Okay History: The Battle of Dove Creek (January 8, 1865)

On January 8, 1865, several hundred militiamen and Confederate soldiers, all Texans, attacked an Indian camp. In their minds they were attacking Comanches or Kiowas, the allied Indian peoples who had been ravaging a frontier long exposed by the withdrawal of Union forces in the early days of secession. In time they would learn that they had made a grievous error. They had assaulted the Kickapoos, a people largely neutral in the War Between the States. The Battle of Dove Creek would become one the largest and most controversial Indian battles in Texan history.

An Undermanned Frontier

Throughout the 1850s Texas Rangers, in conjunction with the Federal Army, struggled to keep the western Texas frontier safe for settlers. They frequently battled Comanches and Kiowas, and it seemed like this war would never have a final end. Matters only worsened at the end of 1860 and the start of 1861, as Federal garrisons abandoned most of the far western forts. This was the result firstly of a collusion between General David Twiggs and Texan Secessionists and secondly of a need for experienced soldiers further east. Texans now struggled to keep their western borders safe, using special frontier and border militia units as well as whatever Confederate troops could be spared.

A family faces the horror of an Indian raid.
Such horrors were feared by many families
exposed by the removal of Federal fort garri-
sons and the draining of men into military units.

By late 1864, Morale on the Texas frontier was low. Hundreds of deserters and draft dodgers not only sought refuge in western, sparsely settled counties, but often resorted to theft of Texan citizens. In fact, for many law-abiding Texans, these desperate men were becoming a greater problem than Comanche and Kiowa raiders. And those Indians had not ceased their raids, though they seemingly never realized or cared that they had a golden opportunity to smash through a weakened Confederate frontier.[1]

First it might be good to look at the actions in the Second District of the frontier defense network, where the Battle of Dove Creek would occur. On August 26, 1864, Captain James Moore led Company H of the Border Regiment out of Gainesville. This force of 90 men marched in the direction of a spot on Hubbard Creek from which they could roundup deserters and outlaws. Portending the sloppy reconnaissance and waste of life that was to half a year later, Company H surrounded a house where a deserter was hiding. They opened fire and killed not only the deserter, but the house’s owners, an elderly couple.

After reaching their destination, Company H quickly scattered around 50 more deserters, but their tired mounts were unable to keep up and they got away. Around the same time Major Erath sent a force of 100 men under Captain Silas Totten to a location nearby to also hunt for outlaws as well as look out for Indians. Totten’s men found none of their targets, but settled in for the winter.[2]

It was not to be a season of rest. On December 9, a small scouting party found a trail that suggested at least 500 Indians nearby. They headed east to report to Erath, but Erath was currently out of town so Totten took charge. The captain got together 300 men. On the last day of the year, December 31, Captain John Fossett of the Frontier Regiment headed for Fort Chadbourne with a further 50 men, and several other detachments would join him there. Fossett would lead the official Confederate contingent of 161 men, while Totten would have 300-325 militia men.[3]

A People Seeking Peace

Kickapoos in Mexico circa 1865

The Indians in question were in fact the Kickapoo. Though not allied with the Confederacy, the Kickapoo people were far from enemies. When the war began the Kickapoo’s leaders were very wary about getting entangled in an internecine American conflict. In 1862 Chief Machemanet had led his families south for Mexico to escape the war. They had come upon a ranch belonging to a friend, William Tankersley, and spent some time there.

Then violence struck. Confederates arrived demanding to know what these Indians were up to. Tankersley assured them that they were friendly Kickapoos. Despite hearing this, the Confederates did not decide to let the refugees pass, but instead attack them and seize their fine horses. Perhaps they disbelieved Tankersley, or perhaps they thought the Kickapoos sounded like easy, docile targets.

