Legends of the Old West - BUFFALO SOLDIERS Ep. 1 | “Battle of Fort Lancaster”

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

In 1867, Company K of the 9th Cavalry spends a long summer rebuilding Fort Lancaster on the road between El Paso and San Antonio. At the end of the year, a force of 400 fighters – led by Kickapoo warriors – attack the fort. In the first serious frontier action of Company K, the Buffalo Soldiers engage in a fierce battle to protect the fort and their horses. Thanks to our sponsor, Quince! Use this link for Free Shipping and 365-day returns: Quince.com/lotow Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Captain William Frohawk knew his men were in a very bad spot. Company K of the 9th Cavalry was stationed at Fort Lancaster, an isolated outpost in West Texas. In fairness, nearly all the outposts in Texas were isolated to one degree or another, and actually nearly all the outposts in the entire American West were isolated in the 1850s, 60s, and 70s. That was the life of a soldier, and it was the nature of the vast and varied landscape west of the Missouri River. Even though Fort Lancaster was located on the critical road from El Paso to San Antonio, its closest neighbors were Fort McAvitt, 95 miles in one direction, and Fort Stockton, 70 miles in the other direction. There was no chance,

that the 60 soldiers of Company K and the civilians who operated the small stores and the stage station at Fort Lancaster could receive help in their battle against the hundreds of fighters who now surrounded them on three sides. Kickapoo Warriors had united with Hispanic gunmen, old enemies of the Texans,

and a collection of Comoncheros, the name given to the hated white Americans who traded stolen animals and white captives to Native American groups. But the makeup of the huge, force that was a raid against Company K wasn't Captain Frohawk's biggest fear. His biggest fear was the loss of the company's horses. That was the very bad spot he was in at the moment. It looked like he could defend the small cluster of buildings which had survived the initial

assault, or he could defend the horses, but he couldn't do both. It was a problem faced by commanders since time immemorial. It didn't look like he could do both, but somehow he had to. The herd of horses was massing at the gate to the stone-walled corral, and the animals were becoming increasingly panicked. Hundreds of attackers were closing in from the north, the south, and the west, and the horses were stamping and bucking as their anxiety rose. The attackers launched rifle shots, musket balls from old muzzleloaders, and arrows at the outpost. The soldiers responded with steady volleys from their 50-caliber Spencer rifles. and the noise and the sense of fear grew immensely.

The problem was, the gate to the corral was closed, and the men couldn't fight their way through the horses to open it. When the terror of the animals reached its peak, many of them bolted to the south. Captain Frohawk faced a terrible choice. His small force was already badly outnumbered, and surrounded, and defending multiple positions. If he further divided his men to try to retrieve the horses,

he faced the very real possibility of total annihilation. Granted, total annihilation was a very real possibility anyway, especially later, when the captain learned the true size of the force that was gathering out of sight in the hills above them. But the chances of annihilation would increase dramatically if the men of Company K could be separated into smaller groups and cut off from each other. He left a squad of men to defend Fort Lancaster, and he took most of the the rest of the men of Company K and ran south after the herd. It didn't take long for the captain to recognize the task was impossible. The horses which had run south would quickly reach the attackers who were lined up in battle formation in that direction. Grudgingly, Captain

Froak halted the pursuit, and as he did, he heard renewed shouting and firing at the fort behind him. His wife and sister were at the outpost, and in that instance, it appeared as though so the only hope for survival was for his soldiers to regroup and defend the fort with everything they had. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling a collection of stories about the famous Buffalo soldiers, the courageous black soldiers of the infantry and cavalry who served in the West after the Civil War. This is Episode 1, Battle of Fort Lancaster.

