Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 04

by Quanah Parker

  His hands were free and he clawed at the rope, but couldn’t manage to get his fingers inside the noose.

  In desperation, he waved an arm to Mitchell. The lieutenant approached slowly while Tafoya, his tongue lolling, signaled that he had changed his mind. With the rope still around the prisoner’s neck, Mitchell had him dragged back to Mackenzie’s tent, where he proceeded not only to tell where the Comanche hideout was located, but to draw a detailed map of the layout. He spent more than an hour with the colonel, and when he was finished, Mackenzie not only knew the location, he had a fairly clear idea of the surrounding terrain, including the limited escape routes available to the Comanche who, as it happened, were camped in Palo Duro Canyon.

  Mackenzie dispatched scouts to verify Tafoya’s intelligence, and when they were gone, he told the Comanchero, “Señor Tafoya, I certainly hope you’ve been honest with me. Because if you haven’t, I will personally haul your greasy ass into the air and this time you will not come down from that gallows alive. Do you understand me, señor?”

  Rubbing his neck, which still bore scrapes from the rope and glowed a bright red in the lamplight of Mackenzie’s tent, Tafoya nodded. “Si, Colonel. I understand.”

  Scouts confirmed Tafoya’s story, and Mackenzie wasted no time. Two days’ forced march brought him to the brink of Palo Duro Canyon. The precipitous pink walls ran for miles along the river, and the canyon floor was thick with cedars and lush grass. It was an ideal position to defend, because the only access was down dangerous trails a quarter mile in length, and any troops attempting the descent would be easy targets. They would have to move slowly and in single file.

  But for some reason, perhaps lulled into a false sense of security by the seemingly impregnable defense provided by the canyon walls, the encampment was unaware of the army’s approach. Mackenzie started down immediately, having reached the rim just after daylight. Scouts found a buffalo trail that wound down the walls, and the troops started down on foot, leading their horses.

  Tipis lined the river, but the camp seemed to be asleep. The column managed to avoid discovery until it was on a grass-covered plateau on the canyon floor. Finally, an Indian sentry saw them and fired his rifle to sound the alarm. Almost immediately, dozens of Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne warriors spilled out of their lodges and the fight was on.

  But with a significant army force already on the canyon floor, the battle had already been lost. The Indians fought fiercely, using every rock and cedar tree for cover as they pinned the soldiers down. More troops were still making the descent, and Mackenzie was forced to slow his assault to cover them.

  But the only way out for the defenders was up the canyon walls, because the mouth of the canyon was cut off by troopers, and the Indians realized they were in a desperate situation. Their herd of more than two thousand horses was useless, and they were forced to abandon it as they fell back, fighting desperately to allow the women and children time to climb up and out of the cul de sac.

  The huge village, and everything in it, was abandoned to the advancing troopers. Mackenzie did not wait for the fight to finish before ordering everything burned. He knew the fleeing Indians were on foot, and that they had nothing. He also knew the weather would work against them. Food, clothing, lodges, everything was burned.

  Taking control of the captured herd, Mackenzie then made a bold decision.

  “Shoot the horses,” he ordered. It was almost unheard of for a military commander, especially a cavalryman, to issue such a command. His officers balked initially, but Mackenzie was adamant. “Shoot them all,” he insisted.

  The troopers set about the bloody business with grim faces and more than a few tears in their eyes. The warriors, clinging to the precipitous trails, saw what was happening, and many of them began to wail horribly at the senseless slaughter. But, hanging on the towering stone walls, helpless to do anything but watch, they saw more than two thousand animals massacred by incessant firing from the blue coats.

  When the smoke had cleared, Mackenzie filed his report, and the casualties among the Indians, given the circumstances, were surprisingly few. He reported only four killed. His own casualties were light, and yet, whether he knew it or not, he had accomplished what Sheridan had ordered him to do. He had broken the back of Indian resistance.

