Quanah drew his knife, knelt beside one of the hunters, and grabbed a fistful of stringy hair that was slippery under his fingers. He brought the knife down, held it at the dead man’s forehead for an instant, remembering Nocona doing the
same so long ago, then sliced the scalp and held it aloft, offering it to the dead chief.
He felt no joy, and as the warriors fell on the others’ bodies, their scalping knives flashing in the firelight, he walked off into the darkness. Already, he knew that the war would be long, and he thought he knew how it would end.
Autumn 1871
K
IOWA RESISTANCE WAS ALL BUT BROKEN
by the middle of 1871. Earlier that year, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman had been visiting Fort Richardson when news reached him that a wagon train led by Henry Warren, bringing supplies of feed corn to Fort Griffin, had been attacked near Salt Creek, between Richardson and Griffin. Seven men had been killed and five more badly wounded. The supplies of corn were dumped on the ground and the dead savagely mutilated by the raiders, widely believed to be Comanche.
Outraged, Sherman ordered a punitive expedition under Major Alton Woods, but the cavalry was unable to find the raiders and returned empty-handed. Many of the Kiowa and Comanche were by this time nominally settled on the Kiowa and Comanche reservations in the Indian Territory, with Fort Sill at the hub.
Sherman then sent for some of the Kiowa chiefs, and when Satanta, Big Tree and Satank came in, they were arrested, jailed, and held for trial.
Satanta was still one of the fiercest of the plains chieftains, as was Big Tree, but Satank, the oldest of the trio, was another matter. He had lost his favorite son and, when he went to recover the body, found nothing but bones, which he gathered up, washed, and wrapped in a blanket. For the rest of his freedom, he traveled everywhere with the blanket-wrapped remains in trail on a second horse. He was a broken man, and seemed to accept the confinement without protest.
But that left the matter of the Comanche, and Sherman was less certain what to do about them. Quanah had been elected chief of all the Quohada Comanche at the remarkable young age of twenty-five, and his determination to resist the whites had drawn others to his band, including remnants of the Yamparika and Katsoteka Comanche and some die-hard Kiowa.
And Sherman knew that it was Quanah Parker who held the key to pacifying the Plains of Texas. As long as Quanah remained free, he would be a lightning rod for the disaffected, regardless of tribe, and he was determined to bring Quanah into the reservation or kill him, and made no secret of his preference for the latter.
But finding Quanah was no easy task. After the three Kiowa chiefs were tried and convicted in early summer, and confined to prison,
Sherman ordered the commander of Fort Richardson, Col. Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, to enter the Llano Estacado, find Quanah, and put an end to his resistance, by whatever means necessary.
In September of 1871, Mackenzie assembled a formidable force, consisting of four units of the 4th Cavalry, two units of the 19th Infantry, and twenty of the few remaining Tonkawa as scouts. His expedition overall consisted of six hundred officers and men supported by a train of one hundred pack mules. Joined by Major Woods, Mackenzie left Fort Richardson on September 19, and headed up the Fort Griffin road until he reached the Clear Fork of the Brazos River. From here, they were ready to brave the Llano in search of Quanah and the Quohada, and entered the Staked Plains on September 25th.
Mackenzie was no fool. He knew that the Comanche would get word of his presence, and would scout every inch of his march, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was in territory familiar only to the Comanche, and was more than a little concerned about meeting so fierce an enemy on that enemy’s home ground, but there was no other way to bring the Comanche to heel. Quanah was too smart, and too good a general, to relinquish an advantage voluntarily.
They traveled thirty miles the first day, camped for the night and Mackenzie watched and waited to see what Quanah would do. The following
morning he had his answer. The Murphy ranch on the edge of the Llano had been raided during the night, with more than one hundred cattle and more than a dozen horses captured. But the cavalry didn’t take the bait, believing that it was simply a diversion, an invitation to divide their force and weaken the expedition.
