| Comanche campaign | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 United States | Comanche | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| William T. Sherman Ranald Mackenzie | Quanah Parker | ||||||
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.
Western settlement brought the Spanish, French, English, and American settlers into regular contact with the native tribes of the region. Many of these Indians were friendly, and received the new settlers gladly, offering to trade and coexist peacefully, while other tribes resisted the newcomers. The idea of Manifest Destiny as well as the Homestead Act pushed American and immigrant settlers further west, thereby creating more competition for a finite amount of land. This competition for land created tension between the Anglo settlers and the Natives of the region. In an effort to prevent conflicts in the area, many treaties were signed promising land and peace between the two parties, but such treaties were rarely honored. The Comanche tribe was one of the main sources of native resistance in the region that became Oklahoma and Texas, and often came into conflict with both other tribes and the newer settlers. With the outbreak of the Civil War, some Indian tribes attempted to align themselves with what they believed would be the winning side. In the case of the Comanche, the tribe signed a treaty with the Confederacy, and when the war ended they were forced to swear loyalty to the United States government at Fort Smith. [1] This did little to end the cycle of raiding which had come to typify this region. Spreading over a large expanse of the southern plains, the Comanche fought hard diplomatically to maintain power in the region they controlled. In the Treaty of Little Arkansas in 1865, the Comanche tribe was awarded a large piece of land spanning parts of Oklahoma and Texas. Some parts of this region, called the Comancheria, soon became part of the Indian reservation. [2]
This treaty was later followed by the Medicine Lodge Treaty in 1867, which helped to solidify the reservation system for the Plains Indians. These policies eventually became part of President Ulysses S. Grant's Peace Policy, which prioritized missionary work and education over fighting. [2] President Grant's Peace Policy became an important part of the white-Indian relations for a number of years.
A faction of the Comanche tribe, the Quahadi, was arguably the most resistant towards the Anglo settlers. Skeptical of what they would bring, the Quahadi avoided contact with these men. Goods were never exchanged between the groups, and because of this seclusion they were largely unaffected by the cholera plagues in 1816 and 1849. The Quahadi were noted for their fierce nature; so much so that other Comanche feared them. They were the wealthiest of the Comanche in terms of horses and cattle, and they had never signed a peace treaty. It was this faction of the Comanche that gave the American troops the most trouble during this period. [3] General William T. Sherman sent four cavalry companies from the United States Army to capture the Indians responsible for the Warren Wagon raid, but this assignment eventually developed into eliminating the threat of the Comanche tribe, namely Quanah Parker and his Quahadi. Following on the heels of the Civil War, the Army had a low number of recruits, and very little money to pay the soldiers they did have, so few men were sent west to fight the Indian threat. Approximately 5,000 enlisted men, divided into ten regiments made up the American forces that would face the powerful Comanche. [4] General Sherman picked Ranald S. Mackenzie, described by President Grant as "the most promising young officer in the army," commanding the 4th Cavalry, to lead the attack against the Comanche tribe. [5] Mackenzie and his men developed a style of fighting designed to slowly defeat the Comanche rather than face them in open battle. Colonel Mackenzie embarked on several expeditions into the Comancheria in an effort to destroy the Comanche winter camps and crops, as well as their horses and cattle. Reminiscent of General Sherman's "March to the Sea," the 4th Cavalry fought the Comanche by destroying their means of survival. [4]
In the fall of 1871, Mackenzie and his 4th Cavalry, as well as two companies in the 11th Infantry, arrived in Texas, began to seek out their target. [6] The campaign began in the Llano Estacado region where Comanche were rumored to have been camping. In his first expedition, Mackenzie and his men attacked these camps twice. The campaign began with the Battle of Blanco Canyon. Through the use of Tonkawa scouts, Mackenzie was able to track Quanah Parker's faction, and save another group of American soldiers from slaughter. [7] They succeeded in pushing the Quahadi far into the region before they were forced to abandon the hunt for the winter. [8] The second expedition lasted longer than the first, from September to November, and succeeded in making it clear to the Comanche that the peace policy was no longer in effect. Mackenzie established a strong border patrol at several forts in the area, such as Fort Richardson, Fort Griffin, and Fort Concho. While there was little direct combat between the two forces, the American tactics were successful. By following the Comanche tribe throughout the region and destroying each of their camps, Mackenzie and his cavalry were able to hinder the Comanche's ability to prepare properly for winter. [5] Mackenzie's third expedition, in September 1872, was the largest. Capturing 130 Indian women and children, stealing horses, and ransacking Indian camps, Mackenzie and the Fourth