Texas

by James A. Michener

  The excessive heat was a more serious matter, for this was early September when the plains of Texas blazed their hottest; many a newcomer to the state moaned during his first August: ‘Well, at least September will soon be here.’ But he was remembering September in New Hampshire or New York; when that Texas September struck he shuddered.

  In 1874, September was exceptionally hot, with the entire surface of the Panhandle becoming a mirage, dancing insultingly along the horizon. Mesquite trees huddled, scorched by the sun, drawing into their limitless roots what little water they found deep down, and even jackrabbits hid in their burrows. Rattlesnakes appeared briefly, then had to seek shade to protect their body temperature, and those few buffalo that had survived the onslaught of commercial teams wandered aimless among the bleached skeletons of their brothers.

  It was a huge concentration of Indians that gathered in the various canyons of Palo Duro as a last defense against the approaching army: Kicking Bird and his thousand Kiowa; White Antelope and his many Cheyenne; Matark and his nine hundred Comanche. They did not fight as a combined army; Indian custom would never permit that kind of effective coalition, but they did support one another, and to rout them out of their protective furrows was going to be difficult.

  On came the five columns, with Miles and Mackenzie always supplying the pressure, but as they approached Palo Duro the ordeals of a Texas September began to take a heavy toll, and as water supplies diminished, the men learned the agony of thirst.

  When Reed’s 10th Cavalry ran completely out of anything to drink, Jaxifer, acting on his own, ordered one of his men to kill a horse so that his troops could at least wet their lips with its blood, and after Reed’s infantry, lagging far behind, suffered for two days of staggering thirst, he ordered his men to take their knives and open veins in their arms so that their own blood could sustain them. When some demurred, he showed them how by cutting into his own arm, then offering it to two soldiers while he pumped his fist to make the blood spurt. One of the men fainted.

  Texas weather, particularly on the plains, could provide wild variations, and in mid-September, at the height of the heat and the drought, a blue norther swept in, and during one daylight period the thermometer dropped from ninety-nine degrees to thirty-nine. For two days the freezing wind blew, threatening the lives of men who had been sweating their health away, and on the third day torrential rains engulfed the entire area. Now the war became a chase through mud, with the sturdier, slower horses of the cavalry having an advantage.

  From all sides the blue-clads began to compress the thousands of Indians, and although the latter, under the expert guidance of chiefs like Matark, succeeded in avoiding pitched battles, they could not escape the punishing effect of the swift cavalry raids, the burning of lodges and the destruction of crops. Their most serious defeat came on a day when they lost only four braves: in drenching rain Mackenzie and Reed found a defile on the face of the canyon wall and with great daring led their cavalry down that steep and almost impassable route. When they reached the canyon floor they found a concentration of Chief Mamanti’s Kiowa, Ohamatai’s stubborn Comanche and Iron Shirt’s Cheyenne. Thundering through the Indian camps, they scattered the enemy and burned all their lodges, but with even more devastating effect, they captured their entire herd of horses and mules, 1,424 in number.

  With practiced eye, Mackenzie rode through the animals, selecting about 370 of the best, then gave Reed an extraordinary command: ‘Kill the rest.’ When Reed relayed this to Jaxifer, the big black man who loved horses and who tended his own as if they were his children, objected, but Reed said: ‘It’s an order!’ and the black troops carried it out while from a distance the captured Indian chiefs looked on in horror.

  Never did Mackenzie’s troops, or any from the other four columns, engage the Indians in a pitched battle, but the despair they spread through the Indian camps, with their incessant burning of villages and routing of camps and slaughter of horses, convinced the enemy that sustained resistance was going to be impossible, and it was a Kiowa chief named Woman’s Heart who made the first gesture. Assembling thirty-five of his principal braves he told them: ‘We can no longer hold them off. Get your families.’ The men supposed that they were about to make a gallant last stand. Instead, when the large group was assembled, he told them: ‘We shall ride to Camp Hope.’

  ‘To attack it? There’ll be soldiers.’

  ‘No. To surrender to the agent there. This day we start for the reservation that will be our home hereafter,’ and while women wept and braves stared at the canyon walls which had for so many decades been their protection, Woman’s Heart led his Kiowa away.

