Fort Concho: Its Why and Wherefore

by James N. Gregory

“There was never a more splendidly barbaric sight. In after years I was glad that I had seen it. Hundreds of warriors, the flower of the fighting men of the Southwestern Plains tribes, mounted upon their finest horses, armed with guns and lances, and carrying heavy shields of thick buffalo hide, were coming like the wind. Over all was splashed the rich colors of red, vermilion and ochre, on the bodies of the men, on the bodies of the running horses. Scalps dangled from bridles, gorgeous war-bonnets fluttered their plumes, bright feathers dangled from the tails and manes of the horses, and the bronzed, half-naked bodies of the riders glittered with ornaments of silver and brass. Behind this head-long charging host stretched the Plains, on whose horizon the rising sun was lifting its morning fires. The warriors seemed to emerge from this glorious background.” (Life of Billy Dixon, by Olive K. Dixon, The Southwest Press, Dallas, Texas.)

The three buildings were about equally manned by the whites. Doors were closed and then barricaded, as were the windows and transoms, by sacks of flour and grain. The first charge was broken up at the very walls of the buildings by the lead from the big buffalo guns. Thanks to the thick abode walls and to the dirt covered roofs, there was no danger of being smoked out by fire.

The fight raged until noon. Two of the whites, unable to reach the buildings, had been killed in the first onslaught. All of the horses and oxen were dead or driven away. The Indians had lost heavily and now withdrew, out of range. They could be seen moving about in the distance but they did not attack again.

It was on the third day of the siege that Billy Dixon drew a bead on a mounted Indian, 1,538 yards away on a ridge, and shot him dead. He was firing a .50 calibre Sharp’s rifle, the largest of the buffalo guns.

During the next two or three days other buffalo hunters drifted into the Walls until the garrison numbered about a hundred men. William Barclay “Bat” Masterson had been present since the beginning of the fight and had, like most of the other defenders, distinguished himself by his cool behavior under fire.

By the end of the sixth day, the Indians had broken up into bands, the Comanches under Quanah, the Kiowas under Lone Wolf, and the Cheyennes under Stone Calf and White Shield. These bands then proceeded to work over the other buffalo hunters on the south and central ranges. They accomplished their objective. Buffalo hunting by the whites was discontinued for that year.

Down in San Antonio, General Christopher C. Augur, the Department Commander, fully backed by General Sherman, ordered full scale war. All Indians off their reservations were declared hostiles and the campaign against them took the form of a real squeeze play. It was relentlessly carried out by a man-sized army under able lieutenants.

Colonel Nelson A. Miles was ordered to march westerly out of Camp Supply in the Indian Territory; Colonel John Wynn Davidson was to move west out of Fort Sill; Major William R. Price was to move down the Canadian out of Fort Union, Territory of New Mexico; Colonel G. P. Buell was to leave Fort Griffin, proceed north to the Red River then move up that stream, and Colonel Mackenzie’s command headed northwesterly out of Fort Concho for his old camping ground at Blanco Canyon. It appears that Colonel Grierson was left out altogether. The campaign got under way in the late summer of 1874.

Colonel Mackenzie marched out of Fort Concho with eight companies of cavalry and three of infantry. He moved northwesterly up the North Concho River for his first objective—the camp in Blanco Canyon.[10]

(Mackenzie appears to have been overall commander. However, the biography of Nelson A. Miles seems to give Miles considerable credit for subduing the Indians in our West. He was a volunteer in the Union Army during the Civil War and rose to high rank, higher than that reached by Mackenzie. Biographies can often be misleading, parts of them being word of mouth stories from the principal himself. Miles could never have been called a ‘modest’ man. Prior to his death he followed the example of some of the Pharaohs of Egyptian history, and built his mausoleum on the bank of a great river, in his case not the Nile, but the Potomac. It was perfectly legal to do this, the site chosen being in the Arlington National Cemetery, a place reserved for the remains of United States servicemen. However, the timing of the construction of the mausoleum, built even before he died, and the fact that he chose to plant himself, not only in the most prominent spot to be found, but right in what had once been General Robert E. Lee’s front yard, leads one to believe he might have taken a slight advantage of his biographer.)