Seeing Confederate cavalry approach, Machemanet sent an old man with a white flag. Two women, who among most Indian peoples came along with men to signify peaceful rather than bellicose intentions, accompanied the man. The Confederates shot down the peace feelers and charged on, only to be repelled by quick-thinking resistance from the Kickapoo warriors. Having driven off the white cavalry, Machemanet feared that a war with Texas had just begun and urged his people on. Thankfully they had made it to Mexico. Now over two years later the Kickapoos and Confederates were heading for another violent clash.[4]

Machemanet’s band found their subsequent stay in Mexico pleasing and sent messages back to Kickapoos in the US territories. One reservation group under Chief No-ko-aht, was finding life increasingly intolerable at the Potawatomie Agency near Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and decided to join Machemanet. Along the way they met more Kickapoos under chiefs Papequah and Pecan. The three groups, numbering over 600, decided to head south, with Mexicans authorities across the border having already invited them. No-ko-aht’s group separated and it was his own band alone was the one that drew Confederate attention.[5]

The Battle

Fossett arrived at Fort Chadbourne on January 1. Totten was supposed to meet Fossett, but he had rushed ahead with his militia, immediately destroying coordination between the two forces. The Confederates at Chadbourne waited two days before heading out themselves. On January 7 both columns camped on the North Concho River, but at different points. Fossett had no idea where Totten was, but did pick up the Indian trail, finding two abandoned villages of temporary shelters. Now having a good grasp of where the supposed enemies were, he made the rash decision to move forward and attack, despite not knowing which Indians he was encountering and where the militia was.[6]

Totten, meanwhile, had also picked up the trail at another point thanks to his Tonkawa scouts. They realized the Indians were splitting into two groups every time they moved on, but this was likely due to hunting parties separating from the main column rather than any special strategy.[7] The Kickapoos were likewise aware that whites were nearby. “We saw some tracks of soldiers,” remembered No-ko-aht. “We failed to find the soldiers and leaving a white flag went on. In either a fortunate or unfortunate occurrence, the Confederate soldiers came upon their allies. Totten should have urged Fossett to restrain himself, but instead gladly led 220 of his men to assist the 161 Confederates.[8]

Totten and Fossett planned a pincer attack. The bulk of Totten’s militia would cross Dove Creek to the east and attack southward. Their horses were so exhausted that they would advance dismounted. Fossett would circle his Confederates and two companies of the militia to a point where he could attack from the west, first scattering or capturing the herd and then striking the Indians themselves, who would already be responding to the militia assault. 75 men under a Lieutenant Brooks would detach to strike from the Southwest, further hemming in the supposed enemy.[9]

The columns moved out. One veteran recalled that the Kickapoo camp “was quiet as Sunday. Save for a few bucks who kept a lazy half an eye on the horses, the entire population seemed to be sleeping…We thought we were getting on like a house afire.”[10] Indeed the battle had a good start for the Confederates. Fossett struck the horse herd and captured it with ease, not surprising since the Kickapoo had no reason to expect trouble with the whites. At the time “All our young men were scattered that morning hunting horses, and one or two were killed or out.” Fossett also captured, Aski, who insisted that he was attacking the wrong Indians. This led to the most singularly controversial moment of the affair.[11]

Aski “explained that the Indians had killed no white people and had not stolen or destroyed any property, but that they had against their will been armed and equipped by the Federal government to fight against the South, and that they had taken advantage of a permit to leave the reservation to hunt buffaloes in the Panhandle, to make their way into Mexico, and thus keep out of a war that did not concern them. And added that if our commander would grant a parley, the chief would explain to his entire satisfaction.”[12]

One participant claimed that a solider with a knack for ventriloquism asked Fossett, “Captain you are not taking any prisoners, are you?” Fossett raised a musket and shot the old man in the chest. A woman was also said to have been killed killed. An account of a Confederate participant claimed that the old man and woman were a chief and his daughter, but No-ko-aht clearly states that they were simply the first two people the soldiers came upon. Fossett also seized two youths who were accompanying Aski.[13]

This one incident is the most documented part of the battle. Information on the rest of the fight is much lighters. After crossing the stream into a thicket of briars and brush, the attack of Totten and his militia immediately fumbled. Forewarned Kickapoo warriors fired arrows and Enfield rifles into the whites. It should be mentioned that the militia was largely armed with shotguns and hunting rifles, meaning those Kickapoos with rifles greatly outranged them. I.D. Ferguson, one of the Texans, claimed that three officers were fatally wounded within minutes, and over a dozen enlisted men became casualties as well. The militia ran and would sit out the rest of the battle, many of them hiding three miles from the battlefield at Spring Creek.[14]

