Battle of Little Robe Creek

The years 1856 to 1858 were particularly vicious and bloody on the Texas frontier, as settlers continued to expand their settlements into the Comanche homeland, the Comancheria. Valuable Indian hunting grounds were plowed under, and grazing range for the Comanche horse herds were lost.[3] The Comanche realized their homeland of the Comancheria was increasingly encroached on by Anglo-Texas settlers, so they struck back with a series of ferocious and bloody raids into Texas.[4]

The United States Army proved wholly unable to stem the violence. Federal units were being transferred out of the area for reasons that seemed driven more by political than military considerations. At the same time, federal law and numerous treaties forbade incursion by state forces into the federally protected Indian Territories. The U.S. Army was likewise instructed not to attack Indians in the Indian Territories or to permit such attacks.[3] The reasoning behind the order was that many native tribes, such as the Cherokee, were engaged in farming, and living as peaceful settlers, while other tribes, such as the Comanche and Kiowa, continued to use that part of the Indian Territories that was the Comancheria to live in while raiding white settlements in Texas.[5]

The relationship between the federal government, Texas, and the native tribes was further complicated by a unique situation that arose as a result of Texas' annexation. The federal government is charged by the U.S. Constitution to be in charge of Indian affairs and took over that role in Texas after it became a state in 1846, but under the terms of Texas' accession to the Union, the new state retained control over virtually all of public land within its boundaries. In most other new states, the overwhelming majority of publicly owned land belonged to the Federal government as well as sole jurisdiction over Indian affairs, in particular the authority to make treaties guaranteeing reservations for various tribes. However, Texas adamantly refused to contribute public land in the state for Indian reservations, but still expected the federal government to be responsible for the cost and details of Indian affairs. Since federal Indian agents in Texas believed that Indian land rights were the key to peace on the frontier, little progress towards a peaceful settlement was even attempted on account of the attitude of Texas officials on the question of Indian homelands.[6]

As the Civil War loomed, federal forces were moved off the frontier with greater frequency. These troop movements, including the transfer without replacement of the 2nd Cavalry in Texas, left much of the frontier of the Great Plains without protection from Indian attacks.[5] The loss of the 2nd Cavalry in Texas was a particularly bitter blow to settlers. Texas Governor Hardin Runnels had campaigned for office in 1856 on a platform to put an end to the raids. He publicly expressed astonishment and rage when the 2nd Cavalry was transferred to Utah and ultimately disbanded altogether.[5] Governor Runnels determined to re-establish disbanded Ranger battalions, which were reduced after Texas' annexation. On January 27, 1858, Runnels appointed John Salmon "Rip" Ford, a veteran Ranger who had fought both in the Mexican–American War and on the frontier against the Indians, as captain and commander of the Texas Rangers, militia, and allied Indian forces, and ordered him to carry the battle to the Comanche homeland of Comancheria.[3]

Capt. John "Rip" Ford was made captain and commander of the Texas Ranger, Militia, and Allied Indian Forces

Ford, whose habit of signing the casualty reports with the initials "RIP" for "Rest In Peace," was known as a ferocious and no-nonsense Indian fighter. Commonly missing from the history books was his proclivity for ordering the wholesale slaughter of any Indian, man or woman, he could find.[3] Ford's reason for this was simple: Comanche raids were brutal in their treatment of settlers.[5] The Comanche, at that time, generally made no distinction between age and race of victims, except that men old enough to fight were expected to fight to the death as most Native Americans would, never allowing themselves to be captured alive by the fierce Comanche, who regarded surrender as cowardice. Girls, (females below puberty) and young boys (generally up to a year or two below puberty) were generally tested and if found to be strong, healthy, and intelligent, were adopted into the band. Women over puberty were raped and used as slaves.[3]

The Comanche as a people had originated as a branch of the Shoshone people living along the upper Platte River in Wyoming. The Comanche emerged as a distinct group shortly before 1700, when they broke off from the Shoshone as they migrated south.[3] This coincided with their acquisition of the horse from the Spaniards, which allowed them greater mobility in their quest for better hunting grounds. Their population explosion as a distinct tribe of their own came in part from the huge numbers of women and children adopted into the tribe.[4] As the original Comanche moved southward into a swath of territory extending from the Arkansas River to the area of central Texas north of the Edwards Plateau, their population increased dramatically because of the abundance of buffalo as an easy food supply, an influx of Shoshone migrants, and the adoption of significant numbers of women and children taken captive from rival groups. The Comanche made no distinction between those born into the tribe, and those adopted into the tribe.[4] Military historians believe the Comanche's relatively recent acquisition of their domain made them all the more determined to fight to keep it.[7] Their success against the Spanish, Mexicans, and early Texans led them to believe the tactics that had enabled them to win, including unrelenting raids and thefts against settlements, would continue to be successful.[8]

