Texas Almanac, 1990-1991 Page: 47
611 p. : col. ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this book.
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HISTORY 47
of marauding Kiowas, they rode for several weeks
across West Central Texas and into Indian Territory,
only to find that the Kiowas had gone back to the reser-
vation, where they promised to stay.
Mackenzie's next expedition was only marginally
better. Starting from Camp Cooper, he led his troops
west-northwest across the corner of Jones County and
into Stonewall County. Upon making camp, they
hobbled their horses to prevent theft, but Quanah Par-
ker and his Quahadi Comanches stole 66 horses, includ-
ing Mackenzie's gray pacer. One man was lost in the
attack, and further pursuit of the Indians netted only
an arrow in the leg for Mackenzie.
By the time they arrived back at Fort Richardson
on Nov. 8, Mackenzie and his men had traveled 509
miles enduring vile weather, a bison stampede, Indian
attacks and horse theft - all with no apparent results.
But the knowledge they had gained of Comanche cus-
toms and methods of warfare and the experience of ob-
serving how the Comanches operated on the South
Plains was to prove invaluable in the next several
years of struggle to drive the Indians once and for all
from the Texas frontier.
Early in 1873, the Indian Bureau ordered the re-
lease of Satanta and Big Tree as a gesture of concili-
ation. Indian agent Tatum resigned in protest. The
army had to protect the two Kiowa chiefs from angry
frontiersmen all the way back to Fort Sill.
The Comanches promised to remain at peace, but
a few Comanches, including Quanah Parker's Quaha-
dis, and some Kiowas renewed their raiding. The pri-
mary source of all of their necessities of life - the
bison - was rapidly disappearing. Spurred by a grow-
ing market for bison hides in the North and Northeast,
buffalo hunters descended on the Southern Plains in
the winter of 1873-1874 and began a wholesale slaughter
of the magnificent beasts. The provision in the Treaty
of Medicine Lodge of an exclusively Indian hunting
ground south of the Arkansas River was ignored. The
introduction of centerfire metallic cartridges and the
use of the repeating .50 caliber Sharps rifle made
shooting bison more efficient. When it became clear
that the bison were in danger of being annihilated, the
Texas Legislature in 1875 considered protecting the
beasts, but Gen. Sheridan argued that peace with the
Indians would be possible only if their food supply was
eliminated. With the bison gone, the people of the
plains would be forced onto the reservations to become
wards of the U.S. government - or they could starve.
The rapid disappearance of the bison made raids
all the more necessary for Indians who wanted to re-
main free of the "prison" of reservation life. Indian
raids continued as far south and east as Llano. In Au-
gust 1873, a group of 21 Indians, said to be Apaches,
were stealing horses on the South Llano River. A possepursued them 25 miles to Packsaddle Mountain, a
1,600-foot peak in the southeastern corner of present-
day Llano County. Three Indians died in the ensuing
fight, and four of the posse were wounded. The Indians
were finally routed.
To provide more protection for frontier settlers, a
special force of Texas Rangers, named the Frontier
Battalion, was organized by Maj. John B. Jones in May
1874 on the authority of the legislature - six companies
of 75 men each. The intelligent and tactful Jones, mov-
ing his men around like chess pieces wherever he felt
they were the most needed, cleared his assigned area
of South and Central Texas of Indians by August 1875.
Meanwhile, Sheridan and Mackenzie planned an
all-out assault on the remaining Plains Indians. Mack-
enzie's force was augmented by troops from Fort
Dodge, Kan., Fort Union, N.M., Fort Sill and Fort Grif-
fin. Mackenzie assembled nearly 3,000 troops at Fort
Concho and organized them into 46 companies, for a
series of campaigns collectively known as the Red Riv-
er War. They were accompanied by 13 Seminole Negro
Indians, 12 Tonkawas and a few Lipans to act as scouts.
