Tag Archives: Buffalo Soldiers

Tracking Victorio

Posted on March 26, 2009 | Comments Off on Tracking Victorio

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 You’ve heard of Geronimo, no doubt. How about Victorio? The black troops of the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry and the 24th and 25th U.S. Infantry regiments, tracked the Apache chieftain and his band of maurauders across West Texas in 1880. They even followed them across the border into Mexico where he was finally cornered with the help of the Mexican Army who slew him and his band. You probably seldom hear about it because it is not the PC version of the oppressive white man and the peace-loving, in-harmony-with-nature American Indian and his black and brown fellow sufferers. History is more complicated than that.

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Buffalo soldiers

Posted on March 17, 2007 | Comments Off on Buffalo soldiers

My favorite stop on the trip was Fort Davis, the old cavalry-infantry base on the western edge of the unincorporated town of the same name that grew up beside it. The old fort, parts of which are being slowly rebuilt by the National Park Service, was staffed by a few uniformed re-enactors when we visited on Wednesday. It was the post-Civil War base of operations, from about 1867 to 1891, of the former slaves and Union veterans of the black 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry regiments. In 1992 they won a statue by Eddie Dixon of Lubbock at Fort Leavenworth, KS, where the 10th was organized in 1866. During their stay at Fort Davis, their separate companies were scattered all over West Texas, north and south and all along the border. There’s hardly a spot out there where the Buffalo Soldiers didn’t scout or fight or build at one time or another. So far, despite its unfortunate reliance on cliches, this seems to be the best non-fiction book about their work, including their littleknown participation at San Juan Hill in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt. This is the site of a Houston museum dedicated to them.

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Fort Davis trip

Posted on February 20, 2007 | Comments Off on Fort Davis trip

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Preparing for what might become our annual spring break trip to West Texas, in March, this time to Fort Davis, in the Davis Mountains, whence the above scene, circa  1870s. No stagecoaches nowadays of course. It’s Interstate 10 almost all the way, to Balmorhea, anyway, then a 31-mile, two-lane jog south to Fort Davis. About half of the old fort has been restored as a tourist attraction, which we’ll take in, along with the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas. All this primarily for Mr. Boy and Mom who have never been to either spot. Ft. Davis was never your Hollywood stockaded log-cabin frontier fort, but rather made of planks and brick. Set there in the 1850s to fight Indians, primarily the Mescalero Apache, it was home to, among others, the famed black Buffalo Soldiers. Much more, with pictures, maps and art here/Painting "Fort Davis" By Melvin Warren.

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