This violence towards settlers cost roughly 17 settler lives per mile for settlement of the Comancheria.[5] Thus, Ford determined to meet brutality with brutality.[5] Governor Runnels issued explicit orders to Ford, "I impress upon you the necessity of action and energy. Follow any trail and all trails of hostile or suspected hostile Indians you may discover and if possible, overtake and chastise them if unfriendly.[5] The governor's instructions were simple, and Ford intended to follow them.[5] He then raised a force of about 100 Texas Rangers and state militia. Realizing that with Sharps rifles and modern Colt revolvers he needed additional men, Ford set out to recruit ones he did not have to pay, as he did his Rangers and militia.[9]

Among the traditional enemies of the Comanche were the Tonkawa Indians, then on a reservation on the Brazos River in Texas. Immortalized and praised in Texas history as friends and allies of the Texas settlers, these histories generally downplay the fact the Tonkawa were cannibals and were despised by virtually every other Indian tribe.[10] Ford, who had witnessed Tonkawa brutality to other Indians, had no reservations about using cannibals to help him, as long as they were eating Comanches, not Rangers.[5]

On March 19, 1858, Ford went to the Brazos Reservation, near what today is Fort Worth, Texas, and recruited the Tonkawa into his forces. Indian agent Captain S. P. Ross, (father of the future Texas Governor Lawrence Sullivan Ross) called Chief Placido of the Tonkawa to a war council, where he used rhetoric to stir Placido's anger against their mutual traditional enemies, the Comanches. At least 120 warriors volunteered, 111 of them Tonkawa, led by Placido, and scouts were sent to locate Comanche camps north of the Red River in the Comancheria in the Oklahoma Indian Territories.

The Tonkawa Indians, commanded by their "celebrated" chief, Placido, were hailed as the "faithful and implicitly trusted friend of the whites" (with limited mention of their cannibalism)[11] and undertook a campaign with approximately an equal number of Texas Rangers against the Comanches. Ford and Placido were determined to follow the Comanche and Kiowa up to their strongholds amid the hills of the Canadian River and into the Wichita Mountains, and if possible, "kill their warriors, decimate their food supply, strike at their homes and families, and generally destroy their ability to make war."[5]

Map of the Comancheria in 1858.

In February 1858, Ford established Camp Runnells near what used to be the town of Belknap.[1]^: 226 Ford, still operating under Governor Runnell's explicits orders to "follow any and all trails of hostile and suspected hostile Indians, inflict the most severe and summary punishment,"[3] and to "allow no interference from any source." (That source was interpreted to mean the United States, whose Army and Indian agents might try to enforce federal treaties and federal statutory law against trespassing on the Indian territories in Oklahoma).[3]

On April 29, Ford's Rangers, accompanied by Tonkawa warriors, Caddo, Anadarko, Shawnee, and other allied Indian scouts from the Brazos Indian Reservation, crossed the Red River into the Indian Territory.[1]^: 229 The force then advanced into the portion of the Comancheria in the Indian Territories in Oklahoma. Ford and S. P. Ross[2] led the men across the Red River, into the Indian Territory, violating federal laws and numerous treaties, with Ford stating later that his job was to "find and fight Indians, not to learn geography."[3]

The Tonkawa warriors with the Rangers celebrated the victory by decorating their horses with the bloody hands and feet of their Comanche victims as trophies. They also had containers with various other body parts, which they cut off and ate in a "dreadful feast".[3] "The Rangers noted most of their dead foes were missing various body parts, and the Tonkawa had bloody containers, portending a dreadful victory feast that evening."[3]" The coat of mail worn by old Iron Jacket covered his dead body "like shingles on a roof." The Rangers cut up the mail and divided the pieces as trophies.[9]

Ford triumphantly returned to Texas, claiming he had killed 76 Indians and captured 16,[3] though official Army records state 60 casualties.[1]^: 233 Ford requested that the governor immediately empower him to raise additional levies of Rangers and return north at once to continue the campaign in the heart of the Comancheria. Runnels had exhausted half the budget for defense for the year, though, and disbanded the Rangers at the end of six months.[1]^: 233

The overall impact of the campaign was significant. For the first time, Texan or American forces had penetrated into the heart of Comancheria, attacked Comanche villages with impunity, and successfully made it home. The U.S. Army later adopted many of Ford's tactics, including attacking civilians as well as warriors, and destroying the buffalo herds that were a main source of food for their enemies,[3] in their campaigns against the Plains tribes following the Civil War.[5]

As Frank Secoy and John C. Ewers emphasize in their military history book Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains, the Comanche and other Plains Indians had combined mastery of horsemanship while incorporating first, their native weapons of bow and lance, then single-shot firearms, with the horse, but two things combined to alter this battlefield dynamic: first, the Rangers adopted the nomad tactics of cold camp and relentless pursuit to the Indian encampments; second was the introduction of rapid-fire pistols and rifles.[8] Thus, the Texans had surprised the Comanche in the heart of their homeland.[8] The invention and deployment of rapid-rate firearms destroyed the tactics the Plains Indians had developed and used with such success against the Spanish, Mexicans, and early Americans.[8]

