors, the flower of the
fighting men of the Southwestern Plains tribes, mounted upon their
finest horses, armed with guns and lances, and carrying heavy shields of
thick buffalo hide, were coming like the wind. Over all was splashed the
rich colors of red, vermilion and ochre, on the bodies of the men, on
the bodies of the running horses. Scalps dangled from bridles, gorgeous
war-bonnets fluttered their plumes, bright feathers dangled from the
tails and manes of the horses, and the bronzed, half-naked bodies of the
riders glittered with ornaments of silver and brass. Behind this
head-long charging host stretched the Plains, on whose horizon the
rising sun was lifting its morning fires. The warriors seemed to emerge
from this glorious background.” (Life of Billy Dixon, by Olive K. Dixon,
The Southwest Press, Dallas, Texas.)
The three buildings were about equally manned by the whites. Doors were
closed and then barricaded, as were the windows and transoms, by sacks
of flour and grain. The first charge was broken up at the very walls of
the buildings by the lead from the big buffalo guns. Thanks to the thick
abode walls and to the dirt covered roofs, there was no danger of being
smoked out by fire.
The fight raged until noon. Two of the whites, unable to reach the
buildings, had been killed in the first onslaught. All of the horses and
oxen were dead or driven away. The Indians had lost heavily and now
withdrew, out of range. They could be seen moving about in the distance
but they did not attack again.
It was on the third day of the siege that Billy Dixon drew a bead on a
mounted Indian, 1,538 yards away on a ridge, and shot him dead. He was
firing a .50 calibre Sharp’s rifle, the largest of the buffalo guns.
During the next two or three days other buffalo hunters drifted into the
Walls until the garrison numbered about a hundred men. William Barclay
“Bat” Masterson had been present since the beginning of the fight and
had, like most of the other defenders, distinguished himself by his cool
behavior under fire.
By the end of the sixth day, the Indians had broken up into bands, the
Comanches under Quanah, the Kiowas under Lone Wolf, and the Cheyennes
under Stone Calf and White Shield. These bands then proceeded to work
over the other buffalo hunters on the south and central ranges. They
accomplished their objective. Buffalo hunting by the whites was
discontinued for that year.
Down in San Antonio, General Christopher C. Augur, the Department
Commander, fully backed by General Sherman, ordered full scale war. All
Indians off their reservations were declared hostiles and the campaign
against them took the form of a real squeeze play. It was relentlessly
carried out by a man-sized army under able lieutenants.
Colonel Nelson A. Miles was ordered to march westerly out of Camp Supply
in the Indian Territory; Colonel John Wynn Davidson was to move west out
of Fort Sill; Major William R. Price was to move down the Canadian out
of Fort Union, Territory of New Mexico; Colonel G. P. Buell was to leave
Fort Griffin, proceed north to the Red River then move up that stream,
and Colonel Mackenzie’s command headed northwesterly out of Fort Concho
for his old camping ground at Blanco Canyon. It appears that Colonel
Grierson was left out altogether. The campaign got under way in the late
summer of 1874.
Colonel Mackenzie marched out of Fort Concho with eight companies of
cavalry and three of infantry. He moved northwesterly up the North
Concho River for his first objective—the camp in Blanco Canyon.[10]
(Mackenzie appears to have been overall commander. However, the
biography of Nelson A. Miles seems to give Miles considerable credit for
subduing the Indians in our West. He was a volunteer in the Union Army
during the Civil War and rose to high rank, higher than that reached by
Mackenzie. Biographies can often be misleading, parts of them being word
of mouth stories from the principal himself. Miles could never have been
called a ‘modest’ man. Prior to his death he followed the example of
some of the Pharaohs of Egyptian history, and built his mausoleum on the
bank of a great river, in his case not the Nile, but the Potomac. It was
perfectly legal to do this, the site chosen being in the Arlington
National Cemetery, a place reserved for the remains of United States
servicemen. However, the timing of the construction of the mausoleum,
built even before he died, and the fact that he chose to plant himself,
not only in the most prominent spot to be found, but right in what had
once been General Robert E. Lee’s front yard, leads one to believe he
might have taken a slight advantage of his biographer.)
