Houston BSMC
Texas Frontier Forts
(Scout Report 2005)
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October
14-16, 2005
Fort McKavett
Fort
Concho
Fort Lancaster
Seminole Indian Canyon
Seminole-Negro Indian Scout Cemetery
Fort Clark
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Submitted by:
Trooper
Bushman, Trooper Old School, Trooper Gopher,
Trooper Roach and Trooper
Grasshopper
"This Land
is Your Land"
"Lest We Forget"
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1.0 Introduction
On
October 14, 2005, at 0600 hours, five members of the Houston Chapter Buffalo
Soldiers Motorcycle Club departed Houston, Texas heading west on I-10. We knew
the trip would be interesting, but, little did we know how much we would
learn.
The following report outline several
forts we visited and our experience meeting people from across Texas. The forts
held a special place in our hearts. Many African American soldiers, who fought
in the Union Army during the Civil War, were garrisoned at most, if not
all, of these forts after the war.
Lest we forget, on July 28, 1866,
congress passed an act that created six regiments of African Americans soldiers
who were commanded by white officers. These six regiments we comprised of two
cavalry and four infantry units. They were the 9th U.S. Cavalry,
10th U.S. Cavalry, 38th, 39th, 40th
and 41st Infantry. Remember, these were Union Army soldiers and
most were veterans of the Civil War. The army sent them out west to protect
settlers & open up western expansion.
The act of March 3,
1869, consolidated the 38th & 41st Infantry Regiments
which became the 24th Infantry. Under this reorganization Ranald S. Mackenzie
became Colonel, William R. Shafter, Lieutenant Colonel and Henry C.
Merriam, Major. The 24th Infantry Regiment was in Texas from 1869 to
1880. During this period of time, the several companies were
stationed at all or
nearly all of the many forts in Texas. This same act of March 3, 1869
consolidated the 39th & 40th Infantry Regiments into
the 25th Infantry.
The
9th U.S. Cavalry and 10th U.S. Cavalry served gallantly on
the western frontier during the Indian Campaign. These cavalryman became known
as "Buffalo Soldiers" by their Indian adversaries. The 24th &
25th Infantry Regiments became known as "Walk-a-heaps" because most
of their tour of duty was on foot.
In conclusion, there were several
Congressional Medal of Honor recipients from the Buffalo Soldiers
& Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts serving at
several of the forts visited. We hope this report will be educational and
enlightening.
1.1 Trip Map
1. Houston, Texas
2. Fort McKavett
3. Fort Concho
4. Fort Lancaster
5. Seminole Indian Canyon
6. Seminole-Negro Indian Scout Cemetery/ Fort Clark
7. Houston, Texas
Approximately 1,061 total miles
2.0 Fort McKavett
Fort McKavett, once called the
prettiest fort in Texas, was the first fort we visited. Located twenty
miles southwest of Menard, Texas in southwestern Menard County, it was
originally called Camp San Saba because it overlooks the headwaters of the San
Saba River Valley. Fort McKavett was established by five companies of the Eighth
Infantry in March of 1852 to protect frontier settlers and travelers on Upper El
Paso Road. The camp was later renamed for Capt. Henry McKavett, killed at, the
battle of Monterey on September 21, 1846. The fort was abandoned March 1859
because of the Civil War.
After the Civil War, the post was
reopened in April of 1868. Company A, 4th Cavalry, was first assigned to
the post. Soon, other Union soldiers arrived. In March of 1869 Colonel Ranald
Slidell Mackenzie took command of the 38th Infantry, an African American
regiment. The 38th and 41st Regiments were consolidated
and became the 24th Infantry under the Act of March 3,
1869.
In May of 1870,
Sgt. Emanuel Stance, Buffalo Soldier, 9th U. S. Cavalry, Company F, rode out
from Fort McKavett, Texas, to punish the Kickapoo Indians for raiding local
settlements and to look for two captured children. With a detachment of only ten
privates, he attacked a band of Indians herding stolen horses. He immediately
gave the order to charge, scattering the Indians and capturing the horses. He
and his men spent a hair-raising night camped at Kickapoo Springs listening to
the Indians' war dance just beyond the hills.
The next day he
attacked a band of hostiles about to ambush two government wagons, and when
attacked by the same band later in the day, he turned his men about and
drove his antagonists off, capturing six more ponies. Later, while watering
their horses at a spring, his men were attacked by the Indians. This time he let
his men loose to do what they may. The Indians retreated quickly. Sergeant
Emanuel and his small troop proceeded on their way and recovered the two
captured white children.
