Battle of the North Fork of the Red River

Battle of North Fork of Red River, 1872
Part of the Indian Wars
Date September 28, 1872 Location McClellan Creek, Texas Result Decisive U.S. Cavalry Victory
Belligerents
United States Cavalry	Comanche Kotsoteka Band
Commanders and leaders
Ranald S. Mackenzie	Kai-Wotche killed Mow-way escaped
Strength
12 officers and 272 enlisted men, 20 Tonkwa Scouts	Unknown, but the best guesses are 160 in the band, including 100 women and children
Casualties and losses
3 reported.	24 reported killed, (probably twice that were actually killed, and at least 8 more died on the way to Ft. Concho

The Battle of North Fork or the ‘’’Battle of the North Fork of the Red River’’’ occurred on September 28, 1872, near McClellan Creek, Texas in Gray County, Texas, United States. A monument on that spot marks the site of the "battle" between the Comanche Indians under Kai-Wotche and Mow-way and a detachment of Cavalry and scouts under Army Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. The "battle" was really a massacre and slaughter of the Indians, men, women, and children as the Army managed to catch the camp totally by surprise.

This “battle” is primarily remembered as the place where the Army for the first time struck at the Comanches in the heart of the Llano Estacado (Staked Plains).

Prelude to Red River War

Main article: Texas-Indian Wars

Main article: Quanah Parker

The Battle of North Fork, also called the Battle of the North Fork of the Red River, was a precursor to the Red River War of 1873-4. In early 1872 the new Military Commander of the District of Texas decided it was time to strike at the Comanches in the heart of their homeland on the Comancheria, much as the Rangers had done 14 years before at the Battle of Little Robe Creek.

Because the so-called Quaker Peace Policy was still official policy, troops at Fort Sill could not be deployed against the Comanche. But troops out of the Texas District could be.

A captured comancherio, Edwardo Ortiz, had told the army that the Comanches were on their winter hunting grounds along the Red River on the Staked Plains. Gen. C. C. Aguar, commander of the Department of Texas sent a detachment from Fort Concho, Texas, under Capt. Napoleon Bonaparte McLaughlin on a two-month reconnaissance patrol in the spring of 1872. He returned to the fort, confirming the captured comanchero assertions that the main force of the Comanches were in camps on the Staked Plains. Ortiz further claimed that army columns could successfully maneuver in that country. General Aguar then summoned Colonel Ranold Mackenzie to San Antonio where they held a strategy meeting. Out of this meeting, the army developed a campaign against the Comanche in their strongholds in the Staked Plains.

Campaign in the Stalked Plains

Mackenzie marched out of Fort Concho in early July, 1872, beginning his campaign. He reestablished Camp Supply on Duck Creek, on the edge of the Stalked Plains, where he established his command. From there, the Colonel dispatched several scouting parties, one of which discovered a well traveled path with hoof prints of a large herd of cattle stretching west toward the Staked Plains. This find caught Mackenzie's attention, and on July 28, 1872, he marched two hundred seventy-two troopers, twelve officers, and twenty Tonkwa scouts into the heart of the Comancheria. On August 7, 1872, the detachment obtained supplies and rested at Ft. Sumner, New Mexico. They then marched north to Ft. Bascom, New Mexico, arriving August 16, 1872.

Ortiz, who accompanied Mackenzie, led the command to the east, skirting Palo Duro Canyon. Mackenzie split off smaller detachments to search possible locations of the reported Indian camps but with no success. They returned to Camp Supply on August 31, 1872. The expedition had marched close to 700 miles over a five week period, and discovered two new routes through the Stalked Plains. These routes were reported to be shorter and had better water access than the Goodnight-Loving trail that was being used to drive cattle to markets in Kansas.

