Part 3

But meanwhile Mackenzie had returned to Fort Concho, where he arrived in January of that year, and set up the headquarters of the 4th Cavalry Regiment. Then in March, the 4th itself left Fort Richardson for Concho, and the 7th Cavalry took over at Richardson.[8] The 4th headed for Fort Concho, the same column, soldiers, wagons, wives and their household plunder that had moved north to Richardson two years before. General Sherman had decided to do something about that other Texas frontier, the Rio Grande, and he wanted Mackenzie with his 4th Cavalry to handle the job.

Things were not, and never had been, peaceful along the Rio Grande. It was another frontier with two parts. From Ringgold Barracks, opposite the Mexican city of Camargo, on down to the mouth of the Rio Grande, a man by the name of Juan Cortina, once a general in the Mexican Army that had opposed General Zachary Taylor’s invasion of Mexico, sought to make a living in the grand style. He was very successful as a bandit and became the “Robin Hood” of his side of the border. During the Civil War his banditry ceased. He became a trader and did well because the Rio Grande became the only outlet of the Southern Confederacy. But with the close of the war, he resumed his favorite role as a bandit and declared that the Nueces River and not the Rio Grande, was the border between his country and the United States.

The result was that he and other lesser bandits overran the entire 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.

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.

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.