RED RIVER WAR Part One

RED RIVER WAR. The Red River War, a series of military engagements fought between the United States Army and warriors of the Kiowa, Comanche, Southern Cheyenne, and southern Arapaho Indian tribes from June of 1874 into the spring of 1875, began when the federal government defaulted on obligations under- taken to those tribes by the Treaty of Medicine Lodge in 1867. Rations to be issued the Indians consistently fell short or failed entirely, gun running and liquor trafficking by white profiteers were not curtailed, and white outlaws from both Kansas and Texas who entered the Indian Territory to steal Indian stock were not punished or even, in most cases, pursued. On all these counts, the two federal Indian agents who dealt with the Indians, James M. Haworth at Fort Sill and John D. Miles at Darlington, both Quaker missionaries, did everything in their power to remedy the situation, but they received no cooperation from either the military or the Washington officials of the Office of Indian Affairs.

The army declined to enforce provisions of the Medicine Lodge Treaty prohibiting white entry onto tribal lands, and between 1872 and 1874 organized, professional buffalo hunters based in Dodge City, Kansas, wiped the herds out on the Cheyenne-Arapaho Reservation. With no rations arriving from the government and nothing left to hunt, all four tribes were in a desperate situation. A Comanche medicine man named Isatai called for a Sun Dance, even though that ritual had never been part of the Comanche religion. At that gathering, he and a young war leader of the Quahadi band of Comanches, Quanah Parker, recruited warriors for raids into Texas to avenge slain relatives of theirs. Other Comanche chiefs, notably IsaRose (White Wolf) and Tabananica (Sound of the Sun) of the Yapparika band, identified the hide merchants as the real threat to the Indian way of life, and suggested that if Quanah were to attack anybody, he should attack them. A war party headed west into the Panhandle of Texas.

The second battle of Adobe Walls occurred between June 27 and July 1, 1874, when a war party of 700 Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors attacked the buffalo hunters’ camp at Adobe Walls on the Canadian River in what is now Hutchinson County. In the first skirmish of that conflict three whites were killed, but as many as seventy Indians were killed and wounded. Afterward, the Indians maintained a sporadic siege of Adobe Walls until July 1. In this battle William (Billy) Dixon’s renowned “long shot” occurred, and the local restaurateur, William Olds, accidentally shot himself in the head as he was descending from a watchtower.

The great majority of Kiowas did not take part in the Adobe Walls episode. Instead, they awaited direction at their annual Sun Dance, held the first week in July at the western edge of the reservation. There, Chief Kicking Bird persuaded most of the Kiowas to return to the agency with him. The principal chief, Lone Wolf, succeeded in recruiting a war party of just fifty men with the help of Mamanti, the only other chief who voted for war. In the “Lost Valley Fight” on July 12, in a shallow draw near Jacksboro, Texas, they confronted a force of Texas Rangers of the Frontier Battalion, commanded by Maj. John B. Jones, and killed two, David Bailey and William Glass. The rangers escaped under cover of night.

James L. Haley, “RED RIVER WAR,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/ online/articles/qdr02), accessed January 21, 2012. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

To be continued next month