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:: 35 :: 5 :: Responding to the Indian Threat General Ord’s Policy of Pursuit By 1875 Indian raids into Texas from Mexico had resumed, with even greater frequency and damage than before.1 One of the worst raids targeted Corpus Christi, on March 26, during which many settlers and their families were killed. This raid raised regional tensions to such a level that they gained the attention of the U.S. government.2 On June 3, 1875, General Edward O. C. Ord assumed command of U.S. military forces constituting the Department of Texas. He immediately dispatched troops to scattered posts along the Rio Grande. Ord believed the only way to protect Americans and their property was to follow Indian raiders back into Mexico whenever their fresh trails were found—and federal troops thereafter began to carry out Ord’s unofficial policy.3 Serving under Ord was Colonel William R. (“Pecos Bill”) Shafter, who carried out cross-border raids into the rugged country opposite the present Big Bend National Park of west Texas, beginning in the summer of 1876, mostly against Lipan and Mescalero Apaches. Shafter also ordered raids against Kickapoo, Lipan, and Mescalero Indians in the lower settlements, opposite Eagle Pass.4 The Ord policy mandating the pursuit of raiders into Mexican territory was adopted officially by the U.S. government on June 1, 1877.5 First Lieutenant John L. Bullis was the primary instrument implementing General Ord’s policy, through his commanding officer, Colonel Shafter. Bullis commanded the Seminole Scouts, a small, highly mobile scouting force of Seminole black Indians employed by the army against Mexican Indian raiders. Bullis reported that he carried out sixteen scouts and raids into northern Mexico between June 1876 and November 1877.6 Many of these sorties ended in sharp fights with hostile Indians. Bullis was cited for gallant service in four engagements with Indians: in 1873 at El Remolino with Mackenzie; in 1875 on the Pecos River; in 1876 near Zaragoza, Mexico; and in 1881 in the Serranía del Burro of northern Coahuila. Three of his troopers were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry in action. On April 7, 1882, the Texas Legislature adopted a resolution thanking him for his service against Indians and other enemies on the frontier.7 By the 1880s, Bullis had become a military legend and a Texas hero. Between 1873 and 1883, at least twenty-three such raids were mounted by The Reckoning :: 36 U.S. troops into Mexico, over a three-hundred-mile length of the Rio Grande, seeking to capture or kill primarily Kickapoo, Lipan, and Mescalero raiders and to destroy their villages and horses.8 The Diaz Policy In a constitutional coup, Porfirio Diaz assumed the presidency of Mexico in November 1876.9 He recognized the need for internal stability if Mexico was to attract Western capital for economic development, and he perceived that continued marauding by Indians from Mexico tended to suppress such investment. He also sought U.S. diplomatic recognition for his regime. For its part, the United States wanted assurance that Mexico would prevent its residents from raiding Texas settlements.10 Both Ord and Diaz played their political cards shrewdly. Ord cultivated influential Texas politicians who could help him persuade the U.S. War Department to approve a more aggressive policy toward raiders from Mexico into Texas, and he initiated contact with Diaz through U.S. diplomats in Mexico to encourage the placement along the border of Mexican troops led by capable Mexican army of- ficers. Generals Falcon and Trevino not only began to exert control over Indian raiders in northern Coahuila and Chihuahua but also started cooperating quietly with General Ord, in an international gentlemen’s agreement.11 The Mexican Army generally did not challenge U.S. troops on their frequent forays into Mexico in pursuit of Indian raiders, and American officers “looked the other way” on a few occasions when Mexican troops crossed over in pursuit of renegade Indians fleeing into Texas. President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered the official recognition of the Diaz government in Mexico by the United States on April 9, 1878; the Ord doctrine was officially revoked on February 24, 1880.12 Lieutenant Bullis’s Testimony It is one thing to review the pattern of cross-border raiding by Indians from Mexico in terms of international diplomacy, U.S. relations with Native Americans, and U.S. military history. It is quite another to understand such marauding...

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