by Scott Sosebee
When it became obvious to the Comanche living on the reservation lands in Oklahoma by 1874 that the United States was not going to honor the strictures of the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, despair and anger led many Comanche to see that the only alternative they had was to wage war. Into such an atmosphere rose a new leader, a Shaman by the name of Isa-Tai, a member of the strong Quahadi Band. Isa-Tai spread a message of a new “Sun Dance” ritual. The Sun Dance was not a part of Comanche religion and ceremony. Instead, it was a Lakota ceremony that called for spiritual renewal and communal sacrifice as an offering to the Creator to protect the community. Isa-Tai’s intention with his call and adoption was to spur the Comanche to war to protect their lives and lifestyle.
Not that the Comanche needed much convincing. The conditions on the reservation were abhorrent, as the lack of food and the horrible living conditions had convinced the majority that their only choice was to leave Oklahoma and return to Texas and stop the White incursions onto their homeland and also to confront the buffalo hunters that had inundated the plains. Such a war sentiment led the Comanche to not only embrace Isa-Tai’s call but also to rally behind a new war leader, Quanah the son of legendary Quahadi leader Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, who was captured as a child and raised as a Comanche who eventually married Peta Nocona. Quanah devised a plan that called for the first strike to be against the buffalo hunters and then to deal with the eventual U.S. Army intervention on the high plains of the Texas Panhandle, an area that the Comanche knew well, but the soldiers were less skilled in traversing.
The war began on June 27, 1874 when Quanah led about three hundred warriors against a buffalo hunter camp/trading post at Adobe Walls, which is about ninety miles northeast of present-day Amarillo. Quanah’s plan was a surprise attack on the approximately thirty hunters in the camp, but the Comanche had not figured on the buffalo hunters highly accurate rifles that could also be deadly at long distances. The Whites at Adobe Walls repelled the Comanche attack and dispersed them. However, the Comanche did not return to their reserved homes in Oklahoma and remained in the Panhandle to attack and raid on White settlements, which included a second battle at Adobe Walls and other raids by various bands of Comanche, Kiowa and Southern Cheyenne.
The United States Army for the region, under the command of General Phillip Sheridan formulated a response, with Sheridan using the attack on Adobe Walls and subsequent raids as a pretext of ending Indian resistance on the southern plains once and for all. He called for a plan that sent five columns out of various frontier forts to sweep whatever Native bands they encountered before them, and then would converge on the upper tributaries of the Red River in the Panhandle. Colonel Nelson A. Miles (who would go on to be the general of all U.S. troops in the Spanish American War) would move from Fort Dodge in Kansas, Colonel John Davidson led troops out of Oklahoma’s Fort Sill, Lt. Colonel George Buell came out of Fort Griffin in north-central Texas, Colonel Ranald MacKenzie left and traveled north from Fort Concho, while Major William R. Price progressed east out of Fort Union in New Mexico. The plan was to pursue and harass the assembled Native fighters until they were either fully eliminated or agreed to surrender and return to the reservation in Oklahoma.
Dodge and his companies of the Sixth Cavalry were the first to encounter a war party of Cheyenne in August, 1874, along a lower portion of Palo Duro Canyon. It was more of a running pursuit battle, which Miles greatly exaggerated as a huge victory in his report. Taking advantage of the unrest, a contingent of Kiowa, in September, attacked an army supply wagon in an initial skirmish and subsequent siege, that only ended when troops from Miles’ companies came as a relief. Miles sent patrols to try to find the Kiowa, but they were attacked and pinned down in the Battle of Buffalo Wallow. There were other, sporadic contacts between U.S. cavalry troops and Native bands throughout September and early October.
The largest—and most notable—fights between the Native bands and U.S. soldiers came between the Comnache the troops led by MacKenzie. Troops from the Fourth United States Cavalry, and companies from the Tenth and Eleventh Infantry, moved out of Fort Concho and first encountered an Indian force at Tule Canyon on September 26. MacKenzie outflanked the force and then pursued them as they took refuge in Palo Duro Canyon. The Natives had long used the canyon as a shelter from White attackers and did not expect an attack down the canyon walls, but MacKenzie called for an advance that inflicted few casualties but captured and slaughtered thousands of Indian horses. Left afoot and low on supplies, the defeated Bands, one of the largest forces left, returned to their reservations.
The remaining fall of 1874 and winter and summer of 1875 were closing actions. The U.S soldiers remained in the field and pursued and harassed the tribal bands through out Northwest Texas. One body from Miles’ troops inflicted a huge defeat on a Cheyenne group at McClellan Creek not far from present-day Pampa, and other smaller skirmishes between Buell’s men out of Fort Griffin continued through early 1875. The warriors under Quanah continued to hold out through the winter and early spring of 1875, but their plight was a final gasp of action against superior numbers of U.S. troops. Finally, exhausted and out of options, Quanah and his fighters surrendered to Ranald MacKenzie at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in late April 1875. The Red River War was at an end. The Southern Plains Indian peoples presence in Texas was at an end, and with the Native American way of life exterminated from the plains, White Texans began to move west in large numbers, at first to organize cattle and other stock operations, and later they began ploughing and planting crops, ultimately ushering in the largest cotton-growing region in the United States.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee the Executive Director of the Association and can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.