A year and a half earlier, the U.S. Congress passed a law which officially added units of black soldiers to the new peacetime American Army. In July of 1866, the Civil War had been done for a year, and the Reconstruction era was underway. After the vast majority of soldiers who served in the war went home, Congress needed to reorganize those who remained or wanted to join. The first of two laws in 1866 authorized the formation of four infantry regiments and two cavalry regiments of black soldiers. Over the course of the year, Congress spent a lot of time changing its mind

and reorganizing the number of regiments on paper. But in the field, four regiments, were sent to serve in the West, the 9th and 10th Cavalry, and the 24th and 25th Infantry. Members of all four regiments rotated throughout the West, from Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in the south, to Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana in the north. Black soldiers volunteered from across the country to fill the ranks of enlisted men, and their officers were white. Henry Flipper was the first black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He received his commission as the first black officer, a second lieutenant in 1879, and he went west to

serve with the men who were known as Buffalo soldiers by that point. No one knows for sure how or where the nickname Buffalo soldiers originated, but most legends say it came from Native American warriors who clashed with black soldiers in the late 1860s and early 1870s. In one version, Comanche warriors created the name because of the dogged, tireless nature of the cavalrymen who pursued them. Another version said the name came from the buffalo hide coats that the soldiers wore in the winter. And the most popular version is that Native Americans thought the curly dark hair of some of the soldiers resembled the curly dark hair of the buffalo. Hence, Buffalo soldiers. However the nickname happened, the soldiers

soldiers eventually embraced it as a sign of respect. For Native Americans, the buffalo was a revered and sacred animal, and the 10th Cavalry added the image of a buffalo to its regimental crest. As the new regiments formed up in late 1866 and early 1867, the first destination for many was Texas. The assignment for the 9th Cavalry Regiment was to distribute most of its men throughout the West Texas frontier. They were supposed to rebuild and reoccupy the forts which guarded the critical road from

El Paso to San Antonio. Until railroad started to take over in the 1870s and 1880s, the old wagon road from El Paso to San Antonio was the primary route from central Texas to far west Texas. Most of the land the road traveled through was the province of Comanche Raiders and bandits of every description. To secure the road, the army built Fort Clark in 1852, Fort Davis in 1854, Fort Lancaster in 1855, Fort Whitman in 1858, and Fort Stockton in 1859. But in 1861, all the forts were abandoned by regular army soldiers when Texas seceded

from the Union. The Confederate Army and local militiamen reoccupied the forts and the forts. and kept them running for a short time, but it was a hopeless cause. The Confederacy didn't have enough men or resources to maintain outposts on the far-flung edges of its territory. In 1862, one year into the war, Confederate troops abandoned the forts. The limestone and adobe buildings fell into ruin as they were ravaged by Native American raiders and Mother Nature. Then, in the summer of 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War, the army returned to the forts along the El Paso-San Antonio Road.

At Fort Lancaster in the Pacas River Valley, Captain William Frohawk and about 60 men of Company K of the 9th Cavalry started to rebuild the crumbling structures of the small complex. In the summer and autumn of 1867, they chiseled and hauled limestone blocks and molded and baked Adobe bricks to reconstruct the roughly 30 buildings of the compound. At least twice, they fought Native American raiding parties who were trying to attack stagecoaches on the road, and the company lost three men killed in action. But other than those brief moments of warm work, the men were occupied with the drudgery and monotony of constructing their fort. The heat of the summer and the early fall finally waned and gave way to chilly winter days and cold winter nights.

As Christmas approached at the end of December, Company K of the 9th Cavalry would be the first of the new Buffalo soldiers to experience full-scale combat in the West. Surprisingly, their enemy would not be the Comanche, Kiowa, or Apache. It would be the Kickapoo. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice. and we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes.

Because at Desjardin Business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. In 1862, the same year Confederate troops started evacuating the forts along the El Paso, San Antonio, road, the Kickapoo were fleeing Texas for the safety of Mexico. The Kickapoo traced their roots to the Great Lakes region around Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but they gradually migrated south as French, English, and American traders and settlers moved west across the continent.