  Soon Stone Calf and Bull Bear of the Cheyenne, accompanied by 820 of their warriors, straggled in to the reservations, as did White Horse and 200 of his Comanche, and Kicking Bird and Lone Wolf with almost 500 of their Kiowa. What gunfire had been unable to accomplish was achieved by remorseless pressure and destruction. The backbone of Indian resistance had been broken by the irresistible courage of the young colonels, Miles and Mackenzie, and their men.

  The last Comanche to operate on Texas soil was Chief Matark, and in those final days at the canyons he had with him an extraordinary ally, the old Comanchero Amos Peavine, for the Rattlesnake, always aware that in troubled times he stood a chance to make a dollar, had slipped through the army forces, moving in from New Mexico with three large wagonloads of guns stolen from the depots of Cavin & Clark. The word stolen, when so used, covered a horde of possibilities; after investigations were completed, it seemed likely that C&C personnel had sold the illegal weapons to Peavine; or, as another investigator suggested: ‘The Rattlesnake stole not only the guns but also two C&C drivers who believed that by working with him, they could earn a good deal more than the company paid them.’

  At any rate, Rattlesnake Peavine had come down the rocky trails of Palo Duro some two weeks ahead of the army, but once there, with his guns sold and his Mexican gold pieces safely stowed, he realized that this time the encircling force of blue-clads was so powerful, escape was unlikely. He therefore started to build a close friendship with four white girls, thirteen to sixteen, held by Matark’s men, and he became extremely kind to them, giving them most of his food allotment and protecting them from the torments of the young braves.

  After the first huge defections, Peavine strongly recommended that Matark and his remnant also surrender and find their home on the reservations north of the Red River, but the Comanche spoke for his men when he replied: ‘I live on no reservation.’

  But the time came when pressure from the north made it imperative that Matark find temporary refuge by moving south, and he did this with such skill that he evaded Colonel Mackenzie’s men pressing north. This placed him south of Palo Duro, down where the Panhandle joins the rest of Texas, and here he roamed and pillaged.

  The great Indian tribes had once covered the land called Texas, from the Gulf of Mexico to the mountains of the Far West, from the Red River in the north to the Rio Grande in the south, and now they were diminished to this handful of Comanche under Matark and a few Apache who would soon be driven into the arid wastes of Arizona. It would fall to Matark to make the last stand.

  Scouts quickly informed Mackenzie that Matark was running wild to the south, so he dispatched Reed and the Fort Garner men to capture the raiders, and as winter approached a great chase developed across the northern plains. Matark and Peavine would strike an exposed ranch, and Reed and Jaxifer would pursue them. Matark would make a long swing to the west, and Reed would cannily move northwest to intercept him in that unexpected quarter, but Peavine would warn his Comanche that this might be Reed’s strategy, so they would move off in the opposite direction.

  But now the Indians were up against a man of both skill and endurance, and he led battle-hardened cavalry units. Slowly but remorselessly, Reed closed in on these raiding Indians, edging them always closer to the southern rim of Palo Duro, where Mackenzie’s superior numbers would annihilate them.


  The final battle that Reed envisaged did not occur, for a daring move by Jaxifer cut the Indian force in half, with disastrous consequences for the Comanche. Reed, suddenly aware that his portion of the force faced only a segment of Matark’s men, made a frenzied attack at four in the morning, encircling Matark’s camp, killing many of its inhabitants, and taking the great chief captive.

  At the same time, Jaxifer invested the other half, and although many escaped his net, he did capture some three dozen, including Peavine and the four white girls he was protecting. With tears of joy, the Rattlesnake told his captors of how he had been a peaceful rancher in the vicinity of Fort Griffin and of how Matark’s men, damn them, had overrun the place and taken his four granddaughters captive, and while the cavalrymen were celebrating and giving the girls attention, he made his quiet escape with three of their best horses.

  When Reed learned that Jaxifer had also been successful, he dispatched a scout to inform Mackenzie of his unqualified success, including the rescue of the four white girls, but it was not till after the horsemen had ridden north that he began interrogating his black troops about the details of their splendid victory, and heard about the elderly white man who had delivered the girls.

