Battle of Blanco Canyon | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the Comanche Campaign | |||||||
Blanco Canyon, seen from the west rim, on Highway 82 | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
United States 4th Cavalry Regiment (United States), Tonkawa scouts | Comanche Kotsoteka and Quahadi Band | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Ranald S. Mackenzie (WIA) Clarence Mauck | Quannah Parker | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
600 men, including 20 Tonkawas [1] : 159 | 300–400 [1] : 178 | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
1 dead, 2 reported wounded, including Col. Mackenzie. | 5 [1] : 177 | ||||||
The Battle of Blanco Canyon was the decisive battle of Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie's initial campaign against the Comanche in West Texas and marked the first time the Comanches had been attacked in the heart of their homeland. It was also the first time a large military force explored the heart of Comancheria. On 12 August 1871 Mackenzie and Colonel Benjamin Grierson were asked by Indian Agent Lawrie Tatum to begin an expedition against the Kotsoteka and Quahadi Comanche bands, both of whom had refused to relocate to a reservation after the Warren Wagon Train Raid. [1] : 158 Col. Mackenzie assembled a powerful force consisting of eight companies of the Fourth United States Cavalry, two companies of the Eleventh Infantry, and a group of twenty Tonkawa scouts. [1] : 158
The force assembled at the site of old Camp Cooper, on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River on 19 September 1871. [1] : 157 The force set out in a northwesterly direction on 30 September 1871, hoping to find the Quahadi village, which housed the warriors led by Quanah Parker. [1] : 159 This village was believed to be encamped in Blanco Canyon near the headwaters of the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos River, southeast of the site of present Crosbyton, Texas. On the fourth night of the march, the expedition established a base camp at the junction of the Salt Fork of the Brazos and Duck Creek, near the site of present Spur, Texas. The following day, Col. Mackenzie decided to leave his infantry to fortify the base camp, and set out for Blanco Canyon with his cavalry, hoping to catch the Comanche by surprise, and strike a blow at them in their heartland. [2]
In the afternoon of October 9, 1871, the cavalry force reached the White River and Blanco Canyon, the first non-Comanche military force to enter Blanco Canyon since the rise of the Comanche as a power on the plains. [3] Near midnight, Quanah Parker personally led a small Comanche force which stampeded through the cavalry camp, driving off about seventy horses and mules. [1] : 165, 167 As the pursuing cavalry reached the top of a hill on the top of the canyon, they found a much larger party of Indians, who were waiting in ambush. [1] : 170 The cavalry fought their way clear, but suffered the loss of one cavalryman, [1] : 177 the sole Army fatality of the entire campaign. Lt. Robert Goldthwaite Carter and a detail of five men mounted a rear guard action against the Comanches, and the remainder of the unit retreated. [1] : 174 This action on 10 October 1871, won Lt. Carter the Medal of Honor. [1] : 213 [2]
Mackenzie's main column and the Tonkawa scouts, hearing the gunfire, advanced and probably saved the detachment from slaughter, as more Comanche had managed to surround the retreating unit. [1] : 179 With the arrival of the main cavalry column, Quanah Parker and his warriors retreated. [1] : 177 The Comanches fought their way up the walls of Blanco Canyon, sniping at the oncoming troopers and taunting their Tonkawa enemies before disappearing from the Army's sight as they went over the Caprock Escarpment, and onto the Llano Estacado, Carter lacerating his leg against a boulder in the process. [1] : 181 [2]
Col. Mackenzie pursued the Indians over the next few days, forcing them to abandon lodge poles, buffalo hides, tools, and most of their possessions as they fled. [1] : 192 These were the necessities of life for the Comanche, and meant the coming winter would be unusually bleak, without shelter or accumulated food. The Army was able to catch up with the fleeing warriors, slowed by their families, in the late afternoon of October 12, 1871. [1] : 188 Mackenzie was unable to attack them due to the arrival of an unseasonable "blue norther", (a winter storm from the Great Plains). [1] : 192 High winds, blinding snow, hail and sleet halted the cavalry advance, and allowed the Comanche to again retreat safely. [1] : 195 [4] The cavalry force continued the pursuit the following morning, but the weather and conditions allowed the Comanche to disappear into the storm. [1] : 196 Mackenzie ordered his troops to follow what the scouts believed was the Comanche trail for about forty miles, nearly to the vicinity of present-day Plainview, Texas. [1] : 196 Given the deteriorating state of his men and horses, and low rations, Mackenzie reluctantly turned back. [1] : 196
On October 15, 1871, the cavalry re-entered Blanco Canyon and Army scouts saw two Comanches spying on the troops on the walls of the Canyon. [1] : 197 In the brief fight that followed their discovery, the two Comanches were killed, while Mackenzie and another soldier were wounded. [1] : 198 Despite his wound, Mackenzie continued with the command to the mouth of Blanco Canyon, where they rested for a week awaiting supplies from Henry Ware Lawton. [1] : 202 On October 24, 1871, Mackenzie decided to continue the campaign, and began moving towards the headwaters of the Pease River. [1] : 202 However, Mackenzie's wound became too painful and he placed Major Clarence Mauck in command, remaining back with the other disabled and dismounted troops at Duck Creek. [1] : 202 On November 6, in the midst of a snow storm, Major Mauck's expedition returned to the camp at Duck Creek. [1] : 205–206 On November 12, 1871, Mackenzie's force returned to Fort Griffin, ending the campaign at Fort Richardson on 17 Nov. [1] : 206