By the 1820s, the Kickapoo had moved to the area around the modern-day states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. By the 1830s, they were already heading to Mexico to avoid the wave of American settlers who were spreading out across the southern plains. By 1862, after a year of chaos of the Civil War, those who had not already fled to Mexico began to consider the journey. Most of the holdouts made the trip to Mexico that year, but others waited much longer. The hunger for revenge, which spurred the attack on Fort Lancaster,

came from an attack on a group of Kickapoo who waited until January 1865 to make the move to Mexico. On January 8th, four months before the end of the Civil War, several hundred Kickapoo were camped in the thickets on the banks of Dove Creek about 25 miles south of the town of San Angelo. A force of nearly 500 men, who were a mix of local volunteers, mistook the friendly Kickapoo for hostile Comanche or Kiowa. When the Texas troops attacked, the battle did not go well. The Kickapoo had high ground, a creek, and thick brush to use as cover.

Some of the Texas troopers were able to swoop south of the encampment and capture many of the Kickapoo's horses, but then some of that group needed to attack the camp. As they approached, they took blasts of heavy fire from the concealed Kickapoo defenders. The Texas troops lost 12 horses and were forced to retreat to the safety of nearby timber. Meanwhile, the Texans tried to strike from the north, but they had to slog. through the creek and the thick brush to do it. The Kickapoo mowed down the front lines in seconds. 19 men were badly wounded in the opening volleys, and many of the wounds proved fatal. Three officers died, including one of the two top commanders of the overall force. The troops on

the northern end of the battlefield retreated, and now both halves, north and south, were hurrying away from the fight. The Kickapoo left their positions and rounded up their horses. Then they started chasing the fleeing attackers. The Kickapoo inflicted more casualties on the Texas troops as the attackers retreated to the safety of a camp three miles away. The Texans suffered 22 killed and 19 wounded in the engagement. And what was probably worse, they made enemies of the once peaceful Kickapoo. Over the next eight years or so, the Kickapoo conducted raids into Texas from their homes in Mexico. In 1866, a year after the Dove Creek battle, the Kickapoo captured a settler in Bandera outside San Antonio and dragged the person back to Mexico. They launched a raid on Rio Hondo in South Texas, and they were likely responsible for an attack on the settlement around Fort McAvitt 95 miles east of Fort Lancaster.

The raid left a husband and wife dead and their 16-year-old daughter horribly wounded, as well as hundreds of cattle stolen. At the time, in August 1866, U.S. Army soldiers had been in the area to evaluate the old forts which had been abandoned four years earlier and to scout locations for new forts. One year later, in the summer of 1867, companies of the new 9th cavalry reoccupied Fort McAvitt north of San Antonio and several forts, including Fort Lancaster, on the old San Antonio to El Paso Road. By December of 1867, Captain William Frohawk and about 60 troopers of Company K of the 9th Cavalry had been at Fort Lancaster for roughly six months. On December 26th, the day after Christmas, the work at the post was standard. Some men continued the construction labor. A mounted guard detail herded some of the company's horses toward a watering spot at Live Oak Creek north of the fort. and at the creek, a civilian teamster named William Sharp and four soldiers filled barrels with water. Unknown to everyone, two large groups of Kickapoo warriors were stealthily moving down the creek bed on horseback.

The warriors were nearly on top of the five men who were filling water barrels before William Sharp spotted them. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Sharp shouted an alarm to the four soldiers who were with him. It was the last sound he made before the warriors threw him. a lasso around him, dragged him into the brush along the creek, and killed him. The four soldiers with Sharp found hiding spots, while the warriors, who numbered in the hundreds, flowed past them toward the fort. The warriors, 200 of them, according to Captain Frohawk, galloped out of the creek bed and raced toward the horses, which were just arriving at their watering spot. The soldiers who guarded the horses were obviously surprised

to see hundreds of screaming warriors leap out of the brush along the creek with no warning. The warriors charged the horses and the guards, and the soldiers opened fire with their pistols and Spencer rifles. There was now a swarming mass of confusion, shouting, and gunfire north of the fort as hundreds of warriors clashed with a handful of soldiers and about 60 horses. The horses started to run south toward the fort, and the soldiers struggled to maintain control of the frightened animals. As the entire mass rolled southward in the direction of the fort, the soldiers tried to drive the herd toward the safety of the corral on the edge of the compound, while the warriors tried to push the horses away from the fort. During the galloping frenzy, the warriors lassoed two troopers, Anderson Trimble and Eli Bowers,

