DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker at Buffalo Springs tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, when most folks picture the War Between the States, they picture grand charges and battle flags snapping in the wind. They picture glory.
What they don't picture is a line of sentry forts strung along the Red River and the far frontiers of North Texas, holding the edge of the known world together from 1861 to 1865. That's where Buffalo Springs comes in. This was not a place where glory came to visit very often.
Cavalry rode through here at intervals, keeping watch, keeping the line. And there were moments when the watching got very serious indeed — like 1864, when word came that three thousand Federal soldiers were massing to the north, up in Indian Territory. Three thousand.
You'd want to know where every horse, every round of ammunition, and every biscuit was accounted for. And that was precisely the problem. The soldiers at Buffalo Springs saw little of war's glory, the marker says plainly, but they had a large share of the fighting.
And a large share of something else too — shortages. Shortages of guns. Shortages of ammunition.
Shortages of food, of clothing, of horses. The frontier has a way of taking inventory of a man's resolve, and this place was doing that, relentlessly, for four years running. But it wasn't only soldiers here.
Families came too — families who wanted to stay close to their frontier homes, who weren't ready to abandon what they'd built. They fortified up together, right here at this site, living in picket houses arranged in a fortified square. When someone needed water or wood, they didn't just walk out and get it.
They went in guarded parties, because out there, beyond that square, the frontier didn't care about your plans. And then came 1862, and with it a water famine. Even that arrangement, that hard-won, carefully guarded way of surviving — it wasn't enough.
They left. Goods, stock, everything they'd tried to hold onto close to home, and they left. That's the thing about Buffalo Springs.
It's a place that held on, and held on, and held on — and then showed you, in 1862, exactly what holding on costs when the water runs out. Some frontiers, you don't conquer. You just reckon with them.
What the marker says
On line of sentry forts along Red River and far frontiers of North Texas, 1861-1865. Used at intervals by cavalry, especially at such times as 1864 massing of 3,000 federals to the north, in Indian territory. Soldiers here saw little of war's glory, had large share of fighting and shortages of guns, ammunition, food, clothing and horses. Site of "forting up" of families wishing to stay, with goods and stock, near frontier homes; lived in picket houses in fortified square, placing guards on water or wood gathering parties; in 1862 left during water famine. (1965)