Starting from Concho on Aug. 23, 1874, Mackenzie's
forces participated in several minor skirmishes. Then,
late in September, they discovered in the depths of
Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle an enor-
mous encampment of Comanches, Kiowas and
Cheyennes organized into five villages with a total of
about 200 tipis. Mackenzie's soldiers destroyed the vil-
lages, including all equipment and provisions. The sol-
diers were allowed to take their pick of the Indians'
horses, and the remaining animals, numbering more
than 1,000, were slaughtered to keep them out of the
hands of the Indians es. On moonlit nights, legend holds,
the ghosts of these horses gallop along the rim of the
canyon with their manes flying in the wind.
The Palo Duro village Indians escaped, but their
spirit was broken. With their bison being methodically
exterminated, and with constant pursuit by the troop-
ers making reprovisioning or preparing for winter an
impossibility, the Indians were literally starving to
death.
The last Indian battle in West Central Texas was
fought at Lost Valley on the Jack-Young county line in
June 1875. A group of 27 Texas Rangers of the Frontier
Battalion, commanded by Maj. Jones, fought a band of
100 Indians for a full day before getting help from Fort
Richardson and defeating them.
In early summer of 1875, 407 of Quanah Parker's
Quahadis, proudest and most warlike of the Coman-
ches, straggled into the reservation. A few isolated
raids were reported after that, but by early 1876, the
Indians had been contained, and West Texas was open
to wholesale settlement.The Cattle Kingdom
Cattle were raised in West and West Central Texas
from the time the Spanish attempted to establish mis-
sions and domesticate the Indians. It was primarily a
small-scale industry during the Republic and early
statehood. Most cattle were slaughtered for their hides
and tallow. Many cattle raised in the regions were the
famed "longhorns," descendants of Spanish ranch and
mission herds, with horn spreads of four to eight feet.
Some had become crossed with Mexican cattle, short-
er-horned and dun-colored. But there also were cattle
of British origin, brought west by Anglo-American col-
onists from the East Coast by way of Northeast Texas.
Early cattle drives headed west to the California
gold fields after 1850, when cattle worth $5 to $10 a head
in Texas would garner five to 10 times that amount in
San Francisco. Most drives to California took five or
six months. Starting in the vicinity of San Antonio or
Fredericksburg, many drives followed a southern
route through El Paso to San Diego or Los Angeles and
on north to San Francisco. These drives slowed by 1857,
as the cattle market in California reached a glut. By
1859, only a trickle of cattle moved to the West Coast.
After gold was discovered in the Rocky Mountains,
some cattle were driven to the gold fields there, start-
ing about 1858.
Some ranchers held contracts to supply beef to
frontier forts and to Indian reservations in West Texas,
Oklahoma and New Mexico beginning in the late 1850s.
Cattle ranching virtually halted during the Civil War
years as the frontier retreated. Beginning in 1866, how-
ever, ranching expanded rapidly. By 1870, for exam-pie, Brown County had at least 12 ranches with large
cattle herds.
Most stock raisers exercised range rights - the
privilege of grazing their cattle free on public lands. A
rancher would establish a headquarters camp along a
river. His part of the range was defined as all the land
his cattle roamed over back to the divide between his
stream and the next one. With no fences to separate
them, cattle from different owners mingled. Most cow-
men either used the free range or leased land. Few
owned the land their cattle grazed; they owned only the
cattle and the camps.
The wandering and mixing of the cattle led to the
necessity of holding roundups. Generally two
roundups were held a year in which all the cattle in a
large area of the range would be herded together by
crews from all the ranches involved. Each ranch's
cattle would be cut in turn from the mixed herd, and all
unmarked calves would be branded and earmarked.
The main roundup was held in the spring, to find and
mark spring calves. A fall roundup caught summer
calves and strays that had been missed in the earlier
roundup.
The use of brands to identify domestic cattle is an age-
old practice. Burning identifying marks into the hides of
animals and cutting a distinctively shaped piece out of
one ear of each head of livestock were, until the relatively
recent use of tattoos, the only methods of marking
that would last the lifetime of the animal. The prac-
tice came to this country with the first Spanish. In
Continued on Page 49
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Kingston, Mike. Texas Almanac, 1990-1991, book, 1989; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth162512/m1/49/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.