After the Battle of Adobe Walls

            After the Battle of Adobe Walls, the savage Indians were demoralized; this was especially the result of Billy Dixon’s long shot with his buffalo rifle. At this same time, the U.S. Army was responding to the settlers’ ongoing pleas of 20 years for something to be done about the marauding Indians’ savage attacks, murders, and kidnappings all along the frontier. An all-out war was waged with the Indians, carried out from all sides of the Texas High Plains. There were few actual confrontations, other than Ronald MacKenzie’s Battle of Palo Dura Canyon. This well known battle against mainly women and children (most of who escaped) resulted in the capture of the Indian’s enormous herd of horses, their winter’s food supply, and shelters. The supplies were destroyed. The best horses were kept for the Army, but the majority were shot and killed. Their food, shelters, and horses were gone, and they were left afoot and now on foot. The Indians had no option for the winter, except to return to their reservation in the Oklahoma Indian Territory. The savages’ dominance of the frontier was effectively ended forever. They would still cause problems for several years to come for both the settlers and the buffalo hunters, but nothing like before.

               With the frontier of northwest Texas now supposedly safe, settlers poured into the areas that had only been sparsely settled for several decades. From 1874-1878, half of the people who lived up on Choctaw Ridge along the Natchez Trace in Mississippi migrated to the area around present day Mineral Wells. These included the Bakers, Kings, Granthams, Daltons, Herrings, and others. At the same time, the buffalo hunters were spreading all over the Panhandle and western areas of the Texas Frontier. The Texas Buffalo Herd was the largest ever in North America; as the only herd left, its numbers were still in the tens of millions.

               In 1875-1876, the hunters entered Texas from north of the Panhandle and the area of Denison, TX. They travelled through the Jacksboro area, on to the area around Ft. Phantom Hill. Thousands of buffalo were killed during that winter. There being no market in Denison. Lobenstein, the major buyer of hides in Leavenworth, KS, bought all of the 1000s of hides. Lobenstein then opened a branch office to buy hides at Fort Griffin, thus taking the market to the hunters. Just a couple of years earlier, in this area on Salt Creek Prairie west of Fort Richardson and Jacksboro, TX, the horrible Warren Wagon Train Massacre had occurred. The Indians burned a wagon driver to death, tied on a wagon wheel. Hunters came from Dodge City by the dozens, and worked and hunted out of Ft. Griffin. As West Texas filled with buffalo hunters, incidents with small renegade bands of Indians raiding the settlements pretty much ended forever. However, the savages continued to stalk small hunting camps farther out on the frontier whenever possible. In the end, the large numbers of hunters out in West Texas were the ones responsible for making the areas safe for the influx of settlers.

                In Dodge from 1875-1876, Rath and Wright and Lee and Reynolds worked together to locate and establish a direct route from Dodge to Fort Griffin. Their plan was to establish other trading posts throughout the buffalo hunting range in Texas. Already, hides were being taken to Dallas to be sent east. By 1876, the railroad had extended to Fort Worth, so the hides brought from Fort Griffin could be sent east from there. The big buffalo harvest was under way. There is still more yet to tell!