Battle of North Fork of Red River, 1872 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the Indian Wars | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
![]() 4th Cavalry Regiment (United States), Tonkawa scouts | Comanche Kotsoteka Band | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Ranald S. Mackenzie | Kai-Wotche (killed) Mow-way (escaped) | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
12 officers and 272 enlisted men, 20 Tonkawa scouts | Unknown, but the best guesses are 160 in the band, including 100 women and children | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
3 killed 7 wounded [1] | approximately 50 killed 130 captured [2] | ||||||
Location within Texas |
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 warriors. [3]
This battle is primarily remembered as the place where the army for the first time struck at the Comanches in the heart of the Llano Estacado in the western panhandle of Texas. [4]
This battle was a precursor to the Red River War of 1873–4. In early 1872, the new Military Commander of the District of Texas decided it was time to strike at the Comanches in the heart of their homeland on the Comancheria, much as the Texas Rangers had done 14 years before at the Battle of Little Robe Creek. [3] The Grant administration's "Quaker Peace Policy" was still in effect, which placed the appointment of Indian agents in the hands of Protestant religious organizations (Quakers were the first to participate, thus the name of the policy), not political patrons. In addition, Indians were to be moved to reservations peacefully or forcefully, and U.S. troops were not to engage in combat against them. Under the policy, federal troops at Fort Sill could not be deployed against the Comanche. Troops from the Texas District, however, could be. [5]
Mackenzie marched out of Fort Concho in early July 1872, to begin his campaign. He reestablished Camp Supply on Duck Creek, on the edge of the Llano Estacado where he established his command. From there, McKenzie dispatched several scouting parties, one of which discovered a well-traveled path with hoof prints of a large herd of cattle stretching west. This find caught Mackenzie's attention, and on July 28, 1872, he marched 272 troopers, 12 officers, and 20 Tonkawa scouts into the heart of the Comancheria. [6] On August 7, 1872, the detachment obtained supplies and rested at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. They then marched north to Fort Bascom, New Mexico, arriving August 16, 1872. [3]
Ortiz, who accompanied Mackenzie, led the command to the east, skirting Palo Duro Canyon. Mackenzie split off smaller detachments to search possible locations of the Indian camps but with no success. They returned to Camp Supply on August 31, 1872. The expedition had marched close to 700 miles (1,127 km) over a five-week period, and discovered two new routes through the Staked Plains. These routes were reported to be shorter and had better water access than the Goodnight–Loving Trail that was being used to drive cattle to markets in Kansas. [3]
Mackenzie rested his men until September 21, when he marched his troops north to search the last potential campsite of the Comanche, on the north fork of the Red River. On September 28, a scouting patrol under Lt. Boehm and Captain Wirt Davis, [7] discovered a large Kotsoteka Comanche village. The cavalry moved within a half mile of the village before they were seen by the Indians. From there, they charged the village, capturing it after a half-hour battle. Mackenzie lost three men and three were wounded. The Comanche lost an estimated fifty or more, including Chief Kai-Wotche and his wife, who were both killed. Mow-way (Shaking Hand) escaped. [3]
The army had caught the village completely unaware, and captive Clinton Smith in later years would accuse Mackenzie and the army of a massacre. [8] Mackenzie reported officially twenty-three Comanches killed, although there may have been more. The warriors, who sustained heavy casualties, threw some of their dead into a ten-foot-deep pool to keep them away from the Tonkawas' knives and cooking pots; the Tonkawas were reputedly cannibals. [3]
As justification for the attack, the army claimed it found overwhelming proof of the band's raids on white settlements in the wreckage of the village. [9] For instance, a survivor of the wagon train massacred at Howard's Wells the previous spring recognized forty-three of its mules. [3]
Almost 800–3000 horses were rounded up by the troops while the lodges, along with the stores of meat, equipment, and clothing, save for a few choice robes, were burned. [10] About 130 Comanches, mostly women and children, were taken prisoner, but six of these were too badly wounded to be moved long distances. [3]
After dark, Mackenzie's command moved to the hills several miles away from the burned village and camped. Fearing that the captured pony herd would stampede the cavalry horses, Mackenzie had them corralled. That night and the next, however, the Comanches succeeded in recovering most of their horses, plus those of the Tonkawa scouts. [11] The Comanche prisoners were kept under guard as the command rejoined its supply train and retraced its route back south to the main supply base on Duck Creek, where the Indians were transferred to Fort Concho, where they were kept prisoner through the winter. MacKenzie used the captives as a bargaining tool to force the off-reservation Indians back to the reservation, and to force them to free white captives. [3]
MacKenzie's stratagem worked, for shortly after the battle, Mow-way and Parra-o-coom (Bull Bear) moved their bands to the vicinity of the Wichita Agency. The Nokoni chief Horseback, who himself counted family members among the Indian prisoners, took the initiative in persuading the Comanches to trade stolen livestock and white captives, including Clinton Smith, in exchange for their own women and children. [3]
Corporal William O'Neill, Blacksmith James Pratt, Farrier David Larkin, Privates Edward Branagan and William Rankin, Corporal Henry McMasters, Sergeant William Wilson, Sergeant William Foster, and First Sergeant William McNamara were awarded the Medal of Honor.
