mander, General of the Army Winfield
Scott. “It is time to follow them up winter
and summer, thus giving the Indians some-
thing to do at home in taking care of their
families, and they might possibly let Texas
alone.” Scott gave him the go-ahead.
In July 1857, Lieutenant John Bell Hood
rode out with 24 men from Fort Mason to
scout the headwaters of the Concho River,
a favorite Comanche haunt. Tracking the
Indians for 12 days, he trailed them into
the forbidding desert of the Staked Plains in
the Texas Panhandle. After a 150-mile slog,
the soldier came upon a fetid water hole on
July 20, the only water they had seen in
days. Fresh tracks alerted them to recent
Comanche presence.
That afternoon Hood’s party crested a
ridge and saw someone waving a white flag
on a parallel ridge two miles away. Stand-
ing orders were to attack all Indians on
sight, but since Hood had also received
word that friendly Indians were moving
through the area at this time, he decided to
get a closer look. When he and his troop-
ers got within 30 paces of the Indians, the
waiting Comanche threw down the white
flag, set fire to a pile of leaves to spook the
soldiers’ horses, and began firing into their
ranks while another 30 Indians swooped
down on Hood’s flank. Comanche women
followed the warriors, reloading their rifles
for them and urging them on in combat
with shrill ululations.
Hood, blasting away with a double-bar-
reled shotgun, led the troopers forward.
Desperate hand-to-hand fighting ensued.
The troopers swung their sabers at the Indi-
ans, who were attempting to bash in the
heads of the soldiers’ horses to unseat their
riders. One arrow struck Hood in the left
hand, pinning it to the saddle. He would
always have terrible luck in combat, suffer-
ing a crippled arm at the Battle of Gettys-
burg and losing a leg two months later at
the Battle of Chickamauga. Jerking his hand
free, Hood broke off the arrow and contin-
ued firing his shotgun. The soldiers were
down to 11 unharmed men when the
Comanche, at the mournful urging of their
women, suddenly called off the attack, gath-
ered their dead and wounded, and rodeaway. Hood estimated that the Indians had
lost nine killed and 12 wounded. The fight,
although strategically meaningless, brought
Hood praise from Twiggs and Scott, who
called the brief engagement “most gallant”
and said it reflected much credit on the sol-
diers. It was the first mention of Hood’s
later Civil War sobriquet, the Gallant Hood.
Following the death of his father-in-law
in October 1857, Lee left the regiment for
good. His successor, Major George H.
Thomas, was a fellow Virginian who had
been recommended for the post by his old
Mexican War artillery commander, Brax-
ton Bragg. Thomas, wrote Bragg, “is not
brilliant, but he is a solid, sound man, an
honest, high-toned gentleman, above all
deception and guile. I know him to be an
excellent and gallant soldier.” Ironically,
Thomas’s famous stand at the Battle of
Chickamauga six years later would deny
Bragg the total victory that his luckless
Army of Tennessee came within a hair’s
breadth of winning.
Unfortunately for Thomas, the 2nd Cav-
alry commander, David Twiggs, nursed a
longstanding grudge against him dating
back to the Mexican War, when Thomas
had refused to let Twiggs have a brace of
mules for his personal use. They clashed
again at a court-martial of a young lieu-
tenant accused of stealing a drunken civil-
ian’s purse. Thomas voted to absolve the
officer of any wrongdoing, but Twiggs
reversed the ruling. Thomas then went over
his head to Secretary of War John B. Floyd,
who upheld Thomas’s judgment and
warned Twiggs not to interfere. Twiggs did
not forget the slight.
Bad blood between the two surfaced
again in September 1858 when Twiggs was
preparing to lead a major expedition
against the Comanche. Thomas, as rank-
ing field officer in the regiment, expected
to lead the offensive, but Twiggs placed
Earl Van Dorn in charge instead, leaving
an enraged Thomas back at Fort Mason to
command a skeleton guard of noncoms,
band members, and convalescents. Thomas
saw it as the slight it was.
The dashing Van Dorn, with a newly
won reputation as the best Indian fighterin the West, marched out of Fort Belknap
in mid-September at the head of 225 sol-
diers and 135 Indian auxiliaries. On Sep-
tember 15 the force arrived at Otter Creek
in southern Oklahoma, where they quickly
threw up a log stockade named Fort Radz-
iminski in honor of a popular young Polish
lieutenant in the regiment who had died of
tuberculosis the year before. Scouts soon
spotted a number of Comanche teepees
near a Kiowa Indian camp at Wichita. The
Comanche, led by Chief Buffalo Hump,
had come to present some stolen ponies to
their Kiowa allies.
Riding all day and night, Van Dorn and
his troopers reached the village before day-
break on October 1. Van Dorn divided his
forces, sending one column around to the
left to capture the Indians’ ponies while he
personally led to the rest of the command
forward after a shrill blast from the com-
pany bugler. The Comanche, literally
caught napping, dashed from their teepees
and ran for a ravine behind the village. In
the predawn chaos, soldiers dashed through
the camp, firing their carbines and swinging
their sabers. One sergeant, John W. Span-
gler, personally claimed credit for killing six
Comanche warriors singlehandedly.
The Indians fought a desperate rearguard
action, seeking to cover their families’
retreat. Van Dorn, an accomplished horse-
man, raced after them, overtaking two flee-
ing Comanche who were riding double.
The captain shot their horse, sending the
Indians tumbling to the ground unhurt.
Rising quickly, they let fly with bows and
arrows. Reacting instinctively, Van Dorn
threw up his hands; one arrow slashed into
his wrist, the other struck him in the side,
passing through his stomach and nicking
his lung before coming out the other side.
Soldiers raced to rescue their badly
wounded commander as Indian resistance
quickly crumbled. Inside the ravaged camp,
56 Comanche warriors and two women
lay dead; another 25 were mortally
wounded. The soldiers lost four killed,
including Lieutenant Cornelius Van Camp.
“It was a bad day for Vans,” Van Dorn rue-
fully observed. A gratified Twiggs reported
to Washington that Van Dorn’s raid on theQ-Spr16 1 and 2 Cavalry_Layout 1 1/14/16 12:18 PM Page 40