Legends of the Old West - TEXAS RANGERS Ep. 2 | “Frontier Battalion”

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

During and immediately after the Civil War, the Texas frontier suffers from renewed attacks by the Comanche and Kiowa. One of the most notable is the devastating Elm Creek Raid. After the war, Texas briefly reconstitutes the Texas Rangers, but they’re not fully resurrected until the creation of the Frontier Battalion in 1874. Major John B. Jones becomes the commander and leads the battalion into a new era.   SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY “The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900” by Mike Cox “The Ranger Ideal, Vol. 1&2” by Darren L. Ivey “Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers” by Robert M. Utley “The Texas Rangers” by Walter Prescott Webb “Captain L.H. McNelly: Texas Ranger” by Chuck Parsons & Marianne E. Hall Little “Taming the Nueces Strip” by George Durham “Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers” by Doug J. Swanson “Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman” by J. Evetts Haley “Comanches: A History of a People” by T.R. Fehrenbach “The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West” by Peter Cozzens   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.   On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage.   For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The generation of Texas Rangers who began their service during the Texas Revolution, or the Republic years, or the early years of statehood after the Mexican-American War, finished their service during the Civil War. The ones who had survived were now middle-aged. In 1865, after John S. Rip Ford led a Confederate victory in the final battle of the Civil War, he was 50 years old. Henry McCullough, who commanded the Frontier Regiment that tried to protect the western settlements of Texas during the war, was 49 years old. Henry McCullough, who commanded the Frontier Regiment that tried to protect the western settlements of Texas during the war, was 49 years old. His brother, the legendary Ranger Ben McCullough, had been 50 years old in 1862 when he was killed at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas. The youngest of this select group from the

previous generation was Lawrence Sullivan Ross, better known as Sol Ross. He was 26 years old when the war ended, and he never served with the Rangers again. After the war, Henry McCullough, Rip Ford, and Sol Ross followed different pursuits, but their fighting days were done. McCullough seems to have laid low in the years right after the war, but he was prominent again in the second half of the 1870s. He worked to get Governor Richard Koch into office in 1874, which would prove to be instrumental in resurrecting the Rangers after a dormant period. He spent three years as the superintendent of what was called at the time the Deaf and Dumb Asylum.

Today, it's the Texas School for the Deaf, but McCullough's time in charge was marred by controversy. He was forced to resign in 1879 after a legislative investigation. The man who took his place was Rip Ford. After the war, Ford went back to his roots as a newspaper publisher in Brownsville. He was active in state and local politics before he took over the School for the Deaf, and after he left the superintendent's role, he became a driving force in chronicling the state's history. He spent more than 20 years pushing for the creation of the Texas State Historical Society, and it finally happened in 1897, just a few months before he passed away. Saul Ross had a long and active career after the war. Though he never again served

as a Texas Ranger, he did continue a career in law enforcement. He spent three years as the sheriff of McLennan County in the mid-1870s and then two years as a state senator in the early 1880s. That set him up to run for governor in 1886. He won the election and served two terms as governor of Texas. During his time in office, one of his many priorities was continuing to support a small, struggling college called the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. When Ross finished his second term as governor, he accepted the presidency of the college and transformed it into a thriving university. He spent seven years as president of the school that is called today Texas A&M, until his death in 1898 at the age of 59. until his death in 1898 at the age of 59.

In the 35 years between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the new century, Texas experienced as much change as it did in the 40 years between the arrival of the first white settlers and the beginning of the war. One of the many changes was to make the old new again, with the resurrection of the Texas Rangers. And after a bit of a false start, the force would become permanent. The Rangers would transform from their age-old paradigm of frontier fighters to statewide law enforcement officers. And the man who led the transformation was John B. Jones. He would command and supervise the Rangers for seven years. In his time, he would witness the end of the threat of the Comanche in Kiowa, bloody battles of family feuds and local wars, the peak of the cattle drives, the arrival of famous outlaws of the Old

West, and the continued chaos on the southern border. But first things first, before Jones could lead the famous Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers, there had to be a Frontier Battalion. Texas, like all southern states, was chaotic during and after the Civil War. The Comanche and Kiowa didn't have a full understanding of the war between the states, but they knew one thing for sure. The soldiers and rangers who had patrolled the western frontier for more than a decade were gone. The land was open, and the settlements were vulnerable.