On July 24, 1870,
Emanuel Stance,
former sharecropper, United States Army sergeant and Buffalo Soldier proudly
accepted the Congressional Medal of Honor, "for Valor in the Battle of Kickapoo
Springs," and became the first African American to win his country's highest
military honor in the post-Civil War period.
We
found Fort McKavett to be in remarkably good condition with most of the
buildings still standing.
3.0 Fort Concho
In the fall of 1867
the United States Army established a permanent camp on the plateau where the
North and Middle Concho rivers join. For centuries, this high open plateau had
remained barren except for passing expeditions or Native American hunting
parties. The establishment of Fort Concho provided a vital link in the line of
frontier defense and led to the development of the town of San Angelo across the
North Concho River from the military post.
In more than twenty years of federal service,
Fort Concho was home to companies of fifteen regiments in the regular United
States Army, including Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie's Fourth Cavalry and Col.
Benjamin Greisen's
Tenth Cavalry of buffalo soldiers. The post provided a focal
point for major campaigns against the Comanche's, Kiowa's, and Apaches. Patrols
from Fort Concho charted vast areas of western Texas and provided a climate for
settlement on the Texas frontier. Today Fort Concho stands restored, thanks to
numerous preservation efforts, as a memorial to all the peoples who struggled to
survive on the plateau where the rivers join.
This Fort has a
museum loaded with many artifacts from the late 1800's thru early 1900's period.
3.1
Photographs
4.0
Fort Lancaster
Fort Lancaster had been established on
the banks of Live Oak Creek in 1855 by a detachment from the 1st Infantry
Regiment. The nearby watercourse flowed by the western limits of the new post
barely two miles above its junction to the south with the brackish, sinuous
current of the Pecos River. Hard against the parade ground to the north and east
rose the lowering heights of the bluffs and ridgelines that marked the ancient
valley of the Pecos, whose name was derived from the Spanish puerco
("bitter"). The bluecoated, mule-mounted infantrymen had provided both
a haven for travelers and escort parties for travelers along the bleak and
Indian-haunted road linking San Antonio and El Paso until Texas left the Union
early in 1861.
In the summer of 1867, the
9th Cavalry reoccupied
the abandoned prewar posts at Fort Clark and Camp Hudson to the south of
Fort Lancaster, and Forts Stockton and Fort Davis to the immediate west of the station
on the Pecos River. Fort Lancaster became a sub-post of Fort Stockton, which was
some 75 miles to the east. Company-size forces were posted to temporary duty
for several months at a time, quartered amid the crudely refurbished ruins of
the old barracks and sharing the post with a relay station of the San
Antonio–El Paso stage line.
On the day after Christmas 1867,
a mounted guard detail was driving the company's horses and mules
northwestward from the grazing grounds east of the post through the garrison
to reach the watering place on the shady, brush-lined banks of Live Oak
Creek. A wagon was already down at the creek, where civilian teamster
William Sharpe and three soldiers were filling casks and barrels with water
for cooking and washing. None of the soldiers suspected that they were in
danger, and despite the high ground that loomed next to Fort Lancaster,
Captain Frohock had curiously neglected to establish an observation post
that could monitor the approaches to the fort from the north, west and
south. That oversight had allowed two large groups of Kickapoo raiders to
move undetected down the Live Oak Creek corridor from the north. Kickapoos
had been most unfriendly to Texans since January 8, 1865, when Texas state
troops and militia had attacked them on Dove Creek. After routing the Texans
in that fight, the Kickapoos had resettled in Mexico and begun an incessant
campaign of raids into Texas. The lead group on the December 1867 raid had
already moved downstream to the south before the water detail had reached
the creek, and those Kickapoos were now poised to strike at the post from
that direction, while the second contingent of braves closed on the
unsuspecting Sharpe and his companions even as the horse herd neared the
watercourse and the oncoming raiders.
Teamster Sharpe saw the
braves as they approached from upstream, using the creek-side vegetation to
screen their approach toward the post and the oncoming horse herd. He
shouted an alarm to his companions before he was lassoed and dragged away to
be killed. The soldiers prudently melted into the brush and remained hidden
for the next several hours as the nearby landscape was flooded with
hostiles. The Kickapoos quirted their ponies upslope from the creek bed,
charging the horse herd and its startled guards. A firefight erupted as the
handful of herdsmen used their pistols and carbines to hold the raiders at
bay long enough to turn the animals around and send them thundering back
toward the post and the sanctuary of the stone-walled corral. During the
pursuit two of the troopers -- Andrew Trimble and Ed Boyer -- were lassoed
and pulled from their saddles. Like Sharpe, they were dragged off and
butchered in the brush. The surviving members of the guard detail managed to
keep the animals moving toward the fort despite the best efforts of the
Indians.