The campaign lasted until the latter part of December, 1874, when
through ice and snow, Mackenzie’s 4th Cavalry drifted into Fort Griffin.
By this time the other commanders had accomplished their objectives and
returned to their stations.
The strategy had been simple enough. The commands from the north, east
and west were to drive the tribes towards the rough country and the
canyons in the headwaters of the Red River, where Mackenzie, moving in
from the south, would destroy them. The actual carrying out of the
plans, was, as is usual, another thing. Variations in the weather were
severe; drinking water was scarce and when found usually had the same
effects on the drinkers as would castor oil; wood for fires was
generally lacking; corn for horses was an eternal problem; and the long
supply lines were constantly threatened by an alert enemy.
But it all worked out as planned. The four commanders, Miles, Buell,
Davidson and Price drove the tribes before them after spirited
engagements. On October 9th, Buell, moving up the Red River, destroyed a
camp of 400 lodges on the Salt Fork of that river. The usual plan of
operation was for each commander to use his friendly Indian scouts as
guides to locate a fresh Indian trail. After that it was hard riding
and, if possible, surprise attack on a village. Most of the supplies
came from the nearest forts, such as Sill, Fort Bascom, New Mexico and
Camp Supply in the northwestern part of the Indian Territory, and Fort
Griffin on the Brazos. It was during this campaign that plans were made
to locate Fort Elliott as a new defense in the Panhandle.[11]
Mackenzie’s 4th Cavalry covered many a weary mile. His biggest Indian
fight occurred in the Palo Duro Canyon where he surprised a large camp
in late September and reported the capture of 1,424 ponies, mules and
colts. Remembering his past experience with captive horses, he had the
entire herd shot rather than risk the possibility of their recapture
during the night by the braves.
This campaign broke up any further concerted action by the Indian
tribes. It had been long in materializing, and that, to many, still
seems hard to understand. Satanta was recaptured and sent back to the
penitentiary at Huntsville, but ended it all a short time thereafter by
jumping head first out of a second story window.
The other Kiowa Chief, Big Tree, upon being recaptured and imprisoned,
this time at Fort Sill, became a model prisoner. After gaining his
freedom, he became the Kiowa’s principal chief, caused a little trouble
in 1890 that was squelched without bloodshed by the soldiers, and he
then settled in a cottage near Mountain View, Oklahoma. He died, a
deacon in the Baptist Church November 18, 1929.
However much the Comanche tribes might by now be reduced in number,
their spirits remained high and restless on their reservations. As late
as 1878 and 1879, small war parties raided as deep into Texas as Fort
McKavett. But there was no coordinated action.
The extinction of the buffalo in our southern region was completed about
1878, and then the hunters turned in force against the remaining herds
on the northern parts of the Great Plains. These herds lasted about four
more years.
The men in the forts could be, and were, still busy. Colonel Grierson
took over at Concho in 1875. That same year, Colonel Shafter, with nine
troops of the 10th Cavalry and two companies of infantry, left after
rendezvousing at that post and headed for the Indian country near Blanco
Canyon. His supply train consisted of sixty-five wagons drawn by
six-mule teams, a pack train of nearly 700 mules and a beef herd. This
was in July. Good rains had fallen and water holes were expected to be
full. It took the expedition seventeen days to cover the 180 miles. (The
author cannot verify the reported strength of the mule train.)
Only a few Indians were met, so Shafter divided his command. His own
division out of Fort Duncan, returned to that post about December 18,
1875, after having explored the country now known as the South Plains of
Texas and New Mexico. One of his lieutenants, Geddes, leading a division
from Mustang Springs, near present Midland, on south to cross the Pecos
on a southwesterly course below Independence Creek, reached the Rio
Grande. There they engaged in a small Indian fight, then retraced their
steps to avoid the great canyon country, crossed the Pecos, and in a
worn out condition reached Fort Clark. Geddes then rested up and
returned to Fort Concho.
The entire expedition had explored and mapped what had been a vast and
unknown area, and had encountered only a few wandering bands of Indians.
It appeared that the Indian problems had at last been solved.
