Two Miles North of Here

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna let those words do the work. Two miles north of where you're sittin' right now, something happened on a September day in 1874 that ended a way of life on the Texas plains — and it didn't happen with a cannon or a cavalry charge. It happened with an order.

General Ranald S. Mackenzie, commanding the 4th U.S. Cavalry, had just fought a battle in Palo Duro Canyon on September 28th, 1874.

And when it was over, his men held something the Plains Indians could not afford to lose — fourteen hundred and fifty horses. Captured. Every last one.

Now, Mackenzie was not a man given to halfway measures. He understood, in that cold and calculating way of a military commander, what those horses meant. They were mobility.

They were survival. They were the difference between a people who could move and fight and hunt, and a people who could not. So he gave the order.

Shoot them. All fourteen hundred and fifty. Right here.

Two miles north of this spot. The purpose, as the marker states it plain, was to prevent their possible recovery by the Indians — to force the return to their reservations on foot. No horses meant no options.

That was the calculation, and Mackenzie made it. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, and it doesn't editorialize. It just tells you what happened, and where, and how many.

Sometimes the numbers are the story. Fourteen hundred and fifty horses. One order.

And the plains went quiet.

What the marker says

Two miles north of here Gen. Ranald S. Mackenzie, 4th U.S. Cavalry, ordered shot the 1450 horses captured from Indians in battle in Palo Duro Canyon September 28, 1874 to prevent their possible recovery by the Indians to return to their reservations on foot. Erected by the State of Texas 1936