Comanches of West Texas in war regalia, circa 1830

In this battle, the two factors combined to give a glimpse of what would end the Plains Indians' way of life since horses had made them true nomads. Although the "Comanche" had always been a nomadic people, the horse transformed them into a true nomadic culture, and a very warlike one. In the Journal of American History, Pekka Hämäläinen[12] estimates, as do most military historians and cultural anthropologists, that around 1700, the Comanche accessed a sufficient number of Spanish horses that they were able to make the leap from dog- and human-assisted nomadic hunter-gatherer to a true nomadic culture. The effects of this transformation were radical. Because they were the first Plains tribe to fully incorporate the horse into their way of life, and into their way of making war, they were far and away the best at it .[8] Though rare, the only successes the Spanish ever had in battle with the Comanche were on occasions that they were able to take them by surprise. Since the Comanche became classic horse nomads, though, this was never easy to do.[8] Only when the Rangers had adopted classic Comanche tactics of cold camps, forced marches, and use of scouts were they able to alter the dynamic of nomadic cavalry attacking fixed settlements. At Little Robe Creek, they in large part succeeded in surprising the Comanche.[8]

Technology had changed weapons vastly in favor of the settlers.[5] Certainly the Spanish, then the Mexicans, and later the Texans had learned that single-shot weapons were not enough to defeat the deadly Comanche light horsemen, whose mastery of cavalry tactics and mounted bowmanship were renowned. The Comanche's constant movement caused many of their opponent's older single-shot weapons to miss their target in the chaos of battle. The Comanche could then easily kill their enemies before they had a chance to reload.[5] Though it was understated, the Comanche learned to use single-shot firearms quite well, though they found bows superior in terms of rate of fire. The Comanche put an end to Spanish expansion in North America. They did what no other indigenous peoples had managed, defending and even expanding their homelands, in the face of the best military forces the Spanish could bring against them. In the late 18th century, the Comanche were said to have stolen every horse in New Mexico.[5] Their raids into Mexico were so devastating that one primary goal of the Mexican government after the Mexican–American War was a treaty that would compel the United States to end the Comanche raids into Mexico.[5] In addition, the United States promised compensation for those raids that made it to Mexico. In the years between 1848 and 1853, Mexico filed 366 claims for Comanche and Apache raids originating from north of the border.[13]

The scorched earth tactics employed by the Rangers resulted in the destruction of Comanche lodges, food supplies, and horse herds. This left the survivors without even the most limited means to survive.[3] The killing of women and children had occurred before, on both sides, but this marked a watershed in terms of open use as of attacks on noncombatants as a tactic of war.[3] The Texans had had limited success against the Comanche until repeating firearms ended their battlefield domination, and new Ranger fighting tactics took the battle to the Comanche heartland. In the face of the attack on their homeland, the Comanche were defeated and forced to retreat. Only Peta Nocona's leadership saved the day, as he was able to retire skillfully enough that the entire battle disintegrated into a running individual gun battle over several miles.[5]

• List of battles fought in Oklahoma

• Exley, Jo Ella Powell, Frontier Blood: The Saga of the Parker Family,
• Fehrenbach, Theodore Reed The Comanches: The Destruction of a People. New York: Knopf, 1974, ISBN 0-394-48856-3. Later (2003) republished under the title The Comanches: The History of a People
• Foster, Morris. Being Comanche.
• Frazier, Ian. Great Plains. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1989.
• Lodge, Sally. Native American People: The Comanche. Vero Beach, Florida 32964: Rourke Publications, Inc., 1992.
• Lund, Bill. Native Peoples: The Comanche Indians. Mankato, Minnesota: Bridgestone Books, 1997.
• Mooney, Martin. The Junior Library of American Indians: The Comanche Indians. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993.
• Native Americans: Comanche Archived 2011-09-11 at the Wayback Machine (August 13, 2005).
• Richardson, Rupert N. The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement: A Century and a Half of Savage Resistance to the Advancing White Frontier. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1933.
• Rollings, Willard. Indians of North America: The Comanche. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.
• Secoy, Frank. Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains. Monograph of the American Ethnological Society, No. 21. Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1953.
• Streissguth, Thomas. Indigenous Peoples of North America: The Comanche. San Diego: Lucent Books Incorporation, 2000.
• Moore, R Edward. "The Texas Comanches" on Texas Indians (August 14, 2005).
• Wallace, Ernest, and E. Adamson Hoebel. The Comanches: Lords of the Southern Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952.

• Fort Tours: Antelope Hills
• Denson, Jerry & The Ellis County Historical Society: The Battle of Little Robe Creek, 1858 – "Our Ellis County Heritage 1885-1979" - AHGP/ALHN Independent Oklahoma Genealogy & History (OkGenNet)