The next day, the expedition left the Clear Fork and marched toward Double Mountain, near where Quanah had hidden out after leaving Yellow Bear’s camp. The army crossed the Paint and California creeks and camped at Cottonwood Springs. They were in the heart of Comanche country now, and Mackenzie was determined not to make a mistake. He ordered extra restraints on the horses, and posted heavy security. He was no stranger to Indian fighting, and knew that one of the first goals of the Comanche would be to reduce his men to foot, if at all possible. And if the Comanche should succeed in that, the entire expedition would be at their mercy.
Once the preparations had been made, the men lay down to sleep. Shortly after midnight, Mackenzie was awakened by a thunderous din sweeping down on the camp. He dashed out of his tent to find buffalo stampeding toward him, and quickly organized parties of men with blankets to try and deflect the stampede. They couldn’t use guns for fear of signaling their precise location to the Comanche and the men ran around in desperation, shouting at the tops
of their voices, dividing the herd in two and sending it streaming past on both sides of the camp and off into the darkness.
When the dust had settled, and the thunder of the buffalo subsided, Mackenzie found himself wondering whether the stampede had been organized by the Comanche. But there was nothing to be done about it and after doubling the guard, he and the men returned to bed.
The next day’s march brought them across the Salt Fork of the Brazos, where a supply base was established, and most of the pack mules left behind. The deeper they probed into the Llano, the more alien and inhospitable the terrain became. Vast plains studded with cactus and mesquite were broken by towering buttes. This was the country of the Comancheros, the renegade traders, mostly Mexican, who made their living supplying guns, ammunition, and other supplies to the recalcitrant Comanche, in exchange for stolen horses and cattle, and whatever else the raiding bands might turn up in their attacks on settlements, wagon trains, and homesteads.
Mackenzie was certain now that his expedition was being watched, and decided to march at night, in hopes of getting the jump on the Comanche by slipping past scouting parties. He followed the Clear Fork of the Brazos to where it flowed into Blanco Canyon. The following morning, a party of Tonkawa scouts stumbled on a large Comanche village several miles farther up
the Brazos. The expedition was now in Blanco Canyon, surrounded by its towering walls, and to protect the horses that night, Mackenzie ordered double sentries posted. His constant fear was that the horses would somehow be captured, rendering the column little more than a helpless string of sitting ducks.
In the middle of the night, the Comanche roared down on the camp, using everything from guns to cowbells to make enough noise to frighten the cavalry mounts. The uproar terrified the horses, and despite being hobbled, nearly a hundred of them broke free and were driven off.
By morning, Mackenzie was convinced that an attack was imminent. The presence of the village meant large numbers of warriors nearby, and the military force could not be ignored. If the Comanche followed their usual practice, he knew, they would attack at least to cover the removal of the village and allow the women and children to escape to safety. And if the Comanche band was large enough, there might be an all-out attack in hopes of crushing the army.
Colonel Mackenzie sent a small horse unit upriver, with the purpose of tempting the Comanche to reveal their plans. Captains Robert G. Carter and John Gregg were at the head of the small detachment when they stumbled on a small band of Comanche warriors. Excited by the first contact with the enemy, the cavalrymen charged and the warriors turned tail and fled.
Sweeping around a bend in the canyon, the Comanche disappeared, and Gregg rallied his men, getting out in front and urging them to catch the fleeing warriors. But when he raced around the bend, he found himself confronted by a large contingent of warriors in full charge. At their head, Captain Carter recognized Quanah Parker on a coal-black mustang, Nightwind, his favorite war pony.
The cavalry was badly outnumbered, and fell back, firing to cover their retreat. But the Comanche kept on coming. Quanah charged Gregg and his men at full speed. He was painted for war, wearing a war bonnet and armed with a pistol in addition to bow and arrows. Heading straight toward the retreating soldiers, he dashed past the stragglers and fired at Captain Gregg, catching him in the center of the chest and killing him instantly.
Carter rallied his men, refusing to let them turn their backs to the charging Comanche, knowing that their only chance was to fire and fall back, fire and fall back, trying to slow the charge by accurate fire.