  ‘You mean,’ he asked with a sick feeling, ‘that the old man had a withered left arm?’ ‘Yes, he did.’

  Knowing what his next answer would be, he asked the girls: ‘Did the old man bring guns for the Indians?’ and when they said that he had, but that he had also been extremely protective of them, he asked: ‘Did the Indians call him Little Cripple?’ and when they nodded, he jumped up and began kicking a saddle.

  ‘Good God! Sergeant Jaxifer, you had Rattlesnake Peavine in your hands and you let him go!’ And right there the Fort Garner detachment, all hundred of them, and the four girls entered into a compact: ‘We need tell no one about Amos Peavine. Girls, he saved your lives, didn’t he? So keep quiet about him. Men, do you want the rest of the army laughing at you? Say nothing.’

  He himself did not feel obligated to report more than the bare facts: ‘Sergeant Jaxifer and his well-disciplined detachment of Tenth Cavalry routed the other half of Matark’s force, and in doing so, gallantly rescued four white girls who had been held prisoner by the Comanche.’

  Matark was taken, as the Peace Policy required, to Camp Hope, where he was turned over to new Quakers who had replaced the unfortunate Earnshaw Rusk. He was then moved to a remote reservation in Florida, from which he launched a barrage of appeals. Two Quaker agents new to the frontier lodged a thoughtful appeal for clemency on the grounds that Chief Matark was at heart a well-intentioned man caught up in the tragedy of a war of extermination.

  President Grant was touched by this reasoning, and remembering with what high hopes he had launched his Indian policy, told an aide: ‘What does that fellow Rusk from Pennsylvania say about Matark?’ and when Earnshaw was invited to make a report, he reflected on all he knew about Matark, and then he prayed. After two days of soul-searching he drafted this response:

  I have known Matark for many years. He is a savage striving to find his way in a new civilization governed by new rules which he cannot comprehend. I believe I know every evil thing he has done, and I condemn him for his barbarities. But I assure thee, Mr. President, that except for torture, which can never be forgiven, he has committed no act more reprehensible than what the United States Army committed against him and his people. His tragedy was that he was never given the option of accepting a consistent Peace Policy offered in good faith by the American government, and to punish him now for fighting according to rules established by our side is deplorable.

  I have searched my heart to determine what is justice in this affair, and I find I must beg thee to commute his sentence. He is, like thee, an honorable warrior. Allow him to return to his people and to the lands he used to roam.

  He was pardoned, with the stern admonition: ‘If you ever set foot in Texas, you will be shot on sight,’ to which he replied with humility: ‘I no want Texas.’

  Because the temptation to reinvade Texas might prove irresistible if he was lodged at Camp Hope, from where the traditional hunting grounds would be visible each dawn, he was moved to another section of the Indian Territory, and there a woman reporter for a Texas newspaper found him after peace had been established on the plains:

  Chief Matark can be considered, with much reason, one of the last Indians who warred in Texas. Of all the hundreds of thousands who terrorized our ranches, he was the last, and when I found him sitting peacefully beside an arroyo on his reservation, I asked him what his lasting memories were of our state, and he said: ‘Texas, that was the best.’

  Two weeks after this interview was published in the Texas papers, Matark quietly disappeared from the reservation, and the Quaker in charge of the area announced: ‘He knew he was dying and went, as is the custom of his people, to some lonely spot where he could rejoin the Great Spirit.’

  He had actually gone west across the border into New Mexico in response to a smuggled appeal from Amos Peavine, and there he had joined forces with his old comrade, robbing stagecoaches and caravans headed for California. Numerous agitated reports reached Santa Fe and Tucson of this murderous duo who appeared suddenly at the bend of a road: ‘There was this old man with a withered left arm, this big Indian who said nothing. They took everything.’

  There were also reports, more ominous, of what happened when the travelers had tried to resist: ‘The white man was so quick on the trigger, he shot two of our men before anyone knew what was happening.’