Col. Mackenzie regarded the entire expedition as unsuccessful. The command had marched 509 miles, and lost one man and many horses. He considered that they had accomplished nothing but frighten one hostile Comanche band. However, he had marched to the heart of the Comancheria (and mapped the region in the process), penetrated an area of the Llano Estacado no Americans except Comancheros had ever seen, destroyed the winter equipment of the Comanche he encountered, and temporarily driven them from their homeland. The lessons he learned about Plains Indian warfare as a result of the battle of Blanco Canyon and this expedition informed his plans and actions during the Red River War, and resulted a few years later in the surrender of the last free Comanche. [2] [4]
Quanah Parker was a war leader of the Kwahadi ("Antelope") band of the Comanche Nation. He was likely born into the Nokoni ("Wanderers") band of Tabby-nocca and grew up among the Kwahadis, the son of Kwahadi Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an Anglo-American who had been abducted as an eight-year-old child during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836 and assimilated into the Nokoni tribe. Following the apprehension of several Kiowa chiefs in 1871, Quanah Parker emerged as a dominant figure in the Red River War, clashing repeatedly with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. With European-Americans hunting American bison, the Comanches' primary sustenance, into near extinction, Quanah Parker eventually surrendered and peaceably led the Kwahadi to the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
The Llano Estacado, sometimes translated into English as the Staked Plains, is a region in the Southwestern United States that encompasses parts of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas. One of the largest mesas or tablelands on the North American continent, the elevation rises from 3,000 feet (900 m) in the southeast to over 5,000 feet (1,500 m) in the northwest, sloping almost uniformly at about 10 feet per mile (2 m/km).
Peta Nocona, also known as Puhtocnocony, or Tah-con-ne-ah-pe-ah, the son of Puhihwikwasu'u, or Iron Jacket, was a chief of the Comanche Quahadi band. He married Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been taken as a captive during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836 and was adopted into the tribe by Tabby-nocca's family. Among their three children was Quanah Parker, the last war chief of the Comanche.
The Comanche Wars were a series of armed conflicts fought between Comanche peoples and Spanish, Mexican, and American militaries and civilians in the United States and Mexico from as early as 1706 until at least the mid-1870s. The Comanche were the Native American inhabitants of a large area known as Comancheria, which stretched across much of the southern Great Plains from Colorado and Kansas in the north through Oklahoma, Texas, and eastern New Mexico and into the Mexican state of Chihuahua in the south. For more than 150 years, the Comanche were the dominant native tribe in the region, known as “the Lords of the Southern Plains”, though they also shared parts of Comancheria with the Wichita, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache and, after 1840, the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho.
The First Battle of Adobe Walls took place between the United States Army and Native Americans. The Kiowa, Comanche and Plains Apache tribes drove from the battlefield a United States column that was responding to attacks on white settlers moving into the Southwest. The battle on November 25, 1864, resulted in light casualties on both sides.
The Red River War was a military campaign launched by the United States Army in 1874 to displace the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes from the Southern Plains, and forcibly relocate the tribes to reservations in Indian Territory. The war had several army columns crisscross the Texas Panhandle in an effort to locate, harass, and capture nomadic Native American bands. Most of the engagements were small skirmishes with few casualties on either side. The war wound down over the last few months of 1874, as fewer and fewer Indian bands had the strength and supplies to remain in the field. Though the last significantly sized group did not surrender until mid-1875, the war marked the end of free-roaming Indian populations on the southern Great Plains.
Comanche history – in the 18th and 19th centuries the Comanche became the dominant tribe on the southern Great Plains. The Comanche are often characterized as "Lords of the Plains." They presided over a large area called Comancheria which they shared with allied tribes, the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Wichita, and after 1840 the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. Comanche power and their substantial wealth depended on horses, trading, and raiding. Adroit diplomacy was also a factor in maintaining their dominance and fending off enemies for more than a century. They subsisted on the bison herds of the Plains which they hunted for food and skins.
