Cultures in Conflict
A visual history of the Frontier Wars in Texas
Created by: Kristi Fleming
Murchison Middle School
Spring 2007
LAND
Needed for
buffalo
Native
American
Needs
LAND
Needed for farming
and ranching
vs.
Anglo
American
Needs
Strengths:
Strengths:
1. Knowledge of the
territory
1. Forts
2. Skilled fighters
Weaknesses:
1. Depended on buffalo for
survival
2. Disagreement among
leaders
2. Federal government support
Weaknesses:
1. Too few in number, untrained, supply
shortages
2. Forts too far apart
3. Little experience fighting Native
Americans
Medicine
Lodge
Treaty
Engraving of the Medicine Lodge
Treaty Council, 1867 Natives agreed to
stop raiding Anglo settlements in exchange
for rations and supplies
1867 – present day Kansas
Representatives from the United States and representatives of the
Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other southern Plains tribes
sign the Medicine Lodge Treaty, intended to remove Indians from the path
of white settlement.
The treaty establishes reservations for each tribe in the western part of
present-day Oklahoma. It also requires Native Americans to stop making
raids on Anglo American settlements and give up their traditional lands
elsewhere. In exchange, the government pledges to establish reservation
schools and to provide resident farmers who will teach the Indians
agriculture. However, the Army would not be allowed on reservation
land.The tribes' refusal to give up their free-ranging traditions and remain
confined within the territory assigned to them leads to devastating warfare.
Satank (Setankia) Sitting Bear
Kiowa Chief who
was killed during
transport to
Jacksboro for trial
after the Warren
Wagon Train Raid.
Important TX Indian
Chiefs and Warriors
Kiowa
Lone Wolf (Guipago)
Kicking Bird (Te-ne-angopte)
Satanta (Set-tain-te)
Leader of the War Faction of the
Kiowa Tribe. He believed in fighting
the whites to keep the Kiowa way of
life. Attended the Medicine Lodge
Treaty and fought at Adobe Walls.
Leader of the Peace Faction of the
Kiowa Tribe. He urged his people to
adapt and became known for his
preaching of peace.
Called “Orator of the Plains” because of
his speeches at Medicine Lodge Council.
Kiowa Chief involved in the Warren
Wagon Train Raid
White Bear
Important TX
Indian Chiefs and
Warriors
Comanche
Quanah Parker
Son of a Comanche
chief (Peta Nocona)
and an Anglo
American woman,
Cynthia Ann Parker,
who had been
captured by the
Comanche as a child.
He became a powerful
Comanche chief who
fought to stop the
spread of the Anglos.
Ten Bears (Paruasemana)
Comanche chief known for his
speech at the Medicine Lodge
Treaty in 1867.
"I was born upon the prairie
where the wind blew free and
there was nothing to break the
light of the sun. I was born where
there were no enclosures and
where everything drew a free
breath. I want to die there and not
within walls."
President Ulysses S. Grant
Replaced military officers on reservations
with Quaker agents in an effort to make
peace
Important
Anglo Leaders
of the Frontier
Wars
Lawrie Tatum
Quaker Agent sent by Grant to
help deal with the Native
Americans in Indian Territory.
Shown here with some returned
Native captives.
Colonel Ranald S.
Mackenzie, 4th Cavalry
The leader of the U.S. Army at Palo Duro
General William Tecumseh
Sherman
Civil War hero who brought the total war
tactics he used to crush the Confederacy
against the tribes of the Plains
General Philip
Sheridan
Commander of the US
Military Department of
the Southwest. Helped
defeat the bill
proposed by the Texas
Legislature that would
have protected the
buffalo
Aftermath of Indian attack on an early
Texas farm. The Native’s economy had become
dependent on the people and supplies acquired from
Anglos during these raids.
Drawing by Nola Davis, courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept.
The threat of Indian raids was a constant source of
anxiety for settlers on the Texas frontier, particularly
after U.S. troops left Texas during the Civil War years
Painting by Nola Davis, courtesy of Fort Richardson SHS, Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept
On a path of destruction stretching from Linville in
south Texas to east of Austin, Comanche raiders are
intercepted by citizen militia and rangers at the Battle
of Plum Creek Engraving from sketch by T.J. Owen (a pseudonym for the author,
O'Henry), from Wilbrager, 1889.