However, the final settlement of that problem came in 1880. An Apache
Chief, one Victorio, long confined to a reservation in the Territory of
New Mexico, hit the warpath with all of his tribe and their belongings;
warriors, squaws, papooses and portable lodges. Colonel Grierson, now
General Grierson, left Fort Concho and with detachments from Forts
Concho, Stockton, Davis and Quitman, sought to force an engagement in
that wild and mountainous and desert land that lies on both sides of the
Rio Grande, from El Paso on the west to the Davis Mountains on the east.
The United States cavalry was no match for the elusive Victorio, who
avoided any but guerrilla actions, and worked back and forth across the
Rio Grande, until Grierson, disgusted, returned to Fort Concho. His
forces had not been allowed to cross into Mexico and he thought that the
Mexican forces, also chasing the Apaches, had not fully cooperated with
him.
This may or may not have been so, but the end of the new war came in the
fall, when General Terrazas, then Governor of Chihuahua, forced an
engagement by trapping and surrounding the old chief. Only a few
survivors were able to escape this well planned but short campaign by
the Mexican forces.
The usefulness of the forts, so far as protection against the Indians
was concerned, now ended. The accompanying map shows their relative
locations and the dates on which they were organized and abandoned. Only
one, Fort Bliss at the Paso del Norte, serves the United States Army at
this time.
Fort Concho remained active until 1889, but it was only another army
post. Small parties of Indians roamed the frontier even in the 80’s, but
the Texas Rangers and the frontiersmen took care of them.
Of all of those that were abandoned during the last century, Fort Concho
is the best preserved. It took time to build it, and when finally
abandoned, its lovely stone buildings and the land on which they stand,
reverted to the original landowners, Adams and Wickes, the United States
Army having been only a rent-paying tenant.
Just what do some of the others look like at this time? Fort Worth is
covered somewhere under a modern city that bears its name. The
foundations of old Fort Mason can be seen on a hill within the city
limits of Mason, the cut stones of its buildings having been removed for
construction work elsewhere. The same goes for old Lancaster, where only
a few gaunt white limestone chimneys can be seen rising against the
mesas. However, if you care to walk over to them, you will see the old
foundations and a small graveyard. That is all that is left.
If a Comanche or Kiowa Indian observed Fort Phantom Hill today for the
first time, he would probably name it, “Many chimneys that do not
smoke.” The buildings are gone and he would not be interested in their
foundations.
Some of the limestone houses at Fort McKavett are still being occupied,
and many of the other old fort buildings are outlined by roofless walls.
Several of the original buildings of Fort Stockton still remain and have
been converted into gracious homes. Fort Davis is a line of stone and
adobe shells, the timbers of the overhanging porches being long gone
except where the late Andrew Simmons restored a few, and built a
creditable museum in one building.
Fort Clark, rising by the beautiful Las Moras Springs, is a combination
of the old and the new, having seen service in the last World War. It is
interesting to observe that in its case, it is unfortunately the new and
not the old that is missing.
The old Spanish Fort (presidio) on the San Saba River? Enough of the
rubble remains to outline the outer wall of the large courtyard. This
was a massive stone fortification and each of its four corners was
protected by a protruding circular stone tower. The State Highway
Department has restored one of these towers and a part of the outer
wall. The old Mission, San Saba de la Cruz, across and down the river
from this presidio, disappeared along with its administering priests
during the great Comanche attack against the Spaniards and their Apache
allies, back in 1758, or thereabout.
The preservation of the existing buildings of Fort Concho, and the
restoration of the destroyed ones, were begun in 1930 by Mrs. Ginevra
Wood Carson, a gracious and far-sighted lady of San Angelo. She had
already started the West Texas Museum in about 1928, and it was located
in the new Tom Green County Court House, where it soon outgrew its
housing facilities She therefore turned her attention towards the old
Fort. The original Administration or G.H.Q. Building of Fort Concho was
privately owned but in excellent condition, and it stood at the Eastern
end of the old Quadrangle. Mr. R. Wilbur Brown, Sr. of San Angelo
recognized the far-sightedness of Mrs. Carson. He bought the
Administration Building from its owners and deeded it toward a museum of
pioneer days and the preservation of old Fort Concho.