by S. C. Gwynne
26. Eugene E. White, Experiences of a Special Indian Agent, pp. 276ff. White’s account is taken from his conversations with Quanah in later years.
27. The ultimate source of this story is Quanah, but his accounts, passed down to us through three different sources—Eugene White, Olive King Dixon (via Goodnight and Baldwin Parker), and Ella Cox Lutz, Quanah’s granddaughter—agree in all important aspects.
28. Wallace and Hoebel, pp. 136–37.
29. White, p. 284.
30. Ibid., p. 286.
31. Dixon, manuscript.
Fourteen UNCIVIL WARS
1. Ernest Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, p. 238.
2. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 169.
3. Ibid., p. 178.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 171.
6. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 450.
7. Angie Debo, The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians, pp. 150ff.
8. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p, 449.
9. Debo, p. 152; also La Vere, p 171.
10. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 459.
11. Wallace, p. 244; R. N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 142.
12. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill, p. 35.
13. Hampton Sides, Blood and Thunder, p. 308.
14. Thelma S. Guild and Harvey L. Carter, Kit Carson: A Pattern for Heroes, pp. 231ff.
15. Sides, p. 368.
16. Thomas Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 398.
17. Letter to commanding officer, Fort Bascom, September 27, 1864; Official Records of the War of Rebellion, series 1, vol. 41, pt. 3, pp. 429–30.
18. Captain George Pettis, Kit Carson’s Fight with the Comanche and Kiowa Indians (Providence Press Company, Sidney S. Rider [copyright], 1878), p. 3.
19. Mildred Mayhall, The Kiowas, p. 161.
20. Pettis, p. 5.
21. David A. Norris, “Confederate Gunners Affectionately Called Their Hard Working Little Mountain Howitzers ‘Bull Pups,’” America’s Civil War, September 1995,
pp. 10, 12, 14, 16, 20, and 90.
22. Pettis, p. 9.
23. Ibid.
24. Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 395.
25. Ibid., p. 16.
26. Ibid.
27. 39th U.S. Congress; Second Session, Senate report 156, pp. 53, 74.
28. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, p. 86.
29. 39th U.S. Congress; Second Session, Senate report 156, pp. 73, 96.
30. Sides, p. 379.
31. Ibid.
32. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 461.
Fifteen PEACE, AND OTHER HORRORS
1. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 157.
2. Ibid.
3. T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 484.
4. Abstracted from the Army Navy Journal 15, no. 52 (August 31, 1878); cited in Charles M. Robinson, Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie,
p. 57.
5. Thomas Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 411.
6. Richardson, p. 151.
7. Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 412.
8. Alfred A. Taylor, account in Chronicles of Oklahoma, II, pp. 102–103.
9. Charles J. Kappler, ed., Indian Affairs Laws and Treaties (Washington, D.C., 1903), vol. II, pp. 977ff.
10. Henry M. Stanley, “A British Journalist Reports the Medicine Lodge Councils of 1867,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 33 (Spring 1967): 282.
11. Ibid., 33:283.
12. Douglas C. Jones, The Treaty at Medicine Lodge, pp. 101ff.
13. Stanley, pp. 249–320.
14. Kappler, pp. 977ff.
15. Ibid., p. 982.
16. Richardson, p. 237, note 25.
17. Quanah Parker to Captain Hugh Lenox Scott, 1898, H. L. Scott Material, W. S. Nye Collection, Fort Sill Archives.
18. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, pp. 183–84.
19. Leavenworth to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, April 23, 1868, 40th Congress, Second Session, Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 60:2.
20. Richardson, p. 161.
21. Lawrence Schmeckebier, The Office of Indian Affairs, Its History, Activities and Organization, p. 48; Richardson, p. 164
22. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 485.
Sixteen THE ANTI-CUSTER
1. Charles M. Robinson III, Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie,
p. 10, citing Morris Schaff, Old West Point, pp. 42–43.