The sound of gunfire alerted the
garrison, and the troops seized their weapons as Frohock, Smith and a first
sergeant named Underwood strove to organize a hasty defense of the post and
deliver fire in support of the oncoming herdsmen and their fleeing animals.
The black troopers were still rushing to establish a skirmish line when a
portion of the northern contingent of attackers swung wide around the herd
and charged directly through the center of the post as the second party of
warriors came up from downstream and began threatening the soldiers from the
west and south.
Amid the noise and confusion,
the handful of mounted troopers chivied the herd toward the corral, only to
find the bars still up at its entrance. The frightened animals milled about
in panic. "Such, I regret to say, was the panic among them [horses] and
so close upon us were the savages," Frohock later reported, "that
it was found impossible to control them long enough to open the
corral." Company K was by now deployed in a crescent-shaped skirmish
line disposed to cover the northern, western and southern approaches to the
fort. The men maintained a steady fire with their Spencer repeating carbines
and .44 Remington revolvers. The balance of the northern group of attackers
pressed their advance as far as the stage station on the northern edge of
the post, but the soldiers stood firm, and the Kickapoos fell back before
the lash of the Spencers' rolling volleys of .50-caliber rimfire rounds.
Fort Lancaster was by far
the most touching of all the Forts we visited. We were fortunate enough to
be escorted to the gravesites of William Sharp, Andrew Trimble and Ed Boyer
located in the wilderness near Fort Lancaster. We were also fortunate enough
to visit the Fort on the day of one of the many living history events.
4.1
Photographs
5.0 Seminole Indian
Canyon
SEMINOLE CANYON
(Val Verde County). Seminole Canyon, named for the Black Seminole scouts based
at Fort Clark, is a minor tributary of the Rio Grande fourteen kilometers
downstream from the mouth of the Pecos River and eight miles east of Comstock on
U.S. Highway 90. Seminole Canyon and its major tributary, Presa Canyon, contain
examples of every defined prehistoric and historic pictograph style in the lower
Pecos River region. The lower reaches of this canyon system form the nucleus of
Seminole Canyon State Historical Park, established in 1980 as an archeological
and historical preserve. The 2,100-acre park holds seventy-two recorded sites
ranging in age from Early Archaic (ca. 7000 B.C.) to Historic, a span of 9,000
years. Prehistoric occupation of the region resulted in material remains ranging
from deeply stratified occupied rock shelters with extensive rock art panels,
through Archaic stage burned rock middens and hearth sites, to stone circles and
cairn burials typical of the Late Prehistoric period (after A.D. 600).
5.1
Photographs
6.0 Seminole-Negro Indian
Scout Cemetery
The Seminole-Negro Indian
Scout Cemetery is the burial site of many
Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts who were
stationed at Fort Clark. The Medal of Honor, this
nation's highest honor for valor, was awarded to four Seminole-Negro
Indian Scouts. The Seminole-Negro Indian Scout Cemetery where all four of Medal
of Honor recipients are buried in special marked graves. Buffalo Soldier Regimental
returns, show that after twelve engagements and twenty expeditions, not one of
their men was killed or seriously wounded in their seventeen-year history from
1868-1885. These young men of pure African or mixed black and Seminole
ancestry, dressed, acted and possessed trailing, hunting and fighting skills
like those of the plains Indians. Their number varied between thirty to fifty
scouts. They were probably the best desert fighters and trackers the in the
history of the United States Army.
6.1
Photographs
7.0 Fort
Clark
Fort Clark is perhaps most famous as
the home for the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts. After twenty years of protecting
Mexico's northern states from hostile Indians for the Mexican Army, they came to
Fort Duncan in 1872 and to Fort Clark to serve the army as scouts. Many infantry
units and virtually all cavalry units, including the 9th and 10th "Buffalo Soldiers," were stationed at Fork Clark. Many combat
decorations and honors were awarded to Fort Clark veterans, including four
Congressional Medals of Honor awarded to the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts.
7.1 Photographs