From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're returning to the stories of the Texas Rangers. This series will follow the Rangers through the Civil War to their final years as frontier fighters and in their beginnings as lawmen. This is Episode 2, Frontier Battalion. 2. Frontier Battalion Kiowa leader Little Buffalo rode from camp to camp to recruit soldiers. At each stop, he delivered the same message. The Blue Coat soldiers and the other fighters, whom the Whites called Texas Rangers, were gone. They had been gone, for the most part, for nearly three years. He had seen it himself on previous raids. The settlements along the mighty Brazos River

in northwest Texas were ripe for the picking. Little Buffalo's recruiting effort paid off. His raiding party grew into the hundreds, and his message was accurate. The U.S. Army soldiers and the Texas Rangers were mostly gone, but not entirely gone. The Blue Coat soldiers were gone for sure. They had abandoned the line of forts that the Army had spent 12 years building after the Mexican-American War. After Texas joined the United States and then the war with Mexico was finished, the U.S. Army became responsible for protecting the expanding line of white settlements in Texas. But in March of 1861, all those soldiers left their forts to join one army or the other. The Confederacy created the

Frontier Regiment, which was initially commanded by Henry McCullough to try to fill the void left by the U.S. Army. But the regiment wasn't nearly enough in terms of size or experience. All the veteran fighters from Texas had rushed to join the Confederate Army. The volunteers who were left were too few and too green to stop the raids. Back in the 1840s, Texans had called them murder raids because the goal seemed to be simple destruction. Now, 20 years later, the murder raids were back. They had increased in frequency throughout 1862 and 1863 as the Comanche and Kiowa became confident that they couldn't be stopped. The Confederate Frontier Regiment did what it could. Some of the men reoccupied the old forts and patrolled parts of the frontier, but the frontier was enormous. The regiment couldn't

possibly keep all the settlements safe. As a result, two things happened. Many settlers fled their homes and retreated into central Texas, and the stubborn ones who stayed out west built their own crude forts for protection. Two of those homes-slash-forts would be the sites of last stands for settlers in the fall of 1864 when Little Buffalo and his raiding party came calling. Little Buffalo's recruiting effort netted him 700 Kiowa and Comanche warriors, and in October 1864, they rode down from camps above the Red River to strike settlements in the Comanche homeland along the Brazos. At noon on October 13th, the Kiowa Comanche Army split into two groups and swarmed the homesteads on both sides of Elm Creek, a stream that flows into the Brazos River northwest

of Fort Belknap and about five miles from the modern-day town of Newcastle. Little Buffalo's group made the first strike when they killed a rancher and his son. Next, the raiders struck the Fitzpatrick Ranch. Women and children from three families were gathered at the ranch while their husbands rode to the trading post at Weatherford, 70 miles away, to buy supplies. When the women saw the screaming warriors racing toward the ranch, Susan Durgan grabbed a gun and fired at them, but the warriors killed her as they descended on the homestead. The rest of the women and children presented no threat,

so the warriors kidnapped them. They captured Susan's two young daughters, Elizabeth Fitzpatrick and her 12-year-old son, and Mary Johnson and two of her three children. Mary's oldest, a son, was killed during the raid. The Johnsons were one of, if not the only, black family in the area, and Mary's husband, Britt, would prove to be one of the most courageous men on the frontier. But at the moment, he was away at the Weatherford trading post, and the raiding party continued its rampage. Smoke from burning homes could be seen across the prairie. Gunshots echoed through the creek bottoms, and other homesteaders raced for cover or to warn their

