Battle of Blanco Canyon

In West Texas, the clash at Blanco Canyon stood as the culminating fight of Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie's opening drive against the Comanche, and it carried a double significance: never before had the Comanches faced an assault at the very center of their own territory, and never before had such a sizable army column pushed into the depths of Comancheria. The origins of this campaign traced back to 12 August 1871, when Indian Agent Lawrie Tatum called upon Mackenzie and Colonel Benjamin Grierson to launch an expedition targeting the Kotsoteka and Quahadi bands of Comanche, groups that had spurned reservation life in the wake of the Warren Wagon Train Raid. To carry out this task, Mackenzie gathered a formidable command made up of eight companies from the Fourth United States Cavalry, two companies drawn from the Eleventh Infantry, and twenty Tonkawa scouts.

Onset of the Campaign

Troops gathered at the old Camp Cooper grounds, along the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, on September 19, 1871. Eleven days later, on September 30, they marched northwest in search of the Quahadi camp, home to the fighters under Quanah Parker's command. Scouts and commanders believed this settlement lay within Blanco Canyon, near where the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos begins, southeast of what is now Crosbyton, Texas.

By the fourth evening on the trail, the column had pitched a base camp where the Salt Fork of the Brazos meets Duck Creek, close to modern day Spur, Texas. When morning came, Col. Mackenzie made the choice to garrison his infantry there to hold the position, while he pushed ahead toward Blanco Canyon with only his mounted troops, betting on catching the Comanche off guard and dealing a blow deep in their own territory.

The horse soldiers arrived at the White River and entered Blanco Canyon on the afternoon of October 9, 1871, marking the first time any military force outside the Comanche themselves had set foot there since that people rose to dominance across the plains. Close to midnight, Quanah Parker himself led a small raiding party that tore through the sleeping camp, scattering roughly seventy horses and mules into the darkness. When the pursuing troopers crested a hill above the canyon floor, they discovered a far larger band of warriors lying in wait. Though the cavalry managed to break free of the trap, they lost one man in the process, the only Army death suffered during the whole campaign. Lt. Robert Goldthwaite Carter, together with five soldiers, held off the Comanches in a rear guard stand while the rest of the command pulled back. His conduct that day, October 10, 1871, later earned him the Medal of Honor.

Drawn by the sound of gunfire, Mackenzie's main body of troops and his Tonkawa scouts pushed forward, likely rescuing the small detachment from being wiped out, since additional Comanche fighters had nearly closed a ring around the retreating soldiers. Once the larger force appeared, Quanah Parker and his men pulled back. They climbed the canyon walls while firing on the advancing cavalry and jeering at their old Tonkawa rivals, eventually vanishing over the Caprock Escarpment onto the Llano Estacado and out of Army sight, Carter gashing his leg on a rock during the withdrawal.

Second Phase of the Expedition

For several days afterward, Mackenzie kept up the chase, and the fleeing bands left behind lodge poles, buffalo hides, tools, and nearly everything else they owned. Such items were essential to Comanche survival, so their loss promised a grim winter ahead, one without proper shelter or stores of food. By the afternoon of October 12, 1871, the soldiers finally closed the gap on the warriors, who had been hampered by the presence of their families. An attack proved impossible, though, when a sudden "blue norther," that unseasonable plains storm, swept in without warning. Howling winds, thick snow, hail, and sleet brought the cavalry to a standstill, giving the Comanche another chance to slip away unharmed. The troops resumed their pursuit at dawn, yet the storm's conditions let the Indians vanish completely into the weather. Acting on what his scouts took to be the enemy's trail, Mackenzie pushed his men roughly forty miles onward, nearly reaching the site of modern Plainview, Texas. With his soldiers and horses worn down and supplies running short, he finally, and unwillingly, gave the order to head back.

Re-Entering Blanco Canyon

The cavalry pushed back into Blanco Canyon on October 15, 1871, and Army scouts spotted a pair of Comanches watching the soldiers from the canyon walls. A short skirmish broke out once the two were discovered, leaving both Comanches dead, while Mackenzie himself took a wound alongside another trooper. Wounded as he was, Mackenzie pressed on with his men toward the mouth of the canyon, where the column paused for a week to await supplies coming from Henry Ware Lawton. When October 24 arrived, Mackenzie chose to push the campaign forward and set out for the headwaters of the Pease River. His injury soon grew too severe to bear, though, forcing him to hand command to Major Clarence Mauck while he stayed behind at Duck Creek with the rest of the disabled and dismounted men. Amid a snowstorm on November 6, Mauck's expedition made its way back to the camp at Duck Creek. Mackenzie's troops then reached Fort Griffin on November 12, 1871, and the campaign finally closed at Fort Richardson on November 17.

Result of the Expedition

Colonel Mackenzie himself judged the campaign a failure. His troops had covered 509 miles and paid for it with the life of one soldier and the loss of numerous horses, and in his own estimation the only real achievement was scaring off a single hostile band of Comanche. Yet the record tells a different story. His column had pushed into the very center of Comanche territory, producing maps of the region as it went, and had crossed portions of the Llano Estacado that no American had laid eyes on before except for the Comancheros. Along the way his men wrecked the winter supplies belonging to the Comanche they came across and pushed them, for a time at least, off their own land. The insight he gained into how the Plains tribes waged war, drawn from both this march and the earlier fight at Blanco Canyon, would later shape his strategy in the Red River War, a conflict that eventually ended with the last free Comanche laying down arms.