For his part, Fossett, seeing Totten’s retreat, ordered his own attack. His Confederate troops fanned out, the right flank anchoring on a tributary of Dove Creek. Using the timber and ravines for cover, the Kickapoos effectively held them down for six hours. At one point they even tried a counterattack that almost routed the Confederates. One veteran later recalled, “At that moment men began to fall off their horses all around me, among them an Indian fighter and crack shot named Brown, my cousin, Louis Wylie, and two other privates, Bailey and Tarver.” Fossett tried to restore order among his Texans, “pleading and threatening, and telling them what a disgrace it was to run from Indians. In the midst of his wild harangue, the captain’s horse was shot from under him.” The Confederates stabilized, but with no sign of progress or aid from Totten, Fossett ordered a retreat north.[15]

To do this, the Confederates had to go back across Dove Creek. As they did so, a detachment of warriors suddenly appeared and fired into them. Unable to fight while wading through the water, the Texans suffered considerable losses and the retreat turned into a rout. The Kickapoos pursued, trying to recapture their herd animals as well as the two youths taken captive, but had to give up.[16] The Kickapoos had no intention or even a thought of having a battle, but they had fought one and they had won handily.

A Tragic Mistake

Casualty estimates for Dove Creek vary wildly. The Confederates suffered 22-26 killed and 19-60 wounded for a total of up to 86. Among the casualties were Captains Barnes and Culvers of the militia and Gillentine, one of Fossett’s favored scouts. Even a low estimate of 41 killed and wounded was a massive number of casualties for a force of 381 men, and the bloodiest engagement for a Texan force in an Indian battle. The defeated men went to a camp on Spring Creek, with Fossett later claiming that they intended to have another go at the Kickapoos. Instead, they suffered cold weather and low food, killing many of the captured horses for food. They retreated for good on January 11, having to endure chilly rain that turned to snow. Kickapoo losses are less certain. Fossett claimed at least 23 dead Indians, but such reports were often exaggerated. Some of the Indians themselves bragged a light casualty list of just 11 killed and 7 wounded.

However, their trip was likely now much more difficult since “All our stock was taken away nearly; some families had none. We were obliged to leave most of our things.”[17] There was a bright moment. The two young Kickapoos the Texans had captured took advantage of the disorganized and defeated state of their captors to sneak away and, according to once account, take back some of the horses that had been seized.[18]

The retreating Texans continued to suffer intense cold and snow, as well as food rations so thin that the men started to eat one slice of bread a day (one group was lucky enough to come across a fresh buffalo corpse). In one incident there was a report that the Kickapoos were coming at them. This created a panic and Totten could only get a fraction of the militia to stand for a fight. As it turned out it was a small group of fellow Confederates who had acquired a small herd of cattle, and the soldiers and militia got to eat beef. Eventually they reached the ranch of cattleman John Chisum (yes, the character John Wayne plays in Chisum) and stayed there to recuperate.[19]

The heat for the blunder was largely directed against Major Erath and Lieutenant-Colonel Barry, even though they had not been present for the foray. General John McAdoo investigated the matter and rightly concluded that Totten and Fossett were at fault. Worse was the revelation that the Indians were from the friendly Kickapoo People and stories of Texans shooting at peace-offering Indians began to spread. One officer wondered, “They ought to have known whether they were friendly or not.”[20]

Many of the soldiers were disgusted by the affair as well. One, noting that the Kickapoos had no hostile intentions and only harmed the white who attacked them, bitterly claimed that after the battle “the Indians could easily have given chase and secured the scalp of the last one of us.” The same soldier, whose name is not known, also expressed his disgust at Fossett’s unwarranted execution of Aski.[21] The Battle of Dove Creek caused long-term damage to the frontier forces of the Second District. Whether from shame or in reaction to the criticism, many of the same men who had signed up to hunt deserters now deserted themselves. The flood of discontents only increased as news of final Confederate defeat in the East reached western Texas.[22]

As for the bands of No-ko-aht, Papequah, and Pecan, they found a new home in Hacienda El Nacimineto in northern Mexico. In what be labeled tragedy, many of the Kickapoos actually did not find life in Mexico all too appealing, unable to practice many of their favored ways of life and facing possible conscription into the Mexican Army. Many returned north to Kansas.[23]