Some of the men panicked and made a break for it, and Carter watched helplessly as the warriors thundered after them, picking them off one by one.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the fight was over. Quanah wheeled Nightwind around and led the Comanche back up the canyon toward the village, already disassembled and
starting to move. It seemed clear that the battle had been joined less to defeat the expedition than to delay it long enough to permit an orderly escape.
Carter regrouped, then raced back to Mackenzie, informing him of the fight.
“We’ve got them now,” Mackenzie said. “We can’t afford to lose them. If they make it out of the canyon and onto the plains, we’ll have a hell of a time catching them again. And if we do, they’ll have the upper hand.”
“But we can follow them wherever they go. There’s no way they can conceal their route, Colonel,” Carter said.
“Do you want to be out in the open with a thousand Comanche around you, Captain?” Mackenzie asked.
When Carter shook his head, Mackenzie said, “Well, neither do I. Let’s get going.”
It didn’t take long to get the expedition moving, and by the time they marched on through the canyon, they could see the remnants of the villagers leaving the canyon’s other end. Mackenzie ordered a burial detail for Gregg and the other casualties, and pressed his men hard to close the gap. But before the army could get out of the canyon, they were attacked again. Quanah had organized several small parties of warriors and deployed them in ambush along the canyon, choosing sites which were easily defended by small groups of warriors and that allowed them to harass the column, which would have to
choose between exposing itself to heavy fire or dig in.
Mackenize did his best, but Quanah had gotten the upper hand. It took the rest of the day for the expedition to fight its way through the canyon, and by the time they were able to get out onto the plains, the Comanche were nowhere in sight. Pushing his men to their limit, Mackenzie pressed on. The tracks of the hundreds of travois were easily followed, but the lead was considerable, and Mackenzie’s men were exhausted.
Slowly but surely, the army narrowed the gap. But the further Mackenzie followed, the deeper into the Llano Estacado he went, the further behind he left his supplies. His men were well armed, but their ammunition had been seriously depleted in the running battle through Blanco Canyon, and he was starting to doubt the wisdom of further pursuit.
But before he had a chance to change his mind, the weather changed dramatically. The sky darkened and the wind picked up. Freezing rain started to slash across the plains, and there was no place to take cover from the worst of the storm.
By nightfall, Mackenzie had ordered the men to stand down and make camp. It got colder, and the wind continued to howl. The storm was coming out of the north, and Mackenzie knew that such weather often dropped the temperature by thirty or forty degrees in a matter of hours.
And this time was no exception. The freezing
rain changed to sleet and then to snow. They knew they were close, and they knew the Comanche were as exhausted as they were. All along the line of march, abandoned goods, lodgepoles, dead horses had marked the Comanche flight. But the weather was just too oppressive to push on any further.
The temperature had fallen below zero now, and the snow was so heavy that visibility was reduced almost to nothing. But Quanah was leaving nothing to chance. Out of the snow roared a large contingent of Comanche, Quanah at their head. They encircled Mackenzie’s exhausted command and managed to drive off still more of the cavalry mounts before vanishing into the blizzard.
By daybreak, the storm had lifted. Mackenzie found himself in the heart of a frozen wasteland. The ground was frozen solid, but he knew that when the temperature climbed, it would turn to mud. It would not be hard to follow the trail of the refugees, but supplies were short and the men worn down to the point where further pursuit would have been unwise if not outright suicide.
Reluctantly, Mackenzie had to admit he was beaten. He waited much of the morning, less to think through his options, which were few and equally unpalatable, than to give his men a chance to rest and recover some of their strength. The horses, too, were near the breaking point, and in the back of his mind was the
horrible possibility that Quanah might return, and force his men to flee on animals that no longer had the stamina to outrun the Comanche, who almost certainly would have switched to fresh mounts from the considerable herd they were driving ahead of them.
It was nearly three in the afternoon when the sun finally came out, and suddenly the Llano, as far as Mackenzie could see, had turned into a blinding sheet of white that made it almost impossible to see. Squinting against the glare, Mackenzie surveyed the horizon then, dejected, gave the order to pull out. With their backs to the blinding sun, the men headed back toward Blanco Canyon.
And Quanah headed west.