Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877

Preface

Preface  In a general way many of us are acquainted with Captain Nicholas M.Nolan’s “lost troop expedition,” even if we are not familiar with its painful details. The raw brutality of the  tragedy will not allow us to forget its basic outline, for here were nearly forty African American troopers—buffalo soldiers —who with their twenty-two bison-hunting companions survived by drinking their urine and the urine of their horses, by sucking on the moist internal organs of their dead mounts, and by their own grim, voiceless determination to struggle forward through the heat and dust of the desertlike Texas High Plains. “The Staked Plains Horror” people called it at the time. Four men died, many deserted, one went mad, leadership failed, and the whole company broke up. So, if we are acquainted with the failed expedition, why a book? There are several reasons: the oft-cited articles on the black troop tragedy in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly are more than sixty years old. The articles ,moreover,represent little more than edited versions of the white officers ’official reports.The best of the popular articles dates to thirty years ago. One of the most thoughtful books on the black regulars, also published more than thirty years ago, treats the expedition in just six pages, and a more recent one covers it in even less detail. Another book, one that contains a brief chapter on the expedition, dates to nearly a half century ago, and some of its interpretations are not sensitive to modern scholarship. As no book exists aimed solely on the black troop tragedy, the time has come for a new appraisal,one that will cover in some depth the context and multidimensional experiences of those who participated. My purposes, then, were to reexamine the lost troop expedition and to place it in a broad perspective. I also wanted to assess it from more than the white officer and bison hunter viewpoints that dominate most discussions of the dramatic military operation. Testimony from the black soldiers of Troop A, Tenth Cavalry, at the court-martial afterward, for example, provides different opinions than what have been available, and several recent Comanche studies, influenced by newer approaches to American Indian    history, form the basis for a fresh Kawhada view of the tragic affair. In the end, droughty weather, poor choices, bad luck, wrong decisions, and ultimately failed leadership combined with Comanche tracking skills and superb knowledge of the Llano Estacado doomed the July scouting campaign. Relatedly, my goals have been to present the failed expedition from several viewpoints. That is, I have tried to see the July disaster from white, black, and Indian vantage points and to show how veteran military officers, seasoned bison hunters, and younger enlisted men experienced the events differently. For background, moreover, I have tried to assess the black military presence in West Texas to , to examine the bison hunter activity to , and to cover Kwahada Comanche experiences that led to the events of July . One result is this caveat: in chapters two, three, and four there is a bit of repetition. In the three chapters I survey, although briefly, such preliminary developments as the Adobe Walls fight, the Red River campaign, the Yellow House Canyon fight, and the attack on Rath City from, respectively , bison hunter, Indian, and buffalo soldier perspectives. The lost troop expedition captured national attention. Newspapers in cities all across the country in early August covered the story and pressed the army’s division headquarters in Chicago and department headquarters in San Antonio for more information. In such a sense, although its “news life” was brief, it was a national tragedy. It was also a great American story of fortitude and will and determination, one in which perhaps we can all find admirable men. I received an enormous amount of unstinting help, courteous assistance, and thoughtful advice on this project. Eric Strong got me started. When I told him during a conversation in my office that I was thinking of tackling from a NativeAmerican perspective an article-length manuscript on Nolan’s lost troop expedition,he advised against it.Instead,Eric,who nearly twentyfive years ago with some friends on foot and horseback retraced the expedition’s route, suggested a book, one that looks much like the offering presented here. I am indebted to him. Without the efficient work of the staff at Texas Tech University’s fine...