Those Kickapoos who stayed in northern Mexico had gained a large distrust, even hatred, of Texans. They undertook border raiding, attacking white settlers on the American side of the Rio Grande. By attacking an innocent camp of Indians, the Texans had added the Kickapoos to their long list of enemies. It took a cross-border expedition by Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, the man who would later ultimately defeat the Comanches, to end these raids.[24]

Sources

“Henry Fossett’s Account of the Battle of Dove Creek,” Galveston Daily News, March 14, 1865. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-galveston-daily-news-1865-3-14-henry/33068505/

Kelton, Elmer. “Battle of Dove Creek.” https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dove-creek-battle-of.

Latorre, Felipe A. The Mexican Kickapoo Indians. New York: Dover, 1991.

Michino, Gregory. Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes, 1850-1890. Missoula: Mountain Press, 2003.

Smith, David Paul. Frontier Defense in the Civil War: Texas’ Rangers and Rebels. Texas A&M University, 1994.

Unknown. “Texas Pioneer Recalls Battle with Indians – Dove Creek Fight.” https://www.frontiertimesmagazine.com/blog/texas-pioneer-recalls-battle-with-indians-dove-creek-fight

[1] David Paul Smith, Frontier Defense in the Civil War: Texas’ Rangers and Rebels, (Texas A&M University, 1994), 147-148.

[2] Smith, Frontier Defense, 149, 151.

[3] Smith, Frontier Defense, 152.

[4] Felipe A. Latorre, The Mexican Kickapoo Indians, (New York: Dover, 1991) 17-18.

[5] Latorre, Mexican Kickapoo, 18; Gregory Michino, Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes, 1850-1890, (Missoula: Mountain Press, 2003), 162.

[6] Smith, Frontier Defense, 152; “Henry Fossett’s Account of the Battle of Dove Creek,” Galveston Daily News, March 14, 1865, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-galveston-daily-news-1865-3-14-henry/33068505/.

[7] Unknown, “Texas Pioneer Recalls Battle with Indians – Dove Creek Fight,” https://www.frontiertimesmagazine.com/blog/texas-pioneer-recalls-battle-with-indians-dove-creek-fight.

[8] Smith, Frontier Defense, 153.

[9] Smith, Frontier Defense, 153; Michino, Encyclopedia of Indian Wars, 162; “Account of Dove Creek,” https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-galveston-daily-news-1865-3-14-henry/33068505/.

[10] Unknown, “Texas Pioneer,” https://www.frontiertimesmagazine.com/blog/texas-pioneer-recalls-battle-with-indians-dove-creek-fight.

[11] Smith, Frontier Defense, 155.

[12] Unknown, “Texas Pioneer,” https://www.frontiertimesmagazine.com/blog/texas-pioneer-recalls-battle-with-indians-dove-creek-fight.

[13] Latorre, Mexican Kickapoo, 19; Unknown, “Texas Pioneer,” https://www.frontiertimesmagazine.com/blog/texas-pioneer-recalls-battle-with-indians-dove-creek-fight.

[14] Smith, Frontier Defense, 153; “Battle of Dove Creek,” https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dove-creek-battle-of; “Account of Dove Creek,” https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-galveston-daily-news-1865-3-14-henry/33068505/.

[15] Unknown, “Texas Pioneer,” https://www.frontiertimesmagazine.com/blog/texas-pioneer-recalls-battle-with-indians-dove-creek-fight; Smith, Frontier Defense, 153-154; “Battle of Dove Creek,” https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dove-creek-battle-of.

[16] Smith, Frontier Defense, 154; Latorre, Mexican Kickapoo, 19.

[17] Smith, Frontier Defense, 154; Latorre, Mexican Kickapoo, 19; “Battle of Dove Creek,” https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dove-creek-battle-of; “Account of Dove Creek,” https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-galveston-daily-news-1865-3-14-henry/33068505/; Michino, Encyclopedia of Indian Wars, 163.

[18] Unknown, “Texas Pioneer,” https://www.frontiertimesmagazine.com/blog/texas-pioneer-recalls-battle-with-indians-dove-creek-fight.