The lamentations of the border people were finally heard in Washington and in April, 1871, General W. T. Sherman came to San Antonio. The next month, accompanied by General Randolph B. Marcy and an escort of seventeen men, he left for an inspection of the frontier. General Marcy was the same officer (then, Captain Marcy) who, in 1849 and later, had played such an important part in exploring and reporting to Congress on trails through Texas. The great explorer was still an outdoor man of action.
The little expedition proceeded by way of Boerne, Fredericksburg, the old Spanish Fort on the San Saba which had withstood a great Comanche Indian siege in 1758, Fort McKavett, Kickapoo Springs and Fort Concho. From Fort Concho it followed the military trail on northeasterly by the remains of Fort Chadbourne and Phantom Hill and on towards Belknap.
General Marcy’s journal is of great interest. He relates:
“We crossed immense herds of cattle today, which are allowed to run wild upon the prairies, and they multiply very rapidly. The only attention the owners give them is to brand the calves and occasionally go out to see where they range. The remains of several ranches were observed, the occupants of which have either been killed or driven off to the more dense settlements, by the Indians. Indeed, this rich and beautiful section does not contain, today (May 17, 1871), as many white people as it did when I visited it eighteen years ago, and if the Indian marauders are not punished, the whole country seems to be in a fair way of being totally depopulated.” He continues:
“May 18th, 1871—This morning five teamsters, who, with seven others, had been with a mule wagon train en route to Fort Griffin (Captain Henry Warren’s) with corn for the post, were attacked on the open prairie, about ten miles east of Salt Creek, by 100 Indians, and seven of the teamsters were killed and one wounded. General Sherman immediately ordered Colonel Mackenzie to take a force of 150 cavalry, with thirty days’ rations on pack mules, and pursue and chastise the marauders.”
An interesting angle to this affair was that Sherman’s party had been observed by the same Indians who murdered the teamsters, but were unmolested by them because they were waiting for the wagon train which they considered nearer top priority. Sherman realized later that he had nearly lost his scalp.[7]
This Colonel Mackenzie had reported in at Fort Concho as commanding officer on September 6, 1869. Born in New York, July 27, 1840, and christened RANALD SLIDELL, he had graduated first in his class at West Point in 1862. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War, received several wounds in action, and was a brigadier general when that war closed. The remainder of his professional life was devoted to active high command in the Indian wars. At various times he served at Forts Brown, Clark, McKavett, Concho and Richardson, engaging in his last Indian fight at Willow Creek, Wyoming in 1876. He was retired from the Army for disability in 1884 and died a bachelor at New Brighton, New York in 1889.
Along with Mackenzie, Colonel William Rufus Shafter who arrived to command at Fort Concho in January, 1870, the War Department had its two best young officers serving in the West Texas theatre.
Shafter had no West Point training. Born in Michigan on October 16, 1835, he entered the Union Army in the Civil War as a first lieutenant and by the end of that war had been breveted brigadier general of volunteers. He was later awarded The Congressional Medal of Honor for service during that war. He was commissioned lieutenant colonel of regulars in 1869 and first saw service in West Texas with the 24th Infantry at Fort McKavett. Later in life he was to command the American armies in Cuba during the Spanish American War.
During the summer of 1871, while commanding forces at Fort Davis, he set out with cavalry from both Forts Davis and Stockton and pursued a large raiding party of Indians from the Fort Davis area northeasterly until the trail moved into the great sand dune country near where the city of Monahans now stands. He spent fourteen days in this pursuit but as was usual in such matters, could never force an engagement. However, he learned that the heretofore dreaded sand dunes contained fresh water a few feet below the surface in several places, and that the area was a great refuge for Indians and was one of those rendezvous where horse-and-cattle stealing Indians met the Comanchero traders from New Mexico.