Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

South Texas, 1864–1867 441
supposed to be in the vicinity of Redmond’s Ranche,” about forty miles upriver.
When the troops reached there on the morning of 14 August, residents could tell
them nothing of importance, but that afternoon “a Mexican came in” with the
news that he had seen Indians at his ranch, more than forty miles to the northeast,
far from the river. Having gone part of the way, and hearing that “a large force of
Cavalry” was moving from San Antonio toward the Rio Grande, Wright decided
the next morning to move northwest again, toward Laredo and the river. On the
morning of 17 August, the party arrived at a ranch some twenty-five miles from
Laredo. “There I found a post of one Sergt and six men of the 2d Texas Cavalry,
who were scouting around the country,” Wright reported. This may have been the
“large force of Cavalry” he had heard about. 41
Having marched his men more than one hundred miles in six days, Wright
decided to let them rest while he rode on to Laredo. There, the lieutenant commanding
a garrison of some two dozen men told him that the raiders were Mexican
Kickapoos. These Indians had been forced from their lands east of the Mississippi
River two generations earlier. Many had settled in Kansas, but some had moved to
Texas, only to be driven from there into Mexico ten or fifteen years later. Others
from Kansas had joined them recently, disgusted by an 1862 treaty that demanded
further land cessions. The lieutenant at Laredo said that small bands of raiders had
driven off herds of cattle and horses and killed more than a dozen residents along
the river. Wright rejoined his command and marched back down the river to Roma,
arriving on 24 August. During the expedition he had learned that while residents
along the Rio Grande were clamoring for protection, raiding in Texas by Indians
amounted to little, compared to thefts by residents who drove herds across the
river. The commanding officer at Roma reported a band of marauders “painted and
disguised as Indians” killing residents and stealing livestock. Vague information,
demands for military protection, and complaints blaming property losses on Indian
raiders would all become familiar to soldiers charged with implementing federal
Indian policy in the West during the following decades. 42
Army officers soon learned to discount what General Sheridan called “exaggerated
reports, gotten up in some instances by frontier people to get a market for
their produce, and in other instances by army contractors to make money.” Sheridan
believed in any case that warnings of raids on the Texas frontier were merely a ruse
to remove troops from the settlements so that former slaveholders could have a free
hand with the black population. The general commanding the Department of Texas
told Sheridan in July 1866 that he received “frequent complaints . . . of the barbarities
practiced towards . . . freedmen” but could do nothing about it for want of troops. 43
While staff officers planned the distribution of soldiers and supplies, enlisted
men and medical officers on the lower Rio Grande confronted scurvy, brought about
yet again by a lack of fresh meat and vegetables at Brazos Santiago. “You can have
no idea of our desperate situation,” Surgeon Merrill wrote to his father. “The idea of
41 Maj L. Wright to Capt R. C. Shannon, 24 Aug 1865, Entry 533, pt. 2, RG 393, NA.
42 Ibid.; Jackson to Wheeler, 13 Aug 1865 (“painted and disguised”); Craig Miner and William
E. Unrau, The End of Indian Kansas: A Study of Cultural Revolution, 1854–1871 (Lawrence:
Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), pp. 45–49, 96–98.
43 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, p. 301 (“exaggerated reports”); “Condition of Affairs in Texas,” 39th
Cong., 2d sess., H. Ex. Doc. 61 (serial 1,292), p. 4 (“frequent complaints”).