Texas South Plains War Stories

Every veteran has a story to tell--often ones they have not told their own families. But as one vet in this collection of original interviews succinctly said of his combat experiences: "Some things are better left unsaid." Documenting recollections from survivors of World War II, Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts--all residents of the Texas Panhandle--this book presents narratives from men and women whose young lives, for good or ill, were defined by their participation in warfare in service to their country.

Every veteran has a story to tell--often ones they have not told their own families. But as one vet in this collection of original interviews succinctly said of his combat experiences: "Some things are better left unsaid." Documenting recollections from survivors of World War II, Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts--all residents of the Texas Panhandle--this book presents narratives from men and women whose young lives, for good or ill, were defined by their participation in warfare in service to their country.

The Great Plains cover the central two-thirds of the United States, and during the nineteenth century were home to some of the largest and most powerful Indian tribes on the continent. The conflict between those tribes and the newcomers from the Old World lasted about one hundred and fifty years, and required the resources of five nations - Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate States of America and the United States - before fighting ended in the mid 1890s. This masterly exposition explains the background, causes and long term effects of these bitter wars, whose legacy can still be felt today.

Battles of the Red River War unearths a long-buried record of the collision of two cultures. In 1874, U.S. forces led by Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie carried out a surprise attack on several Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa bands that had taken refuge in the Palo Duro Canyon of the Texas panhandle and destroyed their winter stores and horses. After this devastating loss, many of these Indians returned to their reservations and effectively brought to a close what has come to be known as the Red River War, a campaign carried out by the U.S. Army during 1874 as a result of Indian attacks on white settlers in the region. After this operation, the Southern Plains Indians would never again pose a coherent threat to whites’ expansion and settlement across their ancestral homelands. Until now, the few historians who have undertaken to tell the story of the Red River War have had to rely on the official records of the battles and a handful of extant accounts, letters, and journals of the U.S. Army participants. Starting in 1998, J. Brett Cruse, under the auspices of the Texas Historical Commission, conducted archeological investigations at six battle sites. In the artifacts they unearthed, Cruse and his teams found clues that would both correct and complete the written records and aid understanding of the Indian perspectives on this clash of cultures. Including a chapter on historiography and archival research by Martha Doty Freeman and an analysis of cartridges and bullets by Douglas D. Scott, this rigorously researched and lavishly illustrated work will commend itself to archeologists, military historians and scientists, and students and scholars of the Westward Expansion.

A.C. Greene considered The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement an instant choice to be included in his book, The Fifty Best Books on Texas. The book details both sides of the tragic Council House Fight of 1840, the Battle of Adobe Walls, and the reluctance of the Comanches to accept Texas overtures to peace. Originally published in 1933, this edition includes 11,000 words that were left out of the original version. The author tells the story of one of the most feared Indian tribes from both the perspective of the Native Americans and the Whites. This book shows the history was not one-sided, and both share responsibility for the hostility and deaths that resulted. Of particular interest is the chapter on the famous Adobe Walls battle. It tells the story from the Comanche side of the battle and explains the fascinating background, especially the role of Isatai, the young Comanche medicine man and prophet who, convincing the leaders of his magic and visions, created the one final effort on the part of several tribes to reclaim their buffalo hunting grounds.

The Texas Panhandle-its eastern edge descending sharply from the plains into the canyons of Palo Duro, Tule, Quitaque, Casa Blanca, and Yellow House-is as rich in history as it is in natural beauty. Long considered a crossroads of ancient civilizations, the twenty-six northernmost Texas counties lie on the southern reaches of the Great Plains, w...

The fierce bands of Comanche Indians, on the testimony of their contemporaries, both red and white, numbered some of the most splendid horsemen the world has ever produced. Often the terror of other tribes, who, on finding a Comanche footprint in the Western plains country, would turn and go in the other direction, they were indeed the Lords of the South Plains. For more than a century and a half, since they had first moved into the Southwest from the north, the Comanches raided and pillaged and repelled all efforts to encroach on their hunting grounds. They decimated the pueblo of Pecos, within thirty miles of Santa Fé. The Spanish frontier settlements of New Mexico were happy enough to let the raiding Comanches pass without hindrance to carry their terrorizing forays into Old Mexico, a thousand miles down to Durango. The Comanches fought the Texans, made off with their cattle, burned their homes, and effectively made their own lands unsafe for the white settlers. They fought and defeated at one time or another the Utes, Pawnees, Osages, Tonkawas, Apaches, and Navahos. These were "The People," the spartans of the prairies, the once mighty force of Comanches, a surprising number of whom survive today. More than twenty-five hundred live in the midst of an alien culture which as grown up about them. This book is the story of that tribe-the great traditions of the warfare, life, and institutions of another century which are today vivid memories among its elders. Despite their prolonged resistance, the Comanches, too, had to "come in." On a sultry summer day in June, 1875, a small hand of starving tribesmen straggled in to Fort Sill, near the Wichita Mountains in what is now the southwestern part of the state of Oklahoma. There they surrendered to the military authorities. So ended the reign of the Comanches on the Southwestern frontier. Their horses had been captured and destroyed; the buffalo were gone; most of their tipis had been burned. They had held out to the end, but the time had now come for them to submit to the United States government demands.

There is the story the Lone Star State likes to tell about itself—and then there is the reality, a Texas past that bears little resemblance to the manly Anglo myth of Texas exceptionalism that maintains a firm grip on the state’s historical imagination. Lone Star Mind takes aim at this traditional narrative, holding both academic and lay historians accountable for the ways in which they craft the state’s story. A clear-sighted, far-reaching work of intellectual history, this book marshals a wide array of pertinent scholarship, analysis, and original ideas to point the way toward a new “usable past” that twenty-first-century Texans will find relevant. Ty Cashion fixes T. R. Fehrenbach’s Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans in his crosshairs in particular, laying bare the conceptual deficiencies of the romantic and mythic narrative the book has served to codify since its first publication in 1968. At the same time, Cashion explores the reasons why the collective efforts of university-trained scholars have failed to diminish the appeal of the state’s iconic popular culture, despite the fuller and more accurate record these historians have produced. Framing the search for a collective Texan identity in the context of a post-Christian age and the end of Anglo-male hegemony, Lone Star Mind illuminates the many historiographical issues besetting the study of American history that will resonate with scholars in other fields as well. Cashion proposes that a cultural history approach focusing on the self-interests of all Texans is capable of telling a more complete story—a story that captures present-day realities.