Robinson, Quanah Parker, 1891
Hoping to surprise the enemy in its camps, Mackenzie ordered a night march. What he got instead was an object lesson in the hazards of High Plains warfare. His men struggled through steep terrain, dense brush, ravines, and arroyos. After hours of what Carter described as “trials and tribulations and much hard talk verging on profanity” and “many rather comical scenes,” they fetched up bruised and battered in the dead end of a small canyon and had to wait until daybreak to find their way out. A few hours later they reached the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos (now known as the White River), deep in Indian territory, in a broad, shallow, thirty-mile-long valley that averaged 1,500 feet in width and was cut by smaller side canyons.
The place, known as Blanco Canyon, was located just to the east of present-day Lubbock. It was one of the Quahadis’ favorite campgrounds. Whatever surprise Mackenzie had hoped for was gone; the Tonkawa scouts soon realized they were being shadowed by four Comanche warriors, who had been watching their every move, presumably including the blunders of the night march. The Tonks gave chase, but “the hostiles being better mounted soon distanced their pursuers and vanished into the hills,” Carter wrote. This was not surprising: In two hundred years of enmity, the Tonkawas had never come close to matching the horsemanship of the Comanches. Few tribes could. As a result, while the cavalrymen and dragoons had no idea where the Comanches were camped, Quanah knew precisely where Mackenzie’s men were. As though to make certain of that, Mackenzie allowed the men the indulgence of campfires, which was tantamount to painting a large arrow in the canyon pointing to their camp. Some of the companies erred yet again by failing to place guards among the horses.
Around midnight, the regiment was awakened by a succession of unearthly, high-pitched yells. Those were followed by shots and more yells, and suddenly the camp was alive with Comanches riding at full gallop. Exactly what the Indians were doing was soon apparent: Mingled with the screams and gunshots and general mayhem was another sound, only barely audible at first, then rising to something like rolling thunder. The men quickly realized that it was the sound of stampeding horses. Their horses. Amid shouts of “Every man to his lariat!” six hundred panicked horses tore loose through the camp, rearing, jumping, and plunging at full speed. Lariats snapped with the sound of pistol shots; iron picket pins, which a few minutes before had been used to secure the horses, now whirled and snapped about their necks like airborne sabers. Men tried to grab them and were thrown to the ground and dragged among the horses, their hands lacerated and bleeding.
When it was all over, the soldiers discovered that Quanah and his warriors had made off with seventy of their best horses and mules, including Colonel Mackenzie’s magnificent gray pacer. In West Texas in 1871, stealing someone’s horse was often equivalent to a death sentence. It was an old Indian tactic, especially on the High Plains, to simply take a white man’s horse and leave him to die of thirst or starvation. Comanches had used it to lethal effect against the Spanish in the early eighteenth century. In any case, an unmounted Army regular stood little chance against a mounted Comanche. This midnight raid was Quanah’s calling card, a clear message that hunting him and his Comanche warriors in their homeland was going to be a difficult and treacherous business.
S.C. Gwynne, from Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
Hoping to surprise the enemy in its camps, Mackenzie ordered a night march. What he got instead was an object lesson in the hazards of High Plains warfare. His men struggled through steep terrain, dense brush, ravines, and arroyos. After hours of what Carter described as “trials and tribulations and much hard talk verging on profanity” and “many rather comical scenes,” they fetched up bruised and battered in the dead end of a small canyon and had to wait until daybreak to find their way out. A few hours later they reached the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos (now known as the White River), deep in Indian territory, in a broad, shallow, thirty-mile-long valley that averaged 1,500 feet in width and was cut by smaller side canyons.
The place, known as Blanco Canyon, was located just to the east of present-day Lubbock. It was one of the Quahadis’ favorite campgrounds. Whatever surprise Mackenzie had hoped for was gone; the Tonkawa scouts soon realized they were being shadowed by four Comanche warriors, who had been watching their every move, presumably including the blunders of the night march. The Tonks gave chase, but “the hostiles being better mounted soon distanced their pursuers and vanished into the hills,” Carter wrote. This was not surprising: In two hundred years of enmity, the Tonkawas had never come close to matching the horsemanship of the Comanches. Few tribes could. As a result, while the cavalrymen and dragoons had no idea where the Comanches were camped, Quanah knew precisely where Mackenzie’s men were. As though to make certain of that, Mackenzie allowed the men the indulgence of campfires, which was tantamount to painting a large arrow in the canyon pointing to their camp. Some of the companies erred yet again by failing to place guards among the horses.
Around midnight, the regiment was awakened by a succession of unearthly, high-pitched yells. Those were followed by shots and more yells, and suddenly the camp was alive with Comanches riding at full gallop. Exactly what the Indians were doing was soon apparent: Mingled with the screams and gunshots and general mayhem was another sound, only barely audible at first, then rising to something like rolling thunder. The men quickly realized that it was the sound of stampeding horses. Their horses. Amid shouts of “Every man to his lariat!” six hundred panicked horses tore loose through the camp, rearing, jumping, and plunging at full speed. Lariats snapped with the sound of pistol shots; iron picket pins, which a few minutes before had been used to secure the horses, now whirled and snapped about their necks like airborne sabers. Men tried to grab them and were thrown to the ground and dragged among the horses, their hands lacerated and bleeding.
When it was all over, the soldiers discovered that Quanah and his warriors had made off with seventy of their best horses and mules, including Colonel Mackenzie’s magnificent gray pacer. In West Texas in 1871, stealing someone’s horse was often equivalent to a death sentence. It was an old Indian tactic, especially on the High Plains, to simply take a white man’s horse and leave him to die of thirst or starvation. Comanches had used it to lethal effect against the Spanish in the early eighteenth century. In any case, an unmounted Army regular stood little chance against a mounted Comanche. This midnight raid was Quanah’s calling card, a clear message that hunting him and his Comanche warriors in their homeland was going to be a difficult and treacherous business.
S.C. Gwynne, from Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
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