neighbors. Little Buffalo's warriors struck the Williams house, but luckily they didn't find the family hiding in the brush nearby. Thornton Hamby, a wounded Confederate soldier who was home on leave, and his father hurried Mrs. Hamby and the younger children into a cave. Then the Hamby men raced from neighbor to neighbor to sound the alarm. They barely stayed ahead of the horde of raiders until they made it to the ranch of George Bragg. Bragg's house was built from sod and designed as a makeshift fort, and it acted as one now. People from across the range rushed to Bragg's home and filled it to capacity. Thornton Hamby's father had been wounded four times, but he helped

with the defense of the house as best he could. George Bragg was old and unable to be of much use, so the defense fell mostly on Thornton and the women. The sod house was built with narrow gun ports, as all homes on the frontier were, and Thornton moved from port to port, blasting away with pistols. As fast as he could fire the guns empty, women loaded new pistols and slapped them into his hands. All afternoon, they held off the howling mass of warriors who circled the house. The turning point came late in the day, after Thornton had been wounded. Someone, believed to be Thornton, shot and killed the Kiowa leader of the raiding party,

Little Buffalo. Little Buffalo's group retreated from the Bragg Ranch and considered the raid done. But the other group was still going. They had killed and burned until they reached another crude fort, Fort Murrah, that had been constructed by settlers in the absence of the army. The second group of warriors surrounded the fort and killed everyone outside who couldn't make it in, which included nearly half of a local militia unit who had tried to help. Fourteen men had galloped to Elm Creek from Fort Belknap when they heard about the raid. They ran headlong into 300 warriors. Five of the militiamen were killed immediately,

and the others raced to Fort Murrah and crowded in with the families. The warriors kept up the siege well into the night until they eventually decided the fun was over and they started to ride back to their camps above the Red River. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch. And organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage

all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. They have an all-in-one e-commerce platform and in-person POS system, so wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With the internet's best converting checkout, 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms, Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers.

Shopify has allowed us to share something tangible with the podcast community we've built here, selling our beanies, sweatshirts, and mugs to fans of our shows without taking up too much time from all the other work we do to bring you even more great content. And it's not just us. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in.

Shopify.com slash realm. The day after the raid, Britt Johnson returned to the Fitzpatrick Ranch and discovered that Confederate soldier Thornton Hamby had done him a small kindness. During the night, while warriors still prowled the area, Thornton had slipped out of the Bragg house and made his way to the Fitzpatrick Ranch. He buried the bodies of Susan Durgan and Johnson's son before returning to the Bragg home. Johnson no doubt appreciated Hamby's effort, but Johnson's wife and children were still missing. With the help of the Hambys, Johnson packed supplies and weapons and headed for the Comancheria alone. He ran into a group of the friendly Penateca band of the Comanche, and they helped him with his mission. In total, he made four journeys into the heart of the Comanche homeland, the most dangerous place

on the southern plains. He ransomed and rescued his wife Mary and their two children, as well as Elizabeth Fitzpatrick and one of Susan Durgan's two daughters. Sadly, Elizabeth's 12-year-old son had been killed by the Raiders when he fell sick, and Susan Durgon's youngest daughter Millie was likely never seen again. A story surfaced 66 years later, in 1930, about a Kiowa woman with pale skin who was identified as the long-lost Millie Durgon. But Millie was only a year and a half old when she was taken, so it's hard to know if the identity was proven conclusively. The Elm Creek Raid was just one of many during the Civil War,

and the raids continued for another ten years after that. The Comanche raided all the way to the town of Fredericksburg in the hill country west of Austin, and then to within two miles of San Antonio. That was terrifying to Texans because it helped demonstrate just how far the line of white settlements had regressed since the beginning of the war. When the raids had picked up again in late 1861 and 1862, they were probing ventures to test the limits of the Texas defenses. Some of the Comanche and Kiowa had made agreements with the Union and the Confederacy to stop harassing supply shipments on the Santa Fe Trail in exchange for gifts of