2. Evan S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star, p. 108.
3. Captain Joseph Dorst, “Ranald Slidell Mackenzie,” Twentieth Annual Reunion of the Association Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, June 12, 1889, p. 7.
4. F. E. Green, ed., “Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1873–79,” Museum Journal 10 (1966): 13ff.
5. U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (New York: Charles A. Webster and Co., 1885),
p. 541.
6. Ernest Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 9.
7. Dorst, p. 7.
8. Connell, pp. 128–29.
9. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 63ff.
10. Ibid., p. 67.
11. Ibid., p 69.
12. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 196, citing untitled Dickson manuscript,
p. 37.
13. Tatum’s second annual report, August 12, 1870, 41st Congress, Third Session, House Ex. Doc. no. 1, vol. 1, 724–729, cited in Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 171.
14. Letter: Ranald S. Mackenzie to William T. Sherman, June 15, 1871.
15. Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 167.
16. Charles H. Sommer, Quanah Parker, Last Chief of the Comanches, p. 43.
17. There is some disagreement about this among historians. Leading Comanche historian Ernest Wallace believes that the command was Quanah’s, as does Quanah’s principal biographer, Bill Neeley. Evidence to the contrary comes mainly from interviews conducted many years later, and cited extensively in Jo Ella Powell Exley’s Frontier Blood, with the Comanche warrior Cohayyah, who said that Parra-o-coom (Bull Bear) was the leader at that time. There does not seem to be any disagreement that Quanah led the night raid or that he led the attack on Heyl and Carter.
18. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 170.
19. Ibid., p. 173.
20. Ibid., p. 175. Carter notes that the Comanches were “poorly armed with muzzle-loading rifles and pistols, lances and bows.”
21. Ibid.
22. Colonel Richard Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 489.
23. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Society.
24. Carter, op. cit., p. 187.
25. Ibid., p. 187.
26. Ibid., p. 188.
27. Arthur Ferguson Journal, Utah State Historical Society; cited in Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World: The Men who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869, p. 143.
28. Ibid., p. 189.
29. Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie, p. 54.
30. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 194.
Seventeen MACKENZIE UNBOUND
1. Letter: Charles Howard to President Grant, cited in T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 515.
2. Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 219.
3. Ernest Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, pp. 252–53.
4. Ernest Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 74.
5. W. A. Thompson, “Scouting with Mackenzie,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association 10 (1897): 431.
6. Clinton Smith, The Boy Captives, p. 134.
7. David La Vere, Contrary Neighbors, p. 194; Scott Zesch, The Captured, p. 159.
8. Mackenzie’s Official Report, October 12, 1872, “1872, Sept. 29, Attack on Comanche Village,” To The Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Texas.
9. Ibid.
10. Herman Le
hmann, Nine Years Among the Indians, pp. 185–86; Lehmann also notes that Batsena had been using a Spencer carbine, which suggests that the Comanches were finally beginning to trade for some of these weapons. By 1874 they would have many more of them.
11. R. G. Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 84.
12. Mackenzie’s Official Report, October 12, 1872.
13. Carter, Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 84.
14. Smith, The Boy Captives, p. 13.7
15. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, pp. 419ff.
Eighteen THE HIDE MEN AND THE MESSIAH
1. Thomas W. Kavanagh, The Comanches, pp. 474ff.
2. Rupert N. Richardson, “The Comanche Indians and the Fight at Adobe Walls,” Panhandle Plains Historical Review (Canyon, Texas) 4 (1931): 25.
3. Quanah’s feathered headdress is on display at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas.
4. Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches, p. 150.
5. T. Lindsay Baker and Billy R. Harrison, Adobe Walls: The History and Archaeology of the Trading Post, p. 3.
6. Colonel William F. Cody, The Adventures of Buffalo Bill Cody, p. viii.
7. Baker and Harrison, p 29; T. R. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 523.
8. Baker and Harrison, p. 4
9. James L. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 22.
10. Ibid., p. 26.
11. Ibid., p. 8.
12. Francis Parkman, The California and Oregon Trails, p. 251.
13. Baker and Harrison, p. 25.
14. Ibid., p. 41.
15. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, p. 523.
16. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 188.
17. Thomas Battey, Life and Adventures of a Quaker Among the Indians, p. 239; and Baker and Harrison, p. 39.
18. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 51.
19. Ernest Wallace, Ranald Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 119.
20. Kavanagh, The Comanches, p. 445; Haley, The Buffalo War, note on p. 232.
21. Letter: Agent J. M. Haworth to Enoch Hoag, May 5, 1874.
22. Battey, p. 302.
23. This was Coggia’s Comet.
24. Zoe Tilghman, Quanah Parker, Eagle of the Comanches, pp. 82–84.
25. Battey, p. 303.
26. Baker and Harrison, p. 44.
27. Quanah interview with Captain Hugh Lennox Scott, 1897, Fort Sill Archives.
28. Wallace and Hoebel, p. 320.
29. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 57.
30. Letter: Agent J. M. Haworth to Enoch Hoag, June 8, 1874.
31. Quanah interview with Scott.
32. W. S. Nye Collection, “Iseeo Account,” pp. 58–60, Fort Sill Archives.
33. Quanah interview with Scott.
34. Olive King Dixon, Life of Billy Dixon, p. 167.
35. “Quanah Parker in Adobe Walls Battle,” Borger News Herald, date unknown, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum Archives.
36. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 73.
37. Baker and Harrison, pp. 75ff.
38. Dixon, Life of Billy Dixon, p. 186.
39. Baker and Harrison, p. 66.
40. Ibid., pp. 64–66; Dixon, Life of Billy Dixon, pp. 162ff.
41. Dixon, Life of Billy Dixon, p. 181.
42. Robert G. Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 98.
43. Quanah interview with Scott.
44. Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 194.
45. Ernest Wallace, Texas in Turmoil, pp. 256–57.
Nineteen THE RED RIVER WAR
1. Thomas Kavanagh, The Comanches, pp. 472–74. These are rough estimates. The precise number of Comanches is not known, mainly because it was impossible to tell, on a historical basis, which Indians were on or off the reservation by measuring the number of rations drawn. The best estimate for ration-drawing Indians was 2,643, made in March 1874 by Agent Haworth. Clearly many of those were Comanches who later went back into the wild. Kavanagh analyzes the various estimates of Indian populations from censuses taken in November 1869, December 1870, and March 1874. We know that roughly 650 Comanches were in Quanah’s, Black Beard’s, and Shaking Hand’s bands; that is not counting the Comanches who surrendered in unknown numbers after Palo Duro Canyon.
2. When all the tribes in the southern plains surrendered, the number of adult males was little more than seven hundred; this is my estimate based on that and on the ratio of fighting men to total population in the surrendered tribes; see Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement, p. 200.
3. Letter: C. C. Augur to Mackenzie, August 28, 1874, in F. E. Green, ed., “Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence Relating to Texas, 1873–79,” Museum Journal, West Texas Museum Association (Lubbock, Texas), 10 (1966): 80ff.
4. Ernest Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 124.
5. Nelson Miles to AAG, Dept. of Missouri, September 1, 1874; Mackenzie’s Official Correspondence, p. 87.
6. James L. Haley, The Buffalo War, p. 193.
7. J. T. Marshall, The Miles Expedition of 1874–5, p. 39.
8. Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, pp. 125–26.
9. Ibid., p. 131.
10. Augur to Mackenzie, August 28, 1874; Mackenzie Official Correspondence, p. 81.
11. Robert G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 484.
12. “Mackenzie’s Expedition through the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon as described by a special correspondent of the New York Herald,” October 16, 1874, Museum Journal 10 (1966): 114.
13. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 485.
14. Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 136.
15. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, p. 488.
16. John Charlton’s account in Captain Robert G. Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story,
p. 39.
17. Charlton in Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 107, and Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 140.