  Quanah was camped just a few miles away, but was not in the canyon. Had he been there, things might have turned out differently. It is difficult to imagine Quanah permitting such lax vigilance. But the damage had been done, and it was beyond repair, and Quanah knew it.

  Still, Mackenzie knew that his principal quarry had eluded him once more. But Quanah knew that the war was effectively over. It was now just a matter of time.

  All through the winter, skirmishes continued, but Palo Duro Canyon was the last major battle of the Indian Wars on the plains of Texas.

  Chapter 30

  Summer 1875

  ALL WINTER AND INTO THE SPRING, Quanah and his Quohada managed to evade the increasingly aggressive army units crisscrossing the Llano in search of him. Still waging hit-and-run war, he was merely protracting the bitter end of a war that had already been lost.

  More and more frequently, the fugitive Comanche would move their camp, in search of those increasingly rare water holes and hidden canyons unknown to the soldiers. But the constant running was wearing down the people. The women and children were restless and frightened, the old people less and less able to cope with the incessant wandering.

  As the spring of 1875 opened, more bands started to come in to surrender, until only Quanah was left. He knew it couldn’t continue much longer, and the question now was not whether to surrender but how to do so on the best terms possible for his people.

  At one point, he considered heading west to New Mexico, but that would bring him into direct conflict with the Apache, still at war with the American government, and his warriors were too few for such a move. Mexico meant the Mexican army, and that was no better a choice than standing and fighting the Americans.

  Surrender was the only logical choice. The women and children were starving, the buffalo were all but gone, and the weather had been brutal. That meant that Quanah could not demand terms. His surrender would have to be abject and complete, and the thought galled him.

  The army, not knowing exactly where he was, continued to pursue him, and time was growing short. And Quanah had heard tales of conditions at Fort Sill that deterred him from immediate capitulation. Instead of treaties, as in the past, to establish reservations, now the surrendering bands were treated like outlaws. The leaders were confined to prison cells, the property confiscated and burned. The army was leaving nothing to chance. They wanted those who surrendered to have no recourse but to be totally dependent on the government. No longer would the reservations be used as temporary rest areas, springboards to renewed conflict when strength returned and the weather was favorable.

  Fort Sill was crowded, and growing more so. Disease was taking a heavy toll on those confined there, and Quanah’s reluctance was heightened by what he learned of the unsanitary, degrading conditions. But still, it would have to happen, and he knew it. Mackenzie sent runners out looking for the last remaining fugitive bands, and one managed to contact a small war party of Quohada and convinced them to come in and talk to Colonel Mackenzie.

  Mackenzie, for his part, was conciliatory. He respected Quanah, and understood his reluctance to surrender, but insisted that it was the only reasonable course. He promised there would be no retaliation, and the Comanche would be treated fairly and honorably.

  When the war party returned to camp, they explained Mackenzie’s position to Quanah, who spent the night thinking about his options, meager as they were. He thought back over the past twenty years. He realized all he had lost and understood that no matter how it had been taken from him, it was gone, and gone for good.

  In the interim, emissaries from Mackenzie came to Quanah’s camp under a flag of truce. The remaining chiefs were gathered together, but
it was clear that it was Quanah who spoke for the Comanche. He listened politely to what they had to say, and promised he would talk to his people and try to convince them to come in.

  It took several weeks, and Mackenzie waited anxiously for word.

  On June 2, 1875, a sentry at Fort Sill spotted a lone rider approaching, and Mackenzie was notified. The colonel stood on the gallery outside his office as the rider came in through the gates. He recognized Quanah immediately, and stood rigidly at attention, one commander receiving another.

  One of the troopers ran over to Quanah and reached for the bridle and Quanah jerked it, turned the horse’s head away, and said in his halting English, “No. You no lead me like a cow.”

  And Comanche freedom was at an end.

  Afterword

  IMMEDIATELY UPON HIS SURRENDER, Quanah began to work for the future of his people. He knew that, having capitulated to the white man, it was imperative that his people learn the white man’s ways. He worked for improved education, urged his people to learn English, and studiously applied himself to mastering the language.