food and other goods. But on the Union side, when the promised gifts didn't arrive in the fall of 1863, the raids ramped up quickly. Then came the Big Elm Creek Raid in October 1864, followed by the First Battle of Adobe Walls five weeks later in November 1864. Kit Carson led a detachment of troops to the Texas Panhandle to try to stop the raids into New Mexico territory, but his command ended up getting trapped at William Bent's old trading post called Adobe Walls. Carson and his men were able to escape, and that would be the last military expedition into the heart of the Comanche homeland for ten years. After the war, President Andrew Johnson tried and largely failed to lead the nation

through its reconstruction era, and the raids continued. It took time for the US Army to reorganize itself after the war, and the army didn't see West Texas as a priority. The Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 was supposed to bring peace to the Southern Plains, but of course it didn't. It had been signed by lots of bands of tribes from Kansas, Texas, and Indian Territory, but it was just the first of many failed peace treaties between the U.S. government and Native American societies after the Civil War.

As Texans continued to shout about the problems, after the Civil War. As Texans continued to shout about the problems, the two generals in the army who were in positions to help remained unconvinced about the severity of the issue. When Ulysses S. Grant took office as president in 1869, he made William Tecumseh Sherman General-in-Chief of the Army. Sherman made General Phil Sheridan commander of the Military District of the Missouri, which gave Sheridan dominion over all land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains and from Mexico to Canada. In essence, he supervised half of the American West and all the tribes of the Northern and Southern Plains. Sheridan had devised and led the campaign against the southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa in 1868 that created the legend of George Armstrong Custer as a heroic

Indian fighter. But it wasn't until a close call for General Sherman and a fight between the Texas Rangers and the Kiowa that Sherman ordered a concentrated effort against the remaining holdouts in Texas. In September of 1866, new Texas governor James Throckmorton signed a law to create the first regiment of post-war Texas Rangers. It was also the first time in history that the words Texas Rangers appeared in an official piece of legislation. But that piece of legislation contained one little

problem, the same problem that plagued the Rangers for their entire existence. Texas governors and legislators quickly and enthusiastically authorized the creation of ranger regiments, but they were much slower to provide funding for the regiments. That's what happened in 1866. The Texas Congress authorized the creation of a ranger regiment, but didn't provide any money for payment or supplies, so the regiment never formed up. But in 1870, the Rangers had better luck. Governor Edmund Davis and the legislature passed two big bills in the space of two weeks. In mid-June, they authorized the formation of 20 companies of Rangers, and they provided some funding for food, supplies, and weapons. Two weeks later, on July 1st, they created the short-lived Texas State Police.

The story of the State Police will come later, but it was during the one year of service of the newly reconstituted Rangers that General Sherman realized he had been wrong about the problem in Texas. He would survive a massacre, by sheer dumb luck as white settlers would have called it, and by the power of prophetic medicine, as the Kiowa called it. In June of 1870, the Texas legislature authorized the formation of 20 companies of rangers. In August, they sold bonds to provide funding, and in September, 10 of the 20 companies formed up and headed west for service.

Many found themselves in isolated scraps with warriors, but the overall effort fizzled out almost as fast as it started. By December, just two months after funding had been provided for the Rangers, the money was running out. Only 14 of the 20 companies had made it into the field. And the next month, a story that mixed tragedy and heroism ended in further tragedy. A small caravan of wagons was transporting supplies from the Weatherford trading post near Fort Worth to Fort Griffin, way out west on the Brazos River in present-day Shackleford County. The Army had built Fort Griffin three and a half years earlier to replace

Fort Belknap. The caravan was in the vicinity of the present-day town of Graham, Texas, when it was ambushed by a war party. The war party slaughtered, mutilated, and scalped four black men who drove the wagons of the caravan. One of those men was Britt Johnson, who had rescued his wife and children after they were captured in the Elm Creek raid seven years earlier. Now, he was murdered just a few miles from Elm Creek. Travelers found the bodies sometime later, and soldiers from Fort Richardson, near the town of Jacksboro, rode out and buried Britt Johnson and his three business partners. It would be at Fort Richardson, five months later, that the decision would be made to go on the offensive against the Comanche in Kiowa. In February 1871, the month after Britt Johnson died, the Texas legislature