18. Charlton in Carter, The Old Sergeant’s Story, p. 108.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., p. 109.
21. Wallace, Ranald S. Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier, p. 139.
22. “Journal of Ranald S. Mackenzie’s Messenger to the Quahada Comanches,” Red River Valley Historical Review 3, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 227.
23. Ibid., p. 229.
24. Jo Ella Powell Exley, Frontier Blood, p. 255, citing untitled Dickson manuscript.
25. “Journal of Mackenzie’s Messenger,” p. 237.
26. Ibid., p. 237.
27. Wayne Parker, Quanah Parker, Last Chief of the Kwahadi Obeys the Great Spirit, manuscript.
28. Ibid., p. 239.
29. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 229.
30. William T. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 15.
31. Ibid.
Twenty FORWARD, IN DEFEAT
1. Charles M. Robinson III, Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie, pp. 186–88.
2. William T. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, pp. 20–21, Mackenzie to Pope, letter, September 5, 1875.
3. Bill Neeley, The Last Comanche Chief : The Life and Times of Quanah Parker, p. 144.
4. Letter: Ranald S. Mackenzie to Isaac Parker, September 5, 1877 (Fort Sill Letter Book).
5. Charles Goodnight, “Pioneer Outlines Sketch of Quanah Parker’s Life,” Amarillo Sunday News and Globe, August 6, 1928.
6. Accounts of both actions are in letters from J. M. Haworth to William Nicholson, August 26, 1877, Kiowa Agency Microform, National Archives; and Colonel J. W. Davidson to Asst. Adjutant General, October 29, 1878, House Executive Document, 45th Congress, Third Session, p. 555.
7. John R. Cook, The Border and the Buffalo, pp. 249ff.
8. Neeley, p. 153.
9. Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Indians, pp. 186–87.
10. Scott Zesch, The Captured, pp. 220–21, citing Haworth and Mackenzie correspondence.
11. Lehmann, pp. 187–88.<
br />
12. Ibid., p. 232.
13. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 26.
14. Wellington Brink, “Quanah and the Leopard Coat Man,” Farm and Ranch, April 17, 1926.
15. Harley True Burton, “History of the JA Ranch,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 31, no. 2 (October 1927).
16. Brink.
17. Burton.
18. Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, p. 212.
19. Lillian Gunter, “Sketch of the Life of Julian Gunter,” manuscript made for Panhandle Plains Historical Association, 1923, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum archives.
20. G. W. Roberson to J. Evetts Haley, June 30, 1926, manuscript in Panhandle Plains Historical Museum archives.
21. Haley, Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman, p. 30.
22. Hagan, Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief, p. 31.
23. Council Meeting of May 23, 1884, Kiowas, 17:46, Oklahoma Historical Society.
24. H. P. Jones to Philemon Hunt, interview, June 21, 1883, Kiowa Agency files, Oklahoma Historical Society; George Fox to Philemon Hunt, October 13, 1884, Kiowa Agency files.
25. Quanah Parker to Charles Adams, interview, May 13, 1890, Kiowa Agency files, Oklahoma History Center.
26. James T. DeShields, Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture, pp. 78–79.
27. Hugh Lennox Scott, Some Memories of a Soldier, p. 151.
28. Hobart Democrat-Chief (Oklahoma), August 4, 1925, interview with Knox Beall who said that Grantham was adopted and also Quanah’s business adviser.
29. Commissioner T. J. Morgan to Agent Adams, interview, December 18, 1890, Kiowa Agency files, Oklahoma Historical Society.
30. Profile of Charlie Hart by Evelyn Fleming, manuscript, Quanah Parker papers, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum.
31. Knox Beall to R. B. Thomas, interview, November 5, 1937, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma; Beall to Bessie Thomas, April 15, 1938.
32. Lehmann, pp. 233–34.
33. Dick Banks to Bessie Smith, interview, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma.
34. Robert B. Thomas, undated manuscript, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma; also Beall to Thomas, November 5, 1937.
35. Anna Gomez to Ophelia D. Vestal, interview, December 13, 1937, Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma.