The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon was a military confrontation and a significant United States victory during the Red River War. The battle occurred on September 28, 1874, when several U.S. Army companies under Ranald S. Mackenzie attacked a large encampment of Plains Indians in Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle.
The Comanche campaign is a general term for military operations by the United States government against the Comanche tribe in the newly settled west. Between 1867 and 1875, military units fought against the Comanche people in a series of expeditions and campaigns until the Comanche surrendered and relocated to a reservation.
The Antelope Hills expedition was a campaign from January to May 1858 by the Texas Rangers and members of other allied Native American tribes against Comanche and Kiowa villages in the Comancheria. It began in western Texas and ended in a series of fights with the Comanche tribe on May 12, 1858, at a place called Antelope Hills by Little Robe Creek, a tributary of the Canadian River in what is now Oklahoma. The hills are also called the "South Canadians", as they surround the Canadian River. The fighting on May 12, 1858, is often called the Battle of Little Robe Creek.
The Battle of Little Robe Creek, also known as the Battle of Antelope Hills and the Battle of the South Canadian, took place on May 12, 1858. It was a series of three distinct encounters that took place on a single day, between the Comanches, with Texas Rangers, militia, and allied Tonkawas attacking them. The military action was undertaken against the laws of the United States at the time, which strictly forbade such an incursion into the Indian Territories of Oklahoma, and marked a significant escalation of the Indian Wars. It also marked the first time American or Texas Ranger forces had penetrated the Comancheria as far as the Wichita Mountains and Canadian River, and it marked a decisive defeat for the Comanche.
The Texas–Indian wars were a series of conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians during the 19th-century. Conflict between the Plains Indians and the Spanish began before other European and Anglo-American settlers were encouraged—first by Spain and then by the newly Independent Mexican government—to colonize Texas in order to provide a protective-settlement buffer in Texas between the Plains Indians and the rest of Mexico. As a consequence, conflict between Anglo-American settlers and Plains Indians occurred during the Texas colonial period as part of Mexico. The conflicts continued after Texas secured its independence from Mexico in 1836 and did not end until 30 years after Texas became a state of the United States, when in 1875 the last free band of Plains Indians, the Comanches led by Quahadi warrior Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.
The Battle of North Fork or the Battle of the North Fork of the Red River occurred on September 28, 1872, near McClellan Creek in Gray County, Texas, United States. A monument on that spot marks the site of the battle between the Comanche Indians under Kai-Wotche and Mow-way and a detachment of cavalry and scouts under U.S. Army Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. There was an accusation that the battle was really an attempt "to make a massacre," as during the height of battle some noncombatants were wounded while mixed in with the warriors.
Plácido was major Native American Chief of the Tonkawa Indians in Texas during the Spanish and Mexican rule, the Republic of Texas era, and with Texas as part of the United States.
Iron Jacket was a Native American War Chief and Chief of the Quahadi band of Comanche Indians.
Robert Goldthwaite Carter was a US Cavalry officer who participated in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars, most notably against the Comanche during which he received the Medal of Honor for his role against a Comanche raiding party at Brazos River in Texas on October 10, 1871.
Blanco Canyon is a canyon located in the U.S. state of Texas. Eroded by the White River into the Caprock Escarpment on the east side of the Llano Estacado, the canyon runs for 34 miles (55 km) in a southeasterly direction, gradually widening from its beginning in southwestern Floyd County to 10 miles (16 km) across at its mouth in southeastern Crosby County. It also gradually deepens from 50 feet (15 m) at its beginning to 300 to 500 feet at its mouth. One side canyon, 5-mile long Crawfish Canyon, was cut by Crawfish Creek as it feeds into the White River from the west.
The White River is an intermittent stream in the South Plains of Texas and a tributary of the Brazos River of the United States. It rises 8 miles (13 km) west of Floydada in southwestern Floyd County at the confluence of Callahan Draw and Running Water Draw. From there, it runs southeast for 62 miles (100 km) to its mouth on the Salt Fork Brazos River in northwestern Kent County. Besides these two headwaters, which rise near Hale Center and in Curry County, New Mexico, respectively, other tributaries include Pete, Crawfish, and Davidson Creeks. The White River drains an area of 1,690 sq mi (4,377 km2).
Big Red Meat was a Nokoni Comanche chief and a leader of Native American resistance against White invasion during the second half of the 19th century.
Mow-way or Moway also referred to by European settlers as Shaking Hand or Hand Shaker, was the principal leader and war chief of the Kotsoteka band of the Comanche during the 1860s and 1870s, following the deaths of Kuhtsu-tiesuat in 1864 and Tasacowadi in 1872.