  After he had been at Fort Sill for a few months, he started to become curious about his mother’s family, and applied for permission to search for them. Because of the work he had been doing, the request was granted, and a search finally turned up a cousin.

  Quanah journeyed south, alone on horseback, armed only with a vague map, but managed to find the cousin, who put him in touch with Naudah’s brother Silas. Silas took him in, and filled in some details about Naudah’s last days, and, much to Quanah’s surprise, told him about John Parker, Naudah’s brother, who had not been seen since a day or two after the kidnapping of the two Parker children.

  Visiting John, he learned that he had been bartered to another band, adopted by them, became a Comanche warrior and traveled into Mexico where he contracted small pox. Because the deadly disease took such a terrible toll on native Americans, the Comanche left him behind, but he had been found by a young Mexican woman who saved his life and later married him.

  Quanah also had a chance to visit Naudah’s grave, in a remote grove of trees, badly tended and overgrown. The visit saddened him, but seemed to invigorate his determination to seek the best possible future for all the Comanche people.

  He spent the next thirty-five years in service of his people, and died on February 23, 1911. He was buried in the Indian cemetery near Fort Sill. A monument was erected by the federal government, and bore the inscription “Resting here until the day breaks and the shadows fall and darkness disappears.”

  But even in death, he was not free. His grave was vandalized repeatedly and once the bones were disinterred by grave robbers looking for artifacts. Finally, in 1958, Quanah’s remains were reburied at Fort Sill along with those of Cynthia Ann Parker.

  Quanah’s life after his surrender is well documented because as an advocate of Indian rights he was a tireless worker and learned the ins and outs of the alien system that had deprived his people of their way of life. But his life prior to surrender is less well known, and many of the details are missing. Existing biographies disagree more than those of most of the great chiefs, but that of Clyde and Grace Jackson, and the more recent work by Rosemary Kissinger give a good overview of Quanah’s life.

  A fine general survey of the Indian wars of Texas is Carbine and Lance, by Col. W.S. Nye, while Death Song: The Last of the Indian Wars, by John Edward Weems, takes a broader view, placing the Comanche struggle in the context of its time and parallels that conflict with those of the Apache and the Sioux. The best and most readily available study of Comanche customs and life in general is The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains by Wallace and Hoebel.

  Honor and Vengeance

  “What is it?” Nocona shouted, while he was still two hundred yards away.

  Black Snake shook his head waved in hand in front of his face as it to away words he’d rather not speak.

  Nocona felt a chill then. It ffoze his Spine and seemed to spread into the deepest of his body.

  “Something’s happened. What is it?

  Again, Black Snake flaited. He swallowed hard.

  “Tell me,” Nocona Said gently.

  “The village … Osage … they..”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad.”

  Black Snake looked at him them, his eyes suddenly welling up.“White Heron,” he said. “Little Calf … “

  Nocona tilted his head back just a little. Then he nodded.

  “Both of them?” he asked.

  Again, Black Snack noddeed “Both of them.”

  Shaking his head slowly then faster, Nocona said, “All right. Bring the houses. I’m going on ahead.”

  “You can’t. The Osage might be …”

  “I hope so,” Nocona said.

  BOOKS BY BILL DUGAN

  WAR CHIEFS

  Chief Joseph

  Crazy Horse

  Geronimo

  Quanah Parker

  Sitting Bull

  Published by HarperPaperbacks

  Copyright

  HarperPaperbacks

  A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1993 by Bill Dugan.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 978-0-062-13024-2

  A previous mass market edition of this book was published in 1993 by HarperCollinsPublishers.

  HarperCollins®, ®, and HarperPaperbacks™ are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Cover illustration by Jim Carson

  Revised HarperPaperbacks printing: February 2000

  Visit HarperPaperbacks on the World Wide Web at http://www.harpercollins.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

  Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1 Auckland,

  New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com

 

 

 
center>