was forced to cut the number of Rangers in half due to lack of money. The next month, the legislature passed a resolution that urged the U.S. Congress to send a delegation to Texas to see the situation for itself. Reports were still flooding in from the western frontier that was being ravaged by war parties. Two months later, in May of 1871, General William Tecumseh Sherman decided he needed to see if his belief was valid that the reports from West Texas were exaggerated. He traveled to San Antonio and then began a tour of the army forts along the western frontier. He rode north with an escort of black soldiers to Fort Concho, Fort Griffin, the old Fort Belknap, and then to Fort Richardson near Jacksboro. The group toured the entire western frontier and didn't see a single warrior. Sherman reached Fort Richardson on May 17, 1871,

with his belief of exaggerated reports still intact. On the night of May 18th, he changed his mind. A wagon driver staggered into the fort with a terrible tale to tell. He had been shot in the foot, and he was one of a handful of survivors of a massacre that happened the previous day. Twenty miles straight west of Fort Richardson, a caravan of ten wagons, led by Henry Warren, was on the road blazed by the old Butterfield Overland Mail Company. Like Britt Johnson's small group, Henry Warren's wagon train was taking supplies to Fort Griffin.

A war party of Comanche and Kiowa had waited in ambush and then devastated the wagon train. Warriors killed Henry Warren and at least five others, one of whom they tortured in horrible ways. A few of the men of the caravan, all wounded, managed to escape while the warriors were more concerned with ransacking the wagons. One of the survivors now stood before General Sherman and told his tale. The slaughter was bad enough, but that wasn't the part that eventually scared Sherman into action. Sherman later learned that he was only spared because of a sign from a Kiowa medicine man. The war party had watched Sherman and his escort pass by and chose not to attack. The night before Sherman rode into Fort Richardson, the Kiowa medicine man had seen a sign about the upcoming raid. He advised the

warriors that they should not attack the first group of travelers they saw. They should wait and attack the second group. The following day, May 17th, the war party stayed hidden and allowed General Sherman and his escort to pass by unmolested. Then the war party attacked and destroyed Henry Warren's wagon train. After that close call experience, Sherman decided the Army needed to end the peace policy that had mostly guided the strategy on the southern plains. The army commander at Fort Richardson was Colonel Ranald McKenzie, who would soon etch his name into the lore of Texas and the American West. Sherman dispatched McKenzie to catch the war party while he, Sherman, rode up to Fort Sill in Indian territory. McKenzie tracked the raiders to the Comanche Kiowa Reservation, which was supervised by Fort Sill, in the southwest corner of Indian territory. Fort Sill had replaced the old Fort

Cobb as the supervisory outpost of the reservation, and now Sherman and McKenzie rendezvoused to compare notes. Sherman then interrogated the local Indian agent and learned that the war party had originated at the agency. Warriors had returned and bragged about the Warren wagon train massacre. Sherman arrested three of the Kiowa leaders of the raid, and McKenzie took them back to Texas for trial. three of the Kiowa leaders of the raid, and McKenzie took them back to Texas for trial. During transport, one tried to escape, and he was shot and killed. The other two received life sentences, but were paroled two years later. In October 1871, Colonel McKenzie led his first expedition into Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains, the most remote part of the Comanche homeland, and the home of the most remote band of the Comanche, the Quahati, who were led by a young

chief known by Texans as Quanah Parker. The name of Quanah's band is spelled and pronounced many different ways, but this one seems the easiest for now. So, four months after Sherman's close call with the Kiowa War Party, he gave McKenzie permission to go after bands of Comanche who refused to submit to life on a reservation. On October 3rd, McKenzie's column headed for the Comancheria. Six days into the mission, McKenzie and part of his column were attacked in Blanco Canyon, not to be confused with the pronunciation of the name of the town in the hill country called Blanco. The canyon is 20 miles east of Lubbock, and late in the evening, Quanah Parker and a force of warriors galloped straight through the army camp and stampeded

