Better known as the Battle of Soldier Spring, Oklahoma. The beginning of the end for the Plains Indians as nomads. A short 12 years later, the buffalo would be gone, too.
I had to look up the exact site of this battle. I knew many of the other landmarks mentioned, from Ft. Cobb to Ft. Union (north of Las Vegas, New Mexico) to Adobe Walls and Cheyenne, OK, (Custer's Last Oklahoma Stand, lol) and much in between. We're talking about the early counterparts of Route 66 "side trips," lol.
Soldier Spring is also where several councils for Peace-on- the-Plains were held. The historical marker for both is near the junction of state highway 44 and US 283 in, I believe, Greer County, OK. (Might be Kiowa Co.)
The site itself is only reached by foot, from one of my favorite places, Quartz Mountain State Park. This is all between Lugert and Granite, OK. Traveling there, you'll see why Granite is so-named. The mountain sparkles in the sun from all directions.
The area had been a sacred Indian ground for hundreds of years. With the later cattle drives, once Evans and Sheridan and Custer had made it relatively "safe" for passage, this site was on what some call the Western Trail or Dodge City Trail. One of the largest users was the King Ranch in south Texas, herding its livestock north to Dodge City, KS.
Greer County itself has a "story" of its own, having been fought over by Texas and Oklahoma, in what we might call the "original" Red River Rivalry - though not so much a shootout as our annual football game.
Texas, being the greedy, greedy state that it was and is (and my home and birthplace, lol) just decided that the Red River boundary between its country (Republic of Texas) and the baby United States would include the North Fork of the Red River, too, as its most northern boundary.
The north fork of the Red runs due north from just west of Davidson, OK; through Lugert, where it was dammed to make Lake Altus, the water playground of Quartz Mountain park; onward north to about Sayre, OK, home of some of the deepest natural gas wells drilled in OK. From there, it commences westward into the TX Panhandle, near Shamrock, TX, and thence to Lefors, near Pampa.
That's actually "map talk," as it would be the headwaters which arise near Pampa and flow into the Red backwards from the route I mentioned - we're on the eastern side of Continental Divide.
Also, when Oklahoma was created as a state, it was the marriage of Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory (yes, they even had a wedding in the capital at Guthrie). The western boundary of the state was also the western boundary of the most westward Indian reservation, which had originally been set at the 98th parallel. Eventually, it became the 100th meridian.
This was important to Texas, as far as its own "Greer County" was concerned because the 100th parallel needed to be established, along with the northern boundary of the Red River.
Texas and the United States went to court in the 1890s to settle the boundary dispute. It should be noted, for example, that Mangum, OK, was founded on a Texas land grant - as was much of Greer County, TX, now Greer County, OK. Greer County had been formed from Wheeler County, TX, just 10 years prior to the 1896 settlement by the US Supreme Court, which established not only the 100th meridian as the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas, but also the main fork of the Red River as the southern boundary of Oklahoma.
This portion of the Red River's tributaries included the North Fork and what is known as the Salt Fork of the Red, which lies between the North Fork and the main body of the Red. It was called "bad water" by the Indians and may be why the other waters of the Red to the north of the North Fork are called "Sweetwater," as are towns in OK and TX which are near it.
So, Greer County became a county in Oklahoma before OK's statehood in 1907. Mangum, the county seat, is just a few miles SW of the Soldier Spring battlesite described in the threadhead post.
The site is on private property on a farm now, but is said to be visible from a footpath in the Quartz Mtn nature trail and lies at the mouth of Devil's Canyon.
Another brief description of the battle is here:
http://www.forttours.com/pages/tocsoldsp.asp
I got a small chuckle from this passage:
"... Evans reports that a number of the Indians were seen to fall; but no bodies were found. The Indians claim that the only one of their men who fell at this point was Mama-day-te, whose horse bucked him off during the excitement; they say he was not hurt. To this day one may pick flattened lead balls from the rocks around Soldier Spring, fired by the soldiers at the retreating Indians. ..."
But I felt some sorrow at this passage:
" ... Evans had his men establish a fortified camp, after which he put them to work destroying the Indian property. This task was not completed until nearly midnight. It was a rich village; the tepees were of the best Indian workmanship, nearly new. Evans burned everything, including a hundred bushels of corn, much flour, coffee, sugar, soap, cooking utensils, mats, parfleche (leather pouches), bullet molds, weapons, and robes. He did not spare even the buckskin dolls, doll dresses, and other playthings left by the Indian children.
One of the principal items destroyed by the soldiers was several tons of dried buffalo meat, the entire winter food supply of the Noconee Comanches. At the head of the Indian village, where the mountain rises from the plain, is a small pond covered with lily pads, and fed by small bubbling springs. The Comanches drew their drinking water from this spring. Into this Evans threw all of the dried meat, and to this day, the Indians call it "Dried-Beef-Pond." ..."
On the other hand, *some* of the Plains Indians such as a few of these Comanches and Kiowas, had made the passage of the peaceful Indians in IT and OT, such as my great-grandparents, nearly impossible when they wanted to travel to Santa Fe or points west - which is what caused the US soldiers to be there in the first place, for their protection.
Thank you for giving me an afternoon of reading that was an excellent excuse for me to stay out of the midday sun on this very hot and ozone-filled day in south Texas!