Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Black Seminole soldiers chased Apache raiders
December 22, 2004

“Lieutenant, we have gotten into some dry country. I don’t know of any waterholes for more than two days ride in this northwestern direction – even if we could ride all night we might not make it, and there might not be water. The grass is droughty, which means this area may not have gotten the fall rains.” Jose Piedad Tafoya hunkered with Lt. Bullis around an early morning campfire. Bullis had just reached into his saddlebags and gotten out his one can of food for the day. The officer always just reached in and took whatever he grabbed. Today’s meal was a can of tomatoes.

Bullis, Tafoya, thirty-nine black-Seminole scouts, three Lipan Apaches who were brothers-in-law to the black-Seminole scout James Perryman , and fifteen buffalo soldiers were trailing Mescalero Apaches. In that year of 1879, the mid-February morning had dawned clear and cold. It had been over a year since an Apache raiding party had swept through the southern Edwards plateau. A half-dozen settlers had lost three-score horses and two houses had been burned.

For two weeks the men had been following the trail of the Mescaleros. The trail wound through the rough country between the Pecos and Rio Grande for eleven days, but had suddenly veered north and back across the Pecos River to Castle Gap and then swung north. The night before had been spent at Mustang Springs. The trail had then swung up Monument Draw and veered north yet again, to the buffalo grass prairies north of the sand field that sweeps up over the Mescalero Escarpment just north of Blue Mountain.

“There are four playas to the northwest that might hold water.” Tafoya knew the country well. His family had been Ciboleros for generations, and he had become the most influential Comanchero of the Llano Estacado during the latter part of the 1860s. When Colonel Mackenzie had finally begun to drive most of the Comanches off of the Llano in the 1870s Tafoya had adapted to the changing times and had become the scout most requested for army expedition service. Most people of the time did not believe Captain Nicholas Nolan’s story that Mackenzie had threatened to hang him from a wagon tongue to learn the location of the Palo Duro Camp in 1874. Nolan had not listened to Tafoya in July of 1877 and four troopers had died of thirst.

Bullis had been in the area with Colonel Shafter in 1875, as had several of the black-Seminole scouts, but had not gone further north on that expedition. He chewed on a grass stem, watching the men water the horses in the scraped-out holes in the draw. A flock of robins flew into the grove of hackberries just downstream of the water holes. After cogitating on Tafoya’s assessment, he sighed and tossed the frayed stem to the ground.

“We have been pushing the Apaches hard – look at the broken down horses they left behind. They are all tuckered out and limping. Judging by the sign, they cooked another of the horses here not six hours before we arrived – maybe midday. We’re gonna catch them, I just know it. I’m willing to gamble. They must know of water somewhere – their trail will lead us to it. They will probably go north of the bitter lakes on the Pecos and then swing back towards Ft. Stanton and the reservation.” Bullis stretched, rotating his shoulders, and clenching and unclenching his fists. His cutgrass bed had mashed down flat during the night and the hard ground had aggravated aches in both arm sockets.

“The wind has swung to the west. If it picks up, the sand will blow. If the wind gets strong, we will have a blue norther tomorrow. We might be riding into a snowstorm. We might lose the tracks.” Tafoya was not trying to convince Bullis to give up the chase. He was just stating the facts. All of the men would do as Bullis wanted, unquestioningly.

Bullis awed most men with his endurance and ability to “keep going on nothing.” The Lipan Apaches called him “The Whirlwind” for his fast moving and far-ranging ways. Sometimes they called him “The Thunderbolt” for the way he and his men attacked suddenly. Bullis and the scouts were close, personally, like a family. He performed the marriages of the men, and visited their families often, especially when a baby was born. Never asking the men to do what he would not, he led more like a war chief of warriors, not an army officer.

The men rode northwest. The day stayed clear and cold, and the wind did not pick up. Bullis figured they crossed into the Territory of New Mexico after a brief lunch and rest for the horses. The trail kept angling more north than west. Tafoya was convinced they were headed for the four lakes area, but an hour before sundown the trail turned due west. When darkness came, they had to camp. Tafoya knew of no water in that direction. “There is a spring that runs in wet times at the edge of the Llano, but it has gotten drier as we have traveled.’

Horses and men used up the last of the water that night. With no coffee for the morning, and no wood but scrubby catclaw acacia for a fire, all were happy to get moving at first light. The trail swung back south at midmorning. Tafoya cursed as he realized that the Mescaleros were not headed for the intermittent spring. By afternoon the horses refused to do more than walk, and it took some spurring to keep them even doing that. Sergeant David Bowlegs (a son of the great Seminole leader’s youngest wife who had joined the Seminoles in Florida as a child with her escaped slave father) was riding point. The wind had finally started blowing and the trail had begun to fade as the dust started to roil.

Bullis called for a halt. “We are in a world of hurt, gentlemen. Look to the north – a bank of clouds are rolling in. I hope there is snow so we can have water to drink. We’d better head west as fast as we can, to get to the Mescalero Escarpment. We will be out of the wind, and there are some trees for firewood along the “ceja” (the edge of the Llano.) The men stood on the lee side of the horses, chewing on dry rations, swallowing with difficulty. Bowlegs wandered away, back to where he had been when the march had halted. Tafoya and Bullis watched him ride his horse back and forth across the prairie, across a slight swale.

Bowlegs dismounted after stopping and staring at the ground for a minute. He knelt and began sweeping dirt around. Clouds of dust billowed up for a minute or two. Then he suddenly stood as he ripped a buffalo hide from where it lay flat on the ground, and began hollering and whooping, waving the hide. He motioned for the others to come to him, and knelt again, taking off his hat and sticking it into the ground. His torso disappeared into the ground, too, but when he straightened the others could see that he was drinking water from his hat.

(I found a one paragraph reference to this story in “The Black Military Experience” and then attempted to deduce a route that would have been waterless. I do not know if Bullis ever wrote a report this 80 day scout that covered over 1200 miles and ended when the reservation agent at Ft. Stanton refused to surrender the raiders Bullis and his men were trailing.)