Warren Wagon
Train Raid
The Warren Wagon Train Raid
was a raid by the Kiowa that
served as a turning point in
American Policy toward the
Natives of Texas.
Site of the Warren Wagon Train Raid
Young County, 1871
Sketch depicting Warren Wagon
train attack
T.J. Owen (the writer O.Henry.)
The peace policy
adopted after the
Medicine Lodge
Treaty was
abandoned. The
Quaker Agents
were sent home.
The army would
stop just
defending the
settlers… they
would start
attacking.
What the Buffalo Meant
to the Native Americans
Paunch
(stomach)
made into
water bags
Sinews (tendons)
and hair were
made into
bowstrings, rope,
and thread
Buffalo hide became
clothing, saddles,
robes, and covers
for teepees
Hoofs, horns
and bones
became
ornaments,
cups, and
utensils
=
Buffalo Poo
(dung) was
used as fuel
for fires
A Kiowa chief describes it this way:
“The buffalo is our money … the
robes we can prepare and trade. We
love them just as the white man does
his money. Just as it makes a white
man feel to have his money carried
away, so it makes us feel to see
others killing and stealing our
buffaloes, which are our cattle given
to us by the Great Father above.”
Using Buffalo to Destroy
the Native Americans
General Philip Sheridan
Instrumental in instituting the
policy of killing the buffalo to kill
the Indians
Shooting Buffalo on the Line of the
Kansas-Pacific Railroad, c. 1870
By promoting in Congressional testimony the hunting and slaughter of the vast herds of
American Bison on the Great Plains and by other means, Sheridan helped deprive the
Indians of their primary source of food. Professional hunters, trespassing on Indian land,
killed over 4 million bison by 1874. When the Texas legislature considered outlawing
bison poaching on tribal lands, Sheridan personally testified against it in Austin, Texas.
He suggested that the legislature should give each of the hunters a medal, engraved with
a dead buffalo on one side and a discouraged-looking Indian on the other.
Charles Rath
Buffalo Hunter
J. Wright Mooar
Buffalo Hunter
Between 1830-1880, the American bison, or buffalo, was reduced in
numbers from 60 million to a mere handful. By 1900 there were only
two small wild herds in all of North America, numbering only 550
animals. This change was accelerated in the last 40 years of the 19th
century by the coming of the buffalo hunter and thousands of landhungry settlers.
Buffalo
skulls,
mid-1870s,
waiting to
be ground
into
fertilizer
The End of the
Plains Indians
The railroad, the development of
the hide industry during the
1800s, and the wholesale
destruction of the buffalo
guaranteed that the Native
Americans would no longer have
the means to survive
Rath & Wright's buffalo hide yard, showing 40,000
buffalo hides baled for shipment. Dodge City,
Kansas, 1878
Adobe
Walls
New Mexico
Territory
Battles at
Palo Duro
Canyon
Forts and Battles
in Texas (1870s)
Indian Territory
Ft. Richardson
Warren Wagon Train Raid
Fort Belknap
Fort Griffin
Fort Bliss
Fort Concho
Ft. Stockton
Ft. McKavett
Fort Davis
Austin
Fort Clark
Ft. McIntosh
Fort Brown
Drawing of the Adobe Walls
Battle – June 1874
One of the battles of the Red River War.
Quanah Parker led 100s of warriors from 5
Native American Nations against 29 Anglo
buffalo hunters in a failed effort to take
over the camp. The battle was a crushing
spiritual defeat for the Native Americans.
However, the Natives increased their
attacks on West Texas settlements and
kept fighting in order to protect their land
and stop the killing of the buffalo. Over the
next two months they killed over 190
settlers across 5 states.
Quanah Parker
Led the Comanche
at Adobe Walls
Battle of Palo Duro Canyon – September 1874
The major battle of the Red River War. It was a small battle, but it
represented the last effort of the Natives in Texas to stand up
against the American military and the advancement of the
whites. The battle ended in the confinement of the Plains
Indians to reservations in Indian Territory.