Mackenzie rested his men until September 21st when he marched his command north to search the last potential campsite of the Comanche, on the North Fork of the Red River. On September 28th, a scouting patrol, under Captain Boehm, discovered a large Kotsoteka Comanche village. The command moved within a half mile of the village before they were seen by the Indians. From there they charged the village, overtaking it after a half-hour battle. Mackenzie lost three men and had three wounded. The Comanche lost an estimated fifty or more including Chief Kai-Wotche and his wife, who were both killed. Mow-way (Shaking Hand) escaped.

The Battle of North Fork

Sadly, the Battle of North Fork was not so much a battle as a massacre of women and children. The Army had caught the village completely unaware, and captive Clinton Smith in later years would accuse McKenzie and the army of a massacre. Mackenzie reported officially twenty-three Comanches killed, although the Comanches claimed more, and almost certainly at least 50 were killed. The warriors, who sustained heavy casualties, threw some of their dead into a ten-foot-deep pool to keep them away from the Tonkawas' knives and cooking pots. (the Tonkwas were cannibals).

As justification for the attack, the army claimed it found overwhelming proof of the Band’s raids on white settlements in the wreakage of the village. For instance, a survivor of the wagon train massacred at Howard's Wells the previous spring, recognized forty-three of its mules).

Almost 3,000 horses and mules were rounded up by the troops. The lodges, along with the stores of meat, equipment, and clothing, save for a few choice robes, were burned. About 130 Comanches, mostly women and children, were taken prisoner, but six of these were too badly wounded to be moved long distances.

After dark, Mackenzie's command moved to the hills several miles away from the burned village and camped. Fearing that the captured pony herd would stampede the cavalry horses, Mackenzie had them corralled. That night and the next, however, the Comanches succeeded in recovering most of their horses, plus those of the Tonkawa scouts. The Comanche prisoners were kept under guard as the command rejoined its supply train and retraced its route back south to the main supply base on Duck Creek, where the Indians were transferred to Fort Concho, where they were kept prisoner through the winter. MacKenzie used the captives as a bargaining tool to force the off-reservation Indians back to the reservation, and to force them to free white captives.

Aftermath

MacKenzie’s stratagem worked, for shortly after the battle Mow-way and Parra-o-coom (Bull Bear) moved their bands to the vicinity of the Wichita Agency. The Nokoni chief Horseback, who himself had family members among the Indian prisoners, took the initiative in persuading the Comanches to trade stolen livestock and white captives, including Clinton Smith, in exchange for their own women and children.

The Red River Campaign

This marked the first time the United States had successfully attacked the Comanches in the heart of the Comancheria, and showed that the Stalked Plains were no longer a safe haven. Further, this battle emphasized if the army wished to force the wild Comanches onto reservations, the way to do it was destroy their villages and leave them unable to survive off reservation. MacKenzie's tactics were such a success that Sherman empowered him to use them further during the Red River War of 1874. His attack on the village at Palo Duro Canyon, and his destruction of the Comanche horse herd at Tule Canyon, both in 1874, mirrored this battle in their entirity.

See also

• Quanah Parker
• Texas-Indian Wars

References

• Bial, Raymond. Lifeways: The Comanche. New York: Benchmark Books, 2000.
• Brice, Donaly E. The Great Comanche Raid: Boldest Indian Attack on the Texas Republic McGowan Book Co. 1987
• "Comanche" Skyhawks Native American Dedication (August 15, 2005)
• "Comanche" on the History Channel (August 26, 2005)
• Dunnegan, Ted. Ted's Arrowheads and Artifacts from the Comancheria (August 19, 2005)
• Fehrenbach, Theodore Reed The Comanches: The Destruction of a People. New York: Knopf, 1974, ISBN 0394488563. 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.
• Hacker, Margaret S.,Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life and the Legend
• John, Elizabeth and A.H. Storms Brewed in Other Men's Worlds: The Confrontation of the Indian, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540-1795. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1975.
• Jones, David E. Sanapia: Comanche Medicine Woman. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974.
• 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 (August 13, 2005).
• Powell, Jo Ann, Frontier Blood: the Saga of the Parker Family
• 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.
• "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.

External links

Battle of the North Fork - from Handbook of Texas online