This historic marker and four memorial gravestones recall the Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877, which is also known more luridly as "The Staked Plains Horror."
From the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: (
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New state historical marker honors four Buffalo Soldiers who never made it home
Published: Tuesday, July 01, 2008
by HENRI BRICKEY
MORTON - At the end of the day, not all war stories are filled with guns, glory or winners.
Such was the case for 40 men with the 10th Cavalry, who rode off in pursuit of Comanches on July 26, 1877.
Not a bullet was fired in the four-day march, which began near modern-day Tahoka. But in the end, four men were dead - victims of a disastrous military mission remembered as the Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877 or the Lost Troop Expedition.
Saturday, a Texas Historical Marker was dedicated at Morton Memorial Cemetery next to the burial site of four Buffalo Soldiers who died during the expedition. About 40 people attended the ceremony.
The Cochran County Historical Commission applied for the state marker and four military head stones of the men who died. Members of the Morton black community helped pay for the granite markers honoring the four men.
"This was a community effort," said Dorothy Barker, chair of the Cochran County Historical Commission.
Black troops were used by the military following the Civil War to provide security in the Western frontier. These troops were often in contact with American Indians, who later called the men "Buffalo Soldiers."
One of the duties performed by many Buffalo Soldiers was to patrol and search for defiant tribes who either attacked settlers or refused to live on reservations.
That was the mission of the men from Company A, 10th Cavalry.
The group's misguided journey took them through what today are Cochran, Lynn, Hockley, Terry and Lubbock counties. The men went as far as New Mexico before turning back and eventually returning to their camp near present-day Tahoka.
Several days into the ordeal, the men began wandering away from each other in search of water. Four days after setting out, about 15 of the Buffalo Soldiers made it back to their camp.
The men had gone 86 hours without water under the West Texas summer sun. Those who survived told stories of how they drank the blood and urine from their horses to survive.
Others never made it back. John H. Bonds, John T. Gordon, John Isaacs and Isaac Derwin died.
"Everyone in the expedition suffered badly and these four men died," said Paul Carlson, a history professor at Texas Tech University and author of "The Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877"."
A book about this incident explores this tragedy from the black enlisted man's point of view, and can be seen here: (
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"The Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877, by Paul H. Carlson
In the middle of the arid summer of 1877, a drought year in West Texas, a troop of some forty buffalo soldiers (African American cavalry led by white officers) struck out into the Llano Estacado from Double Lakes, south of modern Lubbock, pursuing a band of Kwahada Comanches who had been raiding homesteads and hunting parties. A group of twenty-two buffalo hunters accompanied the soldiers as guides and allies.
Several days later three black soldiers rode into Fort Concho at modern San Angelo and reported that the men and officers of Troop A were missing and presumed dead from thirst. The “Staked Plains Horror,” as the Galveston Daily News called it, quickly captured national attention. Although most of the soldiers eventually straggled back into camp, four had died, and others eventually faced court-martial for desertion. The buffalo hunters had ridden off on their own to find water, and the surviving soldiers had lived by drinking the blood of their dead horses and their own urine. A routine army scout had turned into disaster of the worst kind.
Although the failed expedition was widely reported at the time, its sparse treatments since then have relied exclusively on the white officers’ accounts. Paul Carlson has mined the courts-martial records for testimony of the enlisted men, memories of a white boy who rode with the Indians, and other buried sources to provide the first multifaceted narrative ever published. His gripping account provides not only a fuller version of what happened over those grim eighty-six hours but also a nuanced view of the interaction of soldiers, hunters, settlers, and Indians on the Staked Plains at this poignant moment before the final settling of the Comanches on their reservation in Indian Territory.
Paul H. Carlson is a professor of history at Texas Tech University and a fellow of the Texas State Historical Association. He has written many articles and several books on West Texas history, including one on cavalry soldier William R. Shafter and one on the Plains Indians, both published by Texas A&M University Press. He earned his Ph.D. at Texas Tech University."