Red River
War
The final stand of the
Plains Indians in Texas
Colonel Mackenzie,
4th Cavalry
Lone Wolf
The leader of the
U.S. Army at Palo
Duro
One of the chiefs
defeated at the
Battle of Palo Duro
Buffalo Soldiers
Buffalo Soldiers were former slaves,
freedmen, and Civil War soldiers who
served in the US Military during
“peacetime”
Henry
O. Flipper
The first AfricanAmerican to
graduate from
West Point
Military
Academy
The nickname buffalo soldiers began with the Cheyenne warriors in 1867.
The actual Cheyenne translation was Wild Buffalo. The nickname was
given out of respect and the fierce fighting ability of the 10th cavalry.
Overtime, Buffalo Soldiers became a generic term for all African American
soldiers.
The Apache’s Last
Stand in Texas
After several years of peace, warfare along the Mexican border
began again in 1876. Apache raids were still a problem in West
Texas. While most Apache lived in New Mexico and Arizona one
band, led by a chief named Victorio, still fought in the mountains of
West Texas.
The Army spent months tracking the elusive Apache leader
Victorio through the mountains of the Trans-Pecos. Col. Benjamin
Grierson assigned eight companies of the 10th Cavalry to the
search which resulted in several battles with the Apaches.
Victorio's last skirmish with Colonel Grierson and the 10th Cavalry
occurred in August 1880, only 40 miles south of the Guadalupe
Mountains in the Sierra Diablo Mountains, at a place called
Rattlesnake Springs. Victorio and his band retreated across the
Rio Grande where most of them were killed by Mexican troops.
Apache leader Victorio led
raids throughout the Trans
Pecos
The Results of the
Frontier Wars of
Texas
1. Native Americans in Texas moved onto the reservations in
Indian Territory (Oklahoma) or continued their fight in other
states
2. With the Native Americans out of Texas and the threat of raids
gone, settlers could move into West Texas and the Panhandle
and establish their farms and ranches
3. Many new towns were established at this time in the Western
half of the state
4. The cattle industry exploded… with the buffalo gone from the
“Sea of Grass” cattlemen now had huge areas in which to raise
cattle on their new ranches
5. The forts were no longer needed, so many were closed.
Resources
Passionate Nation: The Epic History of
Texas, James L. Haley, 2006, Free Press
New York, NY
 www.texasbeyondhistory.net
 Handbook of Texas Online

Juan Cortina
The first authentic biography of one of the
most famous of the nineteenth century
Texas Rangers—Capt. Leander H. McNelly.
No history of the murderous Sutton-Taylor
Feud, or of the Texas State Police, or of the
depredations of the Mexican Gen. Juan H.
Cortina, or of the rancher Richard King, or
of the infamous Nueces Strip can be written
without major emphases on the influence of
McNelly and the men who followed him so
loyally
1866 General Philip H. Sheridan takes command of U.S. forces in the West,
proposing to bring peace to the plains by exterminating the herds of buffalo that
support the Indians' way of life: "Kill the buffalo and you kill the Indians," he
says.
1866 Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving blaze the first cattle trail,
driving a herd of 2,000 longhorns from Texas to New Mexico in what will
become an annual tradition across the southern plains.
1867 The first cattle drive from Texas up the Chisholm
Trail arrives at the rail yards of Abilene, Kansas.
1870 Buffalo hunters begin moving onto the plains, brought there by the expanding railroads and
the growing market for hides and meat back east. In little more than a decade, they reduce the
once numberless herd to an endangered species.
Railroad companies begin massive advertising campaigns to attract settlers to their land grants in
the West, sending agents to rural areas in the eastern states and throughout Europe to distribute
handbills, posters and pamphlets that tout the rich soil and favorable climate of the region. But the
higher costs of railroad land compared to public lands, and the fact that railroads pay no taxes on
their lands, soon stirs charges of extortion, leading to state laws controlling railroad rates and land
sale practices by the decade's end.
1874 Joseph Glidden receives a patent for barbed wire, an inexpensive, durable and effective
fencing material which, with the destruction of the buffalo, will open the plains to more efficient
agriculture and ranching.