This marked the first time the United States had successfully attacked the Comanches in the heart of the Comancheria, and showed that the Llano Estacado were no longer a safe haven. Further, this battle emphasized that if the army wished to force the wild Comanches onto reservations, the way to do it was destroy their villages and leave them unable to survive off-reservation. MacKenzie's tactics were such a success that William T. Sherman empowered him to use them further during the Red River War of 1874. His attack on the village at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, and his destruction of the Comanche horse herd at Tule Canyon, both in 1874, mirrored this battle in strategy and effect. [4]
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).
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 Expeditionary Force that was reacting to attacks on white settlers moving into the Southwest. The battle on November 25, 1864, resulted in light casualties on both sides but was one of the largest engagements fought on the Great Plains.
The Comancheria or Comanchería was a region of New Mexico, west Texas and nearby areas occupied by the Comanche before the 1860s. Historian Pekka Hämäläinen has argued that the Comancheria formed an empire at its peak, and this view has been echoed by other non-Comanche historians.
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.
William Wilson was a United States soldier who served with the United States Army's Cavalry as a sergeant during the mid to late 19th century. He is known for being one of only nineteen individuals to twice receive his nation's highest award for valor, the U.S. Medal of Honor.
Fort Chadbourne was a fort established by the United States Army on October 28, 1852, in what is now Coke County, Texas, to protect the western frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail route. It was named after Lt. T.L. Chadbourne, who was killed in the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. It was defended by Companies A and K of the 8th U.S. Infantry. During the early days of the American Civil War, the fort surrendered to the Confederates on February 28, 1861, even before the Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, but was reoccupied by federal troops from 1865 to 1867.
Fort Richardson was a United States Army installation located in present-day Jacksboro, Texas. Named in honor of Union General Israel B. Richardson, who died in the Battle of Antietam during the American Civil War, it was active from 1867 to 1878. Today, the site, with a few surviving buildings, is called Fort Richardson State Park, Historic Site and Lost Creek Reservoir State Trailway. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963 for its role in securing the state's northern frontier in the post-Civil War era.
The Battle of Plum Creek was a clash between allied Tonkawa, militia, and Rangers of the Republic of Texas and a huge Comanche war party under Chief Buffalo Hump, which took place near Lockhart, Texas, on August 12, 1840, following the Great Raid of 1840 as the Comanche war party returned to west Texas.
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.
Robert Simpson Neighbors was an Indian agent and Texas state legislator. Known as a fair and determined protector of Indian interests as guaranteed by treaty, he was murdered by a white man named Cornet, whose brother-in-law had been defamed by Neighbors, accusing the brother-in-law a common horse thief, responsible for stealing horses from the reservation Indians. When Neighbors refused to recant the accusation in front of the two men, Cornet shot Neighbors with a shotgun. Cornet was murdered and Murphy acquitted as he did not pull the trigger. Cornet went on the run and was killed during his arrest.
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.
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 onto a reservation after the Warren Wagon Train Raid. 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.
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.
Anderson, H. Allen: Battle of the North Fork – from Handbook of Texas online