many of the army's horses. The next day, the warriors laid a trap for the soldiers, which the soldiers barely survived. A week later, near the modern-day town of Plainview, the army troopers fought a small skirmish with the Comanche in which Mackenzie and another soldier were wounded. A week after the skirmish, with McKenzie's wound growing worse and biting winter winds sweeping down from the north, McKenzie ended the campaign and the troops returned to Fort Richardson. McKenzie mounted another campaign the following year, in the summer and early fall of 1872, which resulted in the destruction of a Comanche village. But it would be two more years

before General Sherman received authorization to mount a full campaign against the Comanche in Kiowa. When it happened, the campaign would be spurred in part by two events, the Second Battle of Adobe Walls and the Lost Valley Fight, which featured Texas Rangers of the New Frontier Battalion. When the Rangers had disbanded in June of 1871 after a year of service, they were gone for three years. They were resurrected in the spring of 1874 with a new commander, John B. Jones, who was from South Carolina, just like Rip Ford. who was from South Carolina, just like Rip Ford. Jones's father, Henry Jones, had done well in South Carolina,

and when he moved the family to Texas two years after the Revolution, he bought a farm of 1,100 acres in Travis County. Henry Jones served with the impromptu Rangers in fights against the Comanche at Brushy Creek and Plum Creek before he moved the family to Matagorda. After 12 years near the Gulf Coast, the Jones family moved inland to Navarro County between Waco and Dallas. Henry bought a big spread of nearly 5,000 acres and he went into business with his 22-year-old son John. Business was good,

with cotton, hogs, cattle, and a sawmill, and by 1860, John had 1,100 acres of his own. John and Henry supported secession, and John enlisted as a private in the 1st Texas Infantry Battalion in 1862. He spent his first year marching around Texas and Arkansas, and then in the spring of 1863, his regiment moved to Louisiana. They fought small battles in the spring and summer of 1863, and then a big one at Sterling's Plantation in September. Jones was singled out for bravery and promoted to captain. A month later, his friend and fellow captain Richard Koch was wounded at the Battle of Bayou Bourbeau. A year later, they saw heavy fighting again in Louisiana in the spring and summer of 1864, but that was their last major action of the war.

Jones' regiment spent the winter in camp along the Red River, Jones' regiment spent the winter in camp along the Red River, then moved around Texas in the spring of 1865 as the war wound down in the east. On May 24, 1865, the regiment officially disbanded, and Jones went home to his ranch in Navarro County. Eight years later, his friend Richard Koch was elected governor of Texas. In April 1874, three years after General William Tecumseh Sherman's frightening experience with the Kiowa War Party, the Texas legislature passed a law to create a battalion of rangers to protect the frontier. The state adjutant general, William Steele, supervised the battalion, and he selected John B. Jones to command it.

At the time, most people rightfully believed that Jones was given his commission as major of the new battalion because of his old war buddy, Richard Koch, who was now governor. They would soon learn that Jones was a qualified and competent commander in his own right. that Jones was a qualified and competent commander in his own right. The 450 to 470 Rangers of the new battalion were divided into six companies labeled A through F, and they were in the field just two months after Jones took command. And just a couple days after that, Jones and some of his men of Company B found themselves in a ferocious fight with a familiar enemy on familiar ground. Less than two weeks before the Rangers went into the field in early July 1874, the second Battle of Adobe Walls happened in the Texas Panhandle.

A group of hunters had traveled down from Dodge City, Kansas to find some of the few remaining buffalo on the southern plains. They set up camp at the old Adobe Walls trading post and soon found themselves surrounded by an army of Comanche and Kiowa warriors under the leadership of 29-year-old Quanah Parker. The warrior army battled and laid siege to the hunters for several days at the end of June. Eventually, a small group of hunters, including soon-to-be-famous lawman Bat Masterson and soon-to-be-famous scout Billy Dixon, slipped out of Adobe Walls and made the long ride back to Dodge City to get help. The Warrior Army had retreated out of sight, and the siege was essentially done, but Bat and Billy didn't know it at the time. They returned to Adobe Walls six weeks later in the company of a column of soldiers from Fort Dodge

who were beginning the final army campaign on the southern plains, the campaign against the Comanche and Kiowa that would be called the Red River War. That story will have its own series soon, but the second of two events that helped spur it on was a fight on July 12, 1874, just two weeks after the Second Battle of Adobe Walls. Major John B. Jones was with 35 Rangers in Northwest Texas, in the same area where the Elm Creek Raid happened, and the Britt Johnson Massacre happened, and the Warren Wagon Train Massacre happened. The rangers found a fresh trail of Kiowa raiders who were led by the same medicine man who had advised the warriors to allow

