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| Blanco Canyon, east of Lubbock. In 1871, Quannah Parker held plains warfare classes for Ranald Mackenzie here. |
The country around Lubbock is not exactly what would be called a scenic wonderland, but it has been prized as a place to live for many centuries. In fact, the Lubbock Lakes Monument, just off the old Clovis Road and Loop 289 shows evidence of continuous human habitation for over twelve thousand years, the only place in North America with such evidence. Early Amerinds killed and butchered wooly mammoths and giant prehistoric bison in the valley next to the lake. During the reign of the Comanche, Yellow House Canyon was a favorite campsite. The only route to New Mexico across the Llano Estacado with frequent and reliable water passes through the canyon. The Comanche used this route for centuries before white men discovered it. The Comanche kept settlers off the High Plains for four hundred years. San Antonio and Santa Fe were bustling cities, but the Comanche owned everything in between.
From the mid
1850’s until late in the 1870’s,
Comanche took hostages—usually young children captured during a raid—to
the mouth of Yellow House Canyon in southeast Lubbock County, where they traded
the hostages for ransom. Some were traded to
other tribes, some to Comancheros, a few went to brokers hired to find children
and some actually were ransomed by relatives.
The area became known as Ransom Canyon and is still called that today.
During the 1870’s, the area around Lubbock saw bloodshed and violence as the Comanche fought to keep their hunting ground and the white man moved in to take it. The decade beginning in 1870 spelled doom for the Indians and their way of life. Before that, no white man lived on the Llano Estacado, and after that, buffalo hunters, with the encouragement of the government, set about to exterminate the buffalo. After 1880, the Indian “problem” was solved. Those left were systematically starved on reservations set up by the white man in areas deemed unfit for other uses.
Texas was a state for over thirty years when the first settlers came to Lubbock County. To put this in perspective, the golden spike completing the transcontinental railroad was driven in May, 1869, outside Ogden, Utah, and the Comanche still ruled the high plains of Texas. The U.S. Army built forts across Texas, but no self-respecting Comanche ever attacked a fort. If the army sent out two hundred troops, they saw nothing. If the army sent out ten men, they found them roasted over an open fire. Any settler within a hundred miles of the frontier was in danger. “Frontier” in this case is defined as the line between safe, settled homestead land and unsafe Indian Territory. The frontier in Texas actually moved back to the east during the Civil War.
In the fall of 1871, thirty-one year-old Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie was ordered by General William T. Sherman to attack the Comanche in their foreboding homeland, the Llano Estacado. No one had ever done that, but Mackenzie was well-suited for the job. First in his class at West Point, almost brutal in the discipline of his troops, efficient and tenacious, he was called by U.S. Grant, “One of the most promising young officers in the army.” Mackenzie set about to find and eliminate the Comanche. In so doing, he became the greatest Indian fighter in American history. Custer gained fame by getting killed. Mackenzie remained anonymous by effectively killing Indians.
Tonkawa scouts led the soldiers to a canyon east of present day Lubbock, where the young war chief, Quanah Parker, was camped with his band of Quahadi Comanche. The twenty-three year old Comanche out-maneuvered the soldiers at every turn. When the dust cleared, one soldier was dead, seventy army horses, including Mackenzie’s favorite mount, were stolen, and the Indians disappeared in the vast and open plains. Mackenzie tenaciously tracked the band across the plains, but eventually discontinued the search when a vicious “blue norther” struck. Mackenzie felt this was a failed mission, but it was the first incursion, by anyone, into the heart of Comancheria, and it marked the beginning of the end for the Comanche.
Three years later, in 1874, a better-educated Mackenzie followed a band of Comanche from the vicinity of Lubbock to Palo Duro Canyon. Most of the warriors were away hunting, but the soldiers attacked the camp and killed all who resisted, mainly women and old men. A large portion of the Indians escaped, but left behind all their possessions; teepees, blankets, food for the winter, everything. Mackenzie’s troops also captured over fourteen hundred Indian ponies. All the provisions, tents, and supplies were stacked and burned and the horses were driven to Tule Canyon. The soldiers and scouts picked out the best horses for themselves, then Mackenzie had the remainder, over one thousand, shot. In that one battle “Bad Hand,” as Mackenzie was called by the Indians, robbed the Indians of all their food, clothing and shelter for the winter, and put them afoot. All during the winter, small bands of Quahadis walked, starving, into the reservation in Oklahoma. Many others chose to simply starve or freeze to death on their beloved Llano Estacado, where they had lived and hunted their whole lives.
The bones of a thousand horses were left to bleach in the sun, just below the caprock in Tule canyon. Curious visitors drove out to see them well into the 1900’s, and an entrepreneur sold the remains for fertilizer.
The last battle with Indians in Lubbock County took place in March of 1877, and was fought by a group of buffalo hunters and Comanche from the reservation in Oklahoma. Black Horse, a Comanche Chief, had permission from the Indian Agent at Fort Sill to hunt Buffalo on the Llano Estacado. He took over two hundred braves, mostly Comanche with some Apache, but instead of killing buffalo, the Indians killed and mutilated a buffalo hunter near present-day Post. The hunter, Marshall Sewell, was double scalped, mutilated, and left skewered on his rifle tripod. Friends found and buried the body, and forty-six hunters, bent on revenge, went in search of the Indians.
The Indians were camped in Yellow House Canyon, near Buffalo Springs Lake. The battle took place over a two day period and was fought along the length of Yellow House Canyon, from Buffalo Springs Lake, through what became Mackenzie State Park (named after Col. Mackenzie) to the Lubbock Lake site, northwest of town. Twelve of the hunters were killed and they killed 21 Indians. The Indians escaped to the north and were eventually escorted back to the reservation by U.S. Army soldiers from Ft. Griffin.
Barely two years later, the first white settlers in Lubbock County came in wagons from Indiana. In 1879, four Quaker families, led by a fellow named Paris Cox, settled in what is now northeastern Lubbock County, near the Crosby County line. Cox and his sons built a “half dugout” for his family and the other three families chose to live in tents. After the group suffered through the bitter winter, in March a violent sandstorm leveled the tents. That was the last straw-- three families loaded up and went back to Indiana. Cox and his wife stayed and their daughter, Bertha, became the first white child born in Lubbock County.
George Singer established a store in Yellow House Canyon sometime before 1884. His store was located at the end of a spring-fed lake near the Lubbock Lakes archaeological site. That is significant to me because I was born across the Clovis Highway from that site at a place then called Broadview Gin. My parents left Henrietta, Texas, headed for California in 1934, and ran out of money in Lubbock. That says something about their optimism and their financial condition, but not so much about their foresight. They decided to work in Lubbock County until they saved up enough to continue their journey. I have always been grateful that they didn’t go on. I would have missed one of the great blessings of my life-- growing up in Lubbock. What kind of guy would I have been if I’d grown up in California—Los Angeles or Pasadena or maybe Bakersfield?
To be continued.....
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| Ransom Canyon, at the mouth of Yellow House Canyon, southeast or Lubbock. Look at that sky! Always the same, always different, always magnificient! |
