DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the Battle of North Fork of Red River, out in Gray County. Now, September 29, 1872 — mark that date. Colonel Ranald S.
MacKenzie rides into this stretch of Texas and finds something that had to stop him cold. A village. Two hundred and sixty-two tepees.
Comanches who had looked at the treaties meant to hold them on Indian Territory reservations and decided, plainly and deliberately, that they were not going. MacKenzie had two hundred and thirty-one U.S. Cavalry and infantrymen at his back.
And in half an hour — half an hour — they captured that entire village. Chief Mow-Way's warriors put up a desperate resistance, fighting from the shelter of creek banks, but the army took the camp. Now here is where the story turns, and you want to listen close to this part.
That night, under cover of darkness, the Comanches came back. Not for the village — for the horses. They rode straight at an army guard detail and recaptured their horses right out from under MacKenzie's command.
Just like that. The warriors the colonel had scattered in half a morning handed him a lesson before the sun came up again. And MacKenzie, to his credit, was the kind of man who learned.
That lesson — that humbling, horseless night — is what the marker credits with shaping the tactics that led to his eventual victory in the 1874 campaign to subdue the Indians. Win the morning, lose the horses, win the war. Sometimes that's just how it goes out here.
What the marker says
On Sept. 29, 1872, Col. Ranald S. MacKenzie (1840-89) found in this area a 262-tepee village of Comanches defying treaties that sought to confine them on Indian Territory reservations. MacKenzie's 231 U.S. Cavalry and infantrymen captured the village in half an hour and routed Chief Mow-Way's warriors, who made a desperate resistance from sheltering creek banks. That night the Indians succeeded in recapturing their horses from an army guard detail. This taught MacKenzie a lesson that led to his eventual victory in the 1874 campaign to subdue the Indians. (1972)