Cavalry spanned the region several times with the assistance of the Twenty-fourth Infantry and his Tonkawa scouts. [5] These captives were later used in a deal made between the soldiers at Fort Sill and the Comanche tribe: peace in exchange for hostages. The Comanche agreed to the terms, and there was a period of peace in the region. [8] During this period of peace, Mackenzie continued to map and explore the Llano Estacado region through the south and central areas, while also creating a second front in the west in order to separate the Comanche from their source of weapons and food. [9] In the winter of 1873, record numbers of Comanche people resided at Fort Sill, and after the exchange of hostages, there was a noticeable drop in violence between the Anglos and the Native Indians. However, in an attempt to finalize the submission of the Comanche people, there was a movement towards bison hunting. The species became threatened as a result, and those Comanche people who were not at Fort Sill were on the brink of starvation. [10] The remaining Native American Tribes began to gather at the North Fork of the Red River, the center of the slowly diminishing Comancheria region. Due to tensions between them and the Indian Office, the Indians saw the withholding of rations as a declaration of war, and acted accordingly. [10]
The Second Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874 was one of the opening engagements of the summer and fall campaign in 1874, even though it did not involve military personnel. After the attack, federal officials issued an order stating that all Southern Plains Indians were expected to be living on their designated reservation lands by August 1, 1874. [11] After the deadline passed, approximately 2,000 Comanche remained in the Comancheria region. When they refused to relocate, the United States government dispatched 1,400 soldiers, launching an operation that became known as the Red River War. [12]
One of the deciding battles of the Red River War was fought at Palo Duro Canyon on September 28, 1874. Colonel Mackenzie and his Black Seminole Scouts and Tonkawa scouts surprised the Comanche, as well as a number of other tribes, and destroyed their camps. [13] The battle ended with only three Comanche casualties, but resulted in the destruction of both the camp and the Comanche pony herd. This defeat spelled the end of the war between the Comanche and the Americans. [14]
Following the Red River War, a campaign that lasted from August–November in 1874, the Comanche surrendered and moved to their new lands on the reservation. However even after that loss, it was not until June 1875 that the last of the Comanche, those under the command of Quanah Parker, finally surrendered at Fort Sill. [15] Though the U.S. troops themselves were directly responsible for just a few hundred deaths, their tactics in the Comanche campaign were the most devastating to the tribe. The tactics they used eventually led to the economic, rather than military, downfall of the tribe. The Comanche tribe, starting with nearly 5,000 people in 1870, finally surrendered and moved onto the reservation with barely 1,500 remaining in 1875.
The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ is a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma.
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 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 American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were initially fought by European governments and also by the colonists in North America, and then later on by the United States government and American settlers, against various American Indian tribes. These conflicts occurred in the United States from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the 19th century. The various wars resulted from a wide variety of factors, the most common being the desire of settlers and governments for Indian tribes' lands. The European powers and their colonies also enlisted allied Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against each other's colonial settlements. After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; some entailed cycles of violent reprisal.
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 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 is the story of the Native American (Indian) tribe which lived on the Great Plains of the present-day United States. In the 17th century the Eastern Shoshone people who became known as the Comanche migrated southward from Wyoming. 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 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. It 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 Comanches.
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 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 (Puhihwikwasu'u) was a Native American War Chief and Chief of the 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.
White Horse was a chief of the Kiowa. White Horse attended the council between southern plains tribes and the United States at Medicine Lodge in southern Kansas which resulted in the Medicine Lodge Treaty. Despite his attendance at the treaty signing he conducted frequent raids upon other tribes and white settlers. Follower of such elders as Guipago, Satanta and old Satank, he was often associated with Big Tree.
Black Horse or Tu-ukumah, was a Comanche war chief. After Bull Bear died in 1874, Black Horse was promoted to second chief in the Quahadi band of Comanche.
Horseback (1805/1810-1888) was a Nokoni Comanche chief.
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.
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