  The depredations became so offensive that posses were organized both in New Mexico and Arizona, and on a blazingly hot August afternoon in the latter state, a gun battle erupted, and when it ended Chief Matark of the Comanche, not yet fifty years old, lay dead on the burning sand. What happened to Amos Peavine was less certain; said the coroner in reporting his inquest: ‘He was last seen headed north, trailing blood. Considering the land into which he disappeared, he must be listed as dead.’

  Now came one of the curiosities of Texas history. The Comanche threat having been contained, there was no further use for a frontier post like Fort Sam Garner, and so one day in October 1874, George Reed, who had built it of mud back in 1869 and converted it to stone by 1871, received curt instructions from Lewis Renfro in Washington:

  Capt. George Reed, Co. T, 14th Infantry, Commanding Officer Fort Garner, Texas.

  You will proceed immediately to the abandonment of Fort Garner on Bear Creek, dismantling such buildings as can be torn down and returning the land to its civilian owners without any obligation on our part to restore its original condition or make compensation.

  Obedient to the orders, Reed assembled his men and informed them that the two companies of the 10th Cavalry would be reassigned to Colonel Mackenzie at Fort Sill, while the two companies of the 14th Infantry under Captain Wetzel would remain at Fort Garner to decommission the post.

  On a bright morning the two young officers who had replaced Johnny Minor—‘lost his left leg in the battle at Three Cairns’—and Jim Logan—‘dead from the shooting at the tank’—flashed hand signals to John Jaxifer, who blew his whistle and headed his Negro cavalry back toward Jacksborough.

  As Jaxifer left the parade ground for the last time, Wetzel stopped him to say, with grudging admiration: ‘You were first class, Jaxifer. Your men? They’re beginning to learn.’ Jaxifer looked back to review his men: saddles polished, boots pipe-clayed, brass gleaming, faces smiling. He was proud of these dark men, for he knew that rarely had a military unit performed more bravely, more consistently, and with so little recognition.

  When they vanished in dust, Wetzel’s infantrymen began the task of emptying the buildings, loading the wagons, and demolishing the few wooden structures. The stout stone buildings they did not touch, for these were now the property of an unusual owner who gave every intention of occupying them far into the future.

  After careful investigation, Reed had sati
sfied himself that the legal arrangement which his wife had finally engineered in favor of Emma Larkin still prevailed: ‘If I understand you, Judge, the land on which Fort Garner stands reverts to the Larkin girl.’

  ‘It does, and she owns the six thousand other acres we awarded her.’

  ‘Then by Texas law she gets all the buildings we erected?’

  ‘She does. You know that in Texas, the federal government does not own public lands.’

  In a quiet ceremony at the fort, which the judge attended, Reed turned the property over to Emma. ‘You’ve been a brave woman. You’ve earned this land. Occupy it in honor.’ He kissed her, as did Wetzel, but the judge whispered to Sanders: ‘Small reward. The buildings are worth nothing. The land, maybe ten cents an acre.’

  While the men were still dismantling the fort, a general of extraordinary charm sent notice that he intended visiting the fort with the next wagon train, and preparations were made in the diminished quarters to receive him properly. ‘What can we do?’ Mrs. Reed protested. ‘Things half packed. He’ll think we’re slovens.’

  When the general arrived, a big, fleshy man with European manners, he put the wives at ease: ‘My wife and I were warned that you were closing down. That’s why we hurried.’ And from his wagon he produced hampers of food, enough for all the troops.

  He was General Yancey Quimper, sixty-two years old, hero not only of San Jacinto but now of Monterrey as well, and as always, a soldier whose first thought was for the welfare of his men: ‘Feed the troops, Captain Reed, and while they feast let me explain why we’ve come so far to pay you honor.’

  He personally broke open the hampers of beef and duck, arranging a separate table for the four black cavalrymen left behind as guards, and while they toasted him in beer from the two barrels he provided, he told the Reeds and the Wetzels: ‘This gracious lady who stands at my side is none other than the widow of Captain Sam Garner, for whom your fort was named. And those two fine men slicing the beef were Garner’s sons. They’re mine now, for I adopted them, and they bear the name of Quimper.’ He said this grandiloquently, as if by taking away the honorable name of Garner and bestowing upon them the dubious one of Quimper, he had somehow conferred dignity.