General Sherman's group to pass by unharmed three years earlier. The medicine man, whose name translates to Skywalker, would not give the same advice this time. The Rangers followed the Kiowa tracks for 15 miles until they reached an area called Lost Valley in Jack County. And, just like the Warren wagon train, the Ranger column rode straight into an ambush. Kiowa Chief Lone Wolf and Medicine Man Skywalker led the attack on the Rangers. Lone Wolf's son had been killed in 1872 by the U.S. Cavalry, and Lone Wolf had been out for vengeance ever since. He had participated in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls two weeks earlier, and now he and his

warriors targeted the horses of the rangers in the initial wave of the attack. Within seconds, 13 rangers were without their mounts, which could be a death sentence out in the raw country with a war party on the attack. Major Jones quickly organized a counterattack and then a retreat to a gully that was protected by a thin strip of trees. The Rangers laid down below the rim of the gully and took up firing positions, all except Jones. He strode back and forth through the gully, giving orders to his men as the Kiowa poured relentless fire into the trees. Kiowa bullets tore limbs off of the trees at such a pace that one of the rangers likened the fury to a mowing machine snapping off branches. The saving grace for the rangers was that the warriors were in an elevated position,

and they didn't understand that their bullets were flying over the heads of their enemy. But no one knew how long that small mercy would last, and in the meantime, the Rangers were trapped in a ravine with limited cover under the searing summer sun. As the day wore on, they were in a similar situation to the troopers of the 7th Cavalry who would be trapped on Reno Hill during the Battle of the Little Bighorn two years in the future. The need for water became greater than the fear of the warriors, and the rangers had to act. Ranger Dave Bailey repeatedly volunteered to ride a mile down the gully to a creek to fill canteens. Eventually, Major Jones relented,

and he would regret it. Bailey and another ranger slid down low behind their horses and successfully rode to the creek. They filled canteens and started back toward the troop. The Kiowas spotted them, and a group of warriors raced to catch the two rangers. The warriors caught Bailey, but the other man made it safely back to the troop.

And then, the surviving rangers had to watch as the warriors made a grisly display of torturing Dave Bailey. At the end of the horror, Kiowa Chief Lone Wolf bludgeoned Bailey to death with a tomahawk. After the death of Bailey, Major Jones ordered his men to hold their fire. They needed to conserve their ammo. The sun was setting, and the Major needed to see how the night would play out. Fort Richardson, near the town of Jacksboro, was only 18 miles away, but the soldiers, commanded by Colonel McKenzie, knew nothing of the Rangers' plight. That night, the Kiowa guns fell silent, and Major Jones took another chance.

Some rangers doubled up on the available horses, and the others had to move on foot. They left the safety of their gully and made it to a ranch 12 miles away. The next day, they made it to Fort Richardson and then returned to the site of the Lost Valley fight to bury the remains of Dave Bailey. They saw no sign of the Kiowa War Party, but there would be many more fights to come with the Comanche in Kiowa. Those fights just wouldn't feature the Rangers. The campaign that would be called the Red River War would start one month after the Lost Valley fight, and within a year, there would be no more free Comanche or Kiowa. Next time on Legends of the Old West,

as the U.S. Army wages war on the Comanche and Kiowa in the Texas Panhandle, Major Jones and the Rangers transition from frontier fighters to their earliest days as law enforcement officers. They get caught up in the Mason County War, and then a new Ranger captain, Leander McNally, begins to shine after his service in the Civil War and the controversial Texas State Police. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes.

They receive 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. Memberships are just $5 per month. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your writer, host, and producer, Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.