Fort Concho: Its Why and Wherefore

by James N. Gregory

The Lipans, like the Apaches, were natives of the Great Plains country. The Kickapoos were easterners, and had been termed “friendly Indians,” upon their arrival west of the Mississippi River. The term “friendly Indian” often used in writings and reports of the times referred in the larger sense to those tribes such as the Kickapoos, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Delawares and others that had once been powerful tribes in the eastern United States, but because of the encroachment of the white settlers, they had, by treaty, coercion or force during the early 1800’s, been continually moved by the United States Government from their ancestral or reservation lands in the East. They finally ended up at various times on reservations assigned them in what is now Kansas and Oklahoma (Indian Territory). Here they usually encountered hostility from the native tribes of the Great Plains whose superior numbers threatened their entire existence. They were considered intruders and were obliged to turn to the United States troops, where possible, for protection. Their natural ability as “trackers” made them a necessary unit in any force of troops that sought to engage hostile Indians.

The Seminoles from Florida were pretty well mixed with Negro blood upon their arrival in East Texas, and later in the Indian Territory. The reason for this was that prior to the Civil War many run-away Negro slaves had sought and found sanctuary among these Indians, living at that time in the fastnesses of the Everglades.

During the latter days of the Civil War, December of 1864, a company of frontier scouts out of Fort Belknap discovered a freshly abandoned Indian camp west of the ruins of old Fort Phantom Hill. The scouts estimated that perhaps 5,000 Indians had camped there.

During the preceding fall, Comanche and Kiowa Indians in large numbers had broken up the settlements on the northern frontier in Young County. Therefore, it was assumed, and assumed too hastily as it turned out, that these Indians had occupied the camp and were on the march to find a permanent spring and summer location from where they could further raid the settlements.

Actually these Indians were friendly Kickapoos from the Indian Territory, and as it turned out, they were probably peacefully moving themselves and their entire tribe to join a tiny remnant of the tribe that had, years before, settled in Old Mexico, some forty miles west of Laredo.

The hasty assumption that these Indians were hostile led to the Battle of Dove Creek fought on Sunday, the 8th of January, 1865. The scene of the battle was the Indian encampment on the south bank of Dove Creek about three miles above its confluence with Spring Creek, and fifteen miles southwest of the present Tom Green County court house.

After the discovery of the abandoned camp near Phantom Hill, the Indians were trailed by scouts. Confederate regulars had been concentrated at Camp Colorado, and militia had been moved from Erath, Brown, Comanche and Parker Counties.

These two columns of troops, numbering some 400 men, concentrated above the Indian encampment before daybreak. They attacked at daylight. It was an impetuous charge and was met by deadly fire from the Enfield rifles of 600 braves, well protected by the underbrush of the creek bottom. The militia, respectfully referred to by the regulars as the “flop eared militia,” suffered heavily in their charge. They broke and fled and were of no more value in the field.

The regulars, now badly outnumbered and outflanked, were slowly forced back and withdrew towards Spring Creek, fighting from the shelters of the oak groves as they retired. This action continued all day, and they encamped that night with all their wounded and the reformed militia on Spring Creek, about eight miles from the original battle ground. They left twenty-two dead on the field and carried away about forty wounded.

The long retreat to the mouth of the Concho River started the next morning in a blinding snow storm that made pursuit by the Indians impossible. They resorted to captured Indian ponies as food supply.