Palo Duro Canyon Tragedy
Historian Andy Wilkinson's Account

Late in September of 1874 Ranald S. MacKenzie, Commander of the 4th U.S. Cavalry tracked the Comanche to their secret camp in the Palo Duro Canyon.

Wilkinson - "MacKenzie's idea was that he could fight the Comanche until the end of time and never win. But if he could get their supplies and strike them in their home territory, their stronghold, which was the Palo Duro, that he might stand some chance of prevailing."

At the bottom of the canyon the warriors fired on the troops and their people escaped. But it was the horses MacKenzie wanted. He ordered the Indian camp burned and withdrew taking along 1,400 horses 1,000 of which he later destroyed.

"There are reports that his own men objected strenuously to the notion of killing the horses because these were, after all, cavalrymen and attached to horses just as the Comanche warriors would be. Nevertheless, he prevailed and over the course of the next eight hours some thousand of the 1,500 animals were shot and killed. The stench became so bad the next day they had to move the camp to get away from it. The bones were still in that same spot for dozens of years before the bone pickers came out and collected them as they were collecting the buffalo bones later on."

Andy Wilkinson continues, "A thousand horses, that's 125 an hour, two every minute. And you couldn't do that if you took them from here over to there. There'd just be too much time --- or too little time, too many horses. Well, I can imagine the grief that the cavalrymen went through because when you hear a horse cry, