Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Revisit the horrors at Buffalo Soldier Hill June 23rd
June 20, 2007

This weekend I will be going to Buffalo Soldier Hill. I am excited about it. It is where an army command fell apart in late July of 1877. It is an epic story of the Llano Estacado that should be taught in every school district in the region. The story would also make a superb movie. The trip to the hill is part of this weekend’s Cochran County Frontier Day’s celebration at Morton.
The Cochran County Historical Society’s news release about the weekend’s activities reads; “During the spring and summer of 1877 units of the Buffalo Soldiers Tenth U.S. Cavalry, led by Captain Nicholas Nolan, went from Double Lakes in Lynn County through the sand hills of present day Terry, Hockley and Cochran Counties in Texas and eastern Roosevelt County, New Mexico, in pursuit of a Comanche raiding party. Their saga, sometimes referred to as “The Lost Troop Expedition”, is chronicled in The Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877 authored by Dr. Paul H. Carlson, Professor of History at Texas Tech University, published by Texas A & M Press (2003).” A group of buffalo hunters had also been with the troops but remained under their own command.

Reenactors portraying buffalo soldiers and famed scout Jose Piedad Tafoya will be there, too. Deborah and I are going with David Crum, the executive director of the June Leland Wildlife Foundation, to hand out brochures about lesser prairie chicken and sandhills conservation. We will hang out under the trees in the Cochran County Park near Morton and “howdy” folks. For the folks who have not read Dr. Carlson’s book I offer the following adaptation of the events at Buffalo Soldier Hill.

“We traveled over fifty miles today without water. Everybody is in bad shape. Johnny Cook says we should follow Tafoya and head for Silver Lake.” Sam Carr needed to talk. He had been holding some of the other buffalo hunters back. Being heavy had brought heat exhaustion quickly and he had fallen from his horse several times. Johnny Cook had come back for him and had urged him onward.

Carr kept talking. “My horse is the best of this “Forlorn Hope” and it is suffering. Look at the soldiers – some of them no longer have horses. Nolan sent eight of his men to meet Tafoya and bring water back. Sergeant Umbles and four other soldiers are gone – they probably headed for Silver Lake after they fell behind. I would hate to run into the Comanches right now. We are no longer a fighting force. That Spotted Jack was right, this is no time to be on the “Yarner.” The many thousands of buffalo hunters had bowdlerized “Llano” during the three years of hunting and dropped the Estacado. Only one more year of hunting remained before the Yarner would no longer have buffalo running free.

This Spotted Jack was a different Spotted Jack than the man who had died at the Yellowhouse Fight earlier in the year. Maybe the name was a buffalo hunter’s slang term for men of multi-ethnic heritages for both men are described as being combinations of Indian, black, Mexican, and Anglo. This Spotted Jack and three other men had been driving a herd of cattle west but had turned back at Cedar Lake when it was found dry except for “seep water.” On the western Yarner a person can dig into sandy soil in the bottom of draws and then sit and wait while water slowly seeps in and fills it up. He had trailed the stock behind the joint command of buffalo soldiers and buffalo hunters back to the northeast to Double Lakes and then off the Yarner to the east.

The soldiers had turned back west because two of the buffalo hunters had raced into Double Lakes with a report that they had seen a large band of warriors near Rich Lake. At Rich Lake they had met Tafoya (who had been out scouting with several buffalo hunters) who said the Comanches were headed northwest along Sulphur Draw just north of the sanddunes of modern Yoakum and Cochran counties. The Indians had become aware of their presence and had “scattered like quail” into the dunes but Tafoya and Sol Rees had found where the Comanches had come back together further west.

Nolan had kept everyone moving even after night, believing that the Comanches were headed to Lost Lake, several miles into New Mexico Territory. The Comanches had actually turned south after dark, into the dunes, and camped a few miles south the modern town of Bledsoe. Before sundown Nolan asked Tafoya to head to Silver Lake to get water. Johnny Cook wrote a book about the experience and said that Nolan had had a screaming argument with the buffalo hunters about exactly what to do. Cook wrote that the argument ended when Nolan had broken down into uncontrollable sobbing and saying “soon we will each be dethroned of his reason and be a wandering lot of maniacs.”

After Sam Carr finished his talking jag, the other hunters went to sleep, as did the soldiers camped fifty yards away. Carr stayed awake. His body hurt and his skin felt feverish and prickly from the combination of sunburn and sand. “I am close to dying,” he told himself. Carr could feel his heart race, so he concentrated on taking a deep and steady series of breaths. “Panic kills, so I can not dwell on the horror of the present. I have got to think of other things.”
Carr was able to call up a recent memory. Earlier in the month, before the army had arrived on the Yarner, the buffalo hunters had been hunting the Comanches. He and Johnny Cook had been at the headwaters of Sulphur Spring Creek north of modern Stanton and had seen hundreds of wild mustangs. The two men had watched the horses for hours, awed by the sight of so many horses “running and frisking around in reckless abandon in wild unfettered freedom,” as Cook had written. Sam Carr was a gifted horse trainer. His horse, named Prince, was renown among all of the buffalo hunters. Carr had turned down thousand-dollar offers for the horse. He finally slept, dreaming of horses.

I love to try to imagine the experiences of individuals at specific moments in history. How would it have felt? Could I have survived? I identified with Sam Carr, because I am a “burly” individual. Johnny Cook and another hunter had headed for Silver Lake, but passed it to the north, and found Casas Amarillas (Yellowhouse Lake) instead. They had been ahead of the main group of hunters that also decided to head to Silver Lake. Carr and others fell exhausted, further dividing up the group. Carr survived because Johnny Cook brought him (and his horse) water from Casas Amarillas.

Captain Nolan quit trying to find Silver Lake, or wait on Tafoya and the water he was supposedly bringing back, or for any buffalo hunter bringing back water. He had decided to head to Double Lakes and four soldiers died of thirst the next day. In their desperation the soldiers killed some of the horses and sucked on the viscera for moisture, and even fought each other for that inadequate source.