DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do my best to do it justice. Now, by 1891, most Indians had already left the Texas Panhandle — that had happened back in the 1880s. But fear, well, fear doesn't pack up and leave just because the thing it's afraid of does.
And the settlers who'd been arrivin in that next decade brought that fear right along with their wagons and their hopes and their good intentions. So the ground was already ready. All it needed was a spark.
On January 29th, 1891, that spark arrived in the form of a rumor. Word spread — fast, the way rumors do when they find fertile soil — that Indians were approaching. Not just one homestead heard it.
Not just one town. The rumor spread throughout the entire region. The whole Panhandle went taut as a fence wire in January wind.
For three days, three full days, settlers barricaded their homes. They barricaded their communities. They prepared to defend themselves against an attack that was, at that very moment, not happening anywhere on earth.
Now here is where the story earns its name. When it was finally discovered what had actually caused the alarm — those war cries, those smoke signals that had set an entire region to shakin — it turned out to be cowboys. Cowboys chasin a steer.
They finally caught him, and they cooked that steer over an open fire. That's the Great Panhandle Indian Scare of 1891. Three days of genuine, barricaded, wide-eyed terror, and at the center of it all: a campfire, a steer, and a few cowboys who had absolutely no idea what they'd done.
What the marker says
Although most Indians had left the Texas Panhandle by the 1880s, fear of Indian attacks was still prevalent among settlers who arrived in the next decade. On Jan. 29, 1891, rumors of approaching Indians spread throughout the entire region. For three days settlers barricaded their homes and communities and prepared to defend themselves. Later it was discovered that the rumored Indian war cries and smoke signals were actually cowboys in pursuit of a steer they finally caught and cooked over an open fire. (1983)