and dragged them to the ground and killed them. But the rest of the guards succeeded in keeping the horses on a path toward the corral. At the fort, Captain Frohawk and the others heard and then saw the storm that was bearing down on them. The officers and troopers rushed to form a skirmish line, but the thin defensive barrier was no match for what was coming. At that point, three things happened at once. One of the two groups of attackers from the north swung around in an arc to ride straight

through the middle of the compound. At the fort, a handful of troopers on horseback joined the effort to guide the stampeding horses toward the corral, and two more groups of warriors sprang out of the creek bed from the west and the south. Fort Lancaster was essentially surrounded. In one direction, the fort was walled off by high bluffs. From the other three directions, approximately 400 warriors were closing in. The only bright spot was that a small group of men of Company K had miraculously maintained control of the herd of horses. But that bright spot quickly dimmed. As the horses veered toward the corral, they didn't go inside.

They clustered at the entrance and slammed into each other and spun in fear. The gate was closed, and before the soldiers could fight their way through the horses to open it, it became clear that their control over the herd was about to break. If the horses escaped the compound of Fort Lancaster, most of the men of Company K would be left to fight on foot against, an overwhelming enemy who was on horseback. While the men who were hurting the horses fought to maintain the thin threat of control over the panicked animals, a standoff was in progress north of the fort.

One of the two groups of warriors who were attacking from that direction stayed on a direct line toward the fort. A group of soldiers had rushed out and taken defensive positions to repel the attackers. The soldiers blasted away with pistols and Spencer rifles, and they stopped the advance of the the warriors at the stage station that anchored the northern end of the fort complex. The soldiers proved to be deadly accurate from long distance, and as warriors fell from their horses with 50 caliber gunshot wounds, the others wisely stayed out of range. Meanwhile, the second group of attackers from the north had split off from the first and now

screamed into the compound. They fired at soldiers and started burning many of the newly constructed buildings. And then, the cavalry's worst fear happened. At about the same time as the attacking warriors raced out of the other side of the fort, the cavalry's horses at the corral broke free from the soldiers. The horses turned south and started to run, straight into the welcoming arms of the third and fourth groups of warriors who had joined the fight. Shortly after two groups of Kickapoo Warrants, had launched the assault by galloping out of the brush along Live Oak Creek, a group west of the fort and a group south of the fort had done the same.

Approximately 400 fighters pressed against the fort from three sides, and now the horses were sprinting toward the group in the south. Captain Frohawk had to make a difficult choice. He could let the horses go and consolidate his men in a somewhat fortified position with the hope of surviving an assault, and if they did survive, they would be mostly stranded, or he could make a desperate bid to retrieve the horses, which meant running after them across open ground with enemies on all sides.

And the attempt would mean leaving a skeleton crew at the fort, including his wife and sister, who could be annihilated if the warriors mounted a coordinated attack. Frohawk chose the horses, at least for the moment. He couldn't let them go without one last attempt to catch them. But by that time, the horses had already run past the warriors to the south. The warriors now formed a screen between the soldiers and the horses. The task before the men of Company K would be nearly impossible, but Frohawk needed to try. He left a squad to

protect the fort, and he advanced with the rest of the company, maybe 40 to 50 men, in a long line toward the horses and the warriors to the south. The soldiers kept up steady fire with their Spencer rifles as they marched across the dusty plateau. They repeatedly forced the warriors to break, retreat and reform, but each time the warriors regrouped, they kept themselves between the soldiers and the horses. It didn't take long for Frohawk to realize the mission was hopeless. And behind him at the fort, the situation was dire. As his men stood on open ground outside the compound, they could hear the volume of fire increase behind them. Something was clearly happening. They just didn't know exactly what. Frohawk broke off the rescue mission and let the horses go.

he left a squad in place to perform a strategic retreat. The squad continued to fire at the Warriors to the South to keep them at bay, while the captain and the rest of the company rushed back to the fort. At the Fort, the Warriors to the North were attacking at full gallop. They charged through the compound and fired arrows, bullets, and musket balls at the small squad of defenders who took shelter in buildings which were barely standing after the initial assault. assault. The soldiers returned fire, while Mrs. Frohawk and her sister scurried from man to man to distribute ammunition. The squad and the sisters survived the attack, but they probably wouldn't

survive a second assault if they didn't receive reinforcements or if the warriors coordinated their effort with all of their numbers. Luckily for the defenders, Captain Frohawk and most of the company sprinted back into camp to strengthen the skirmish lines and fortify the positions. Now the battle was a true standoff or a possible siege, and it's a mystery as to why the hundreds of warriors and their renegade allies did not mount an all-out assault on the fort. It was a virtual certainty that they could have wiped out all the defenders, but it appears as though the force of Kickapoo were more interested in stealing livestock than exacting further measures of revenge against fighters in Texas.

The warriors had added 38 cavalry horses and mules to the huge group of animals they had collected from what must have been a sizable raid through Southwest Texas. They were content with what they had, and they saw no point in risking more lives to kill a few soldiers who were now hunkered down behind defensive barriers. The warriors continued to surround the fort for the rest of the afternoon and to lob shots into the buildings.

But when night fell, the warriors and their allies drifted away toward Mexico with their prizes. The squad of soldiers who had stayed south of the fort to block an attack from that direction followed the horde of warriors with the hope of rescuing the horses. But after four miles of pursuit on foot, the soldiers gave up the idea. It was just as hopeless as their original attempt. Two days later, some of the warriors returned to Fort Lancaster in an effort to steal the remaining horses, but the garrison fought them off. And that was the last time a serious raiding party threatened the soldiers of Company K.

All told, the fort suffered three men killed, the wagon driver William Sharp and two privates, Anderson Trimble and Eli Bowers, who had been guarding the horses at the beginning of the attack. It took months for the company to find the bodies of the dead men, but their remains were eventually buried in the small cemetery outside the compound. Captain Frohawk reported two warriors killed and several wounded, but it was impossible to do a full count. In the captain's report to his superiors at Fort Stockton the day after the battle, he explained the events and praised the soldiers.

Though many in the company were veterans of the Civil War, the battle at Fort Lancaster was their first taste of action in the West. They had witnessed all the skills of Native American warriors, the uncanny ability to sneak up on a position, the fearless charges against fortified shelters and the unmatched talent for fighting on horseback. Granted, a big part of the reason that the warriors were able to sneak up on the soldiers in this case was that Captain Frohawk had failed to place lookout posts on the bluffs above the fort. That was a failure which he seemed to indirectly acknowledge in the final line of his report when he wrote, Precautions have been taken against surprise.

After passively admitting that he should have taken those precautions earlier, he concluded his report by praising his men. Captain Frohawk wrote, The enlisted men, especially the non-commissioned officers, behaved gallantly. And the captain singled out an officer, his second-in-command, Lieutenant Fred Smith, by saying that Smith, not only seconded my endeavors to save the horses to the utmost, but led the charge of the skirmish line against overwhelming odds, regardless of personal exposure.

All in all, the soldiers of Company K at Fort Lancaster handled themselves well in their first fight, and they started to build the reputation of the 9th Cavalry and the Buffalo soldiers in the West. Next time on Legends of the Old West, after several years in Texas, the 9th cavalry heads west to occupy forts in New Mexico and Colorado. In southern New Mexico, a small detachment is sent to find an Apache war party.

The detachment learns a painful lesson in guerrilla warfare, but the fight near the Mexican border is also an opportunity for bravery, which earns one soldier the Medal of Honor. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program received the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This episode was researched and written by me, Chris Wimmer.

Original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.