The Battle of Little Robe Creek, also known as the Battle of Antelope Hills and the Battle of the South Canadian, took place on May 12, 1858. It was a series of three distinct encounters that took place on a single day, between the Comanches, with Texas Rangers, militia, and allied Tonkawas attacking them. The military action was undertaken against the laws of the United States at the time, which strictly forbade such an incursion into the Indian Territories of Oklahoma, and marked a significant escalation of the Indian Wars. It also marked the first time American or Texas Ranger forces had penetrated the Comancheria as far as the Wichita Mountains and Canadian River, and it marked a decisive defeat for the Comanche.
Military historians distinguish between the Antelope Hills expedition by the Texas Rangers and the Battle of Little Robe Creek, with the former being the entire campaign against the Comanche conducted from January to May 1858, starting in Texas above the Edwards Plateau, and continuing on to the Indian Territories in what is now Oklahoma. The latter is the specific May 12 battle at Little Robe Creek, with all three encounters counting as one sustained, day-long battle. Since federal troops would not attack the Comanche and Kiowa in that portion of the Comancheria, the Texas Rangers launched the incursion into the Antelope Hills.
Background
The years 1856 to 1858 were particularly vicious and bloody on the Texas frontier, as settlers continued to expand their settlements into the Comanche homeland, the Comancheria. Valuable Indian hunting grounds were plowed under, and grazing ranges for the Comanche horse herds were lost. The Comanche realized their homeland of the Comancheria was increasingly encroached on by Anglo-Texas settlers, so they struck back with a series of ferocious and bloody raids into Texas.
The United States Army proved wholly unable to stem the violence. Federal units were being transferred out of the area for reasons that seemed driven more by political than military considerations. At the same time, federal law and numerous treaties forbade incursion by state forces into the federally protected Indian Territories. The U.S. Army was likewise instructed not to attack Indians in the Indian Territories or to permit such attacks. The reasoning behind the order was that many native tribes, such as the Cherokee, were engaged in farming, and living as peaceful settlers, while other tribes, such as the Comanche and Kiowa, continued to use that part of the Indian Territories that was the Comancheria to live in while raiding white settlements in Texas.
The relationship between the federal government, Texas, and the native tribes was further complicated by a unique situation that arose as a result of Texas' annexation. The federal government is charged by the U.S. Constitution to be in charge of Indian affairs and took over that role in Texas after it became a state in 1846, but under the terms of Texas' accession to the Union, the new state retained control over virtually all of public land within its boundaries. In most other new states, the overwhelming majority of publicly owned land belonged to the Federal government as well as sole jurisdiction over Indian affairs, in particular the authority to make treaties guaranteeing reservations for various tribes. However, Texas adamantly refused to contribute public land in the state for Indian reservations, but still expected the federal government to be responsible for the cost and details of Indian affairs. Since federal Indian agents in Texas believed that Indian land rights were the key to peace on the frontier, little progress towards a peaceful settlement was even attempted on account of the attitude of Texas officials on the question of Indian homelands.
As the Civil War loomed, federal forces were moved off the frontier with greater frequency. These troop movements, including the transfer without replacement of the 2nd Cavalry in Texas, left much of the frontier of the Great Plains without protection from Indian attacks. The loss of the 2nd Cavalry in Texas was a particularly bitter blow to settlers. Texas Governor Hardin Runnels had campaigned for office in 1856 on a platform to put an end to the raids. He publicly expressed astonishment and rage when the 2nd Cavalry was transferred to Utah and ultimately disbanded altogether. Governor Runnels determined to re-establish disbanded Ranger battalions, which were reduced after Texas' annexation. On January 27, 1858, Runnels appointed John Salmon "Rip" Ford, a veteran Ranger who had fought both in the Mexican–American War and on the frontier against the Indians, as captain and commander of the Texas Rangers, militia, and allied Indian forces, and ordered him to carry the battle to the Comanche homeland of Comancheria.
Ford, whose habit of signing the casualty reports with the initials "RIP" for "Rest In Peace," was known as a ferocious and no-nonsense Indian fighter. Commonly missing from the history books was his proclivity for ordering the wholesale slaughter of any Indian, man or woman, he could find. Ford's reason for this was simple: Comanche raids were brutal in their treatment of settlers. The Comanche, at that time, generally made no distinction between age and race of victims, except that men old enough to fight were expected to fight to the death as most Native Americans would, never allowing themselves to be captured alive by the fierce Comanche, who regarded surrender as cowardice.
The Comanche as a people had originated as a branch of the Shoshone people living along the upper Platte River in Wyoming. The Comanche emerged as a distinct group shortly before 1700, when they broke off from the Shoshone as they migrated south. This coincided with their acquisition of the horse from the Spaniards, which allowed them greater mobility in their quest for better hunting grounds. Their population explosion as a distinct tribe of their own came in part from the huge numbers of women and children adopted into the tribe. As the original Comanche moved southward into a swath of territory extending from the Arkansas River to the area of central Texas north of the Edwards Plateau, their population increased dramatically because of the abundance of buffalo as an easy food supply, an influx of Shoshone migrants, and the adoption of significant numbers of women and children taken captive from rival groups. The Comanche made no distinction between those born into the tribe, and those adopted into the tribe. Military historians believe the Comanche's relatively recent acquisition of their domain made them all the more determined to fight to keep it. Their success against the Spanish, Mexicans, and early Texans led them to believe the tactics that had enabled them to win, including unrelenting raids and thefts against settlements, would continue to be successful.
This violence towards settlers cost roughly 17 settler lives per mile for settlement of the Comancheria. Thus, Ford determined to meet brutality with brutality. Governor Runnels issued explicit orders to Ford, "I impress upon you the necessity of action and energy. Follow any trail and all trails of hostile or suspected hostile Indians you may discover and if possible, overtake and chastise them if unfriendly. The governor's instructions were simple, and Ford intended to follow them. He then raised a force of about 100 Texas Rangers and state militia. Realizing that with Sharps rifles and modern Colt revolvers he needed additional men, Ford set out to recruit ones he did not have to pay, as he did his Rangers and militia.
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On March 19, 1858, Ford went to the Brazos Reservation, near what today is Fort Worth, Texas, and recruited the Tonkawa into his forces. Indian agent Captain S. P. Ross, (father of the future Texas Governor Lawrence Sullivan Ross) called Chief Placido of the Tonkawa to a war council, where he used rhetoric to stir Placido's anger against their mutual traditional enemies, the Comanches. At least 120 warriors volunteered, 111 of them Tonkawa, led by Placido, and scouts were sent to locate Comanche camps north of the Red River in the Comancheria in the Oklahoma Indian Territories.
The Tonkawa Indians, commanded by their "celebrated" chief, Placido, were hailed as the "faithful and implicitly trusted friend of the whites" (with limited mention of their cannibalism) and undertook a campaign with approximately an equal number of Texas Rangers against the Comanches. Ford and Placido were determined to follow the Comanche and Kiowa up to their strongholds amid the hills of the Canadian River and into the Wichita Mountains, and if possible, "kill their warriors, decimate their food supply, strike at their homes and families, and generally destroy their ability to make war."
Antelope Hills expedition
In February 1858, Ford established Camp Runnells near what used to be the town of Belknap. Ford, still operating under Governor Runnell's explicits orders to "follow any and all trails of hostile and suspected hostile Indians, inflict the most severe and summary punishment," and to "allow no interference from any source." (That source was interpreted to mean the United States, whose Army and Indian agents might try to enforce federal treaties and federal statutory law against trespassing on the Indian territories in Oklahoma).
On April 29, Ford's Rangers, accompanied by Tonkawa warriors, Caddo, Anadarko, Shawnee, and other allied Indian scouts from the Brazos Indian Reservation, crossed the Red River into the Indian Territory. The force then advanced into the portion of the Comancheria in the Indian Territories in Oklahoma. Ford and S. P. Ross led the men across the Red River, into the Indian Territory, violating federal laws and numerous treaties, with Ford stating later that his job was to "find and fight Indians, not to learn geography."
Battle
First encounter
The first of three distinct encounters between the invading Texas forces and the Comanche occurred at sunrise on May 12, 1858. Ford considered his attack—and the entire campaign—a just response to the Comanche raids on settlers. Neither side observed rules concerning not harming noncombatants. Thus, at the break of dawn at Antelope Hills on Little Robe Creek in the heart of the Comancheria, Ford's men attacked the first Comanche camp they found. The Tonkawa asked, and were granted, permission to attack the sleeping Comanche lodges, which were less than a dozen in number.
What Comanche women and children were able to get out of the lodges without being killed or captured by the Tonkawa fled for their lives, while the few men who survived the original attack tried desperately to cover their flight. Ford's Ranger forces attacked the fleeing Comanche, effectively using their pistols, killing every warrior during their retreat and numerous women and children, Ford reported, "it was not an easy matter to distinguish Indian warriors from squaws".
Fehrenbach and other historians have labelled this a massacre, where a sleeping village was attacked without warning, and the population slaughtered, the dead later eaten (by the Tonkawas) or enslaved among the allied Indian tribes. Historian Jerry Denson notes that Ford joked about the deaths of "squaws and such." Ford's own memories, though, captured in Rip Ford's Texas, edited by Stephen B. Oates, makes clear that he considered the Indian Wars a ruthless struggle for the very survival of Texas, in which the only rule was to protect the settlers, by "whatever means were necessary."
Second encounter
The second encounter was not as easy as the first, though Ford's official reports made clear the Texans had every intention of doing to the second encampment what they had done to the first. The mixed force under Ford proceeded on, and attacked a moderately large encampment of about 70-100 lodges further upriver. Fortunately for the Comanche, a warrior saw the Texan forces advancing upriver after the original dawn attack on the solitary encampment and had ridden hastily to warn the larger village. Thus, the Comanche were able to mount a defensive action, protecting their women and children at the cost of many warriors' lives.
Most devastating to the Comanche, their legendary Chief, Phohebits Quasho, Iron Jacket, "professed to blow arrows aside from their aim", was killed in the fighting. He had worn a Spanish coat of mail in battle which had earned him a reputation of invincibility as it evidently protected him from some light weapons fire. However, Jim Pockmark, a Tonkawa sharpshooter, managed to hit him with a Sharps rifle, something no mail could protect him from, although Ford reports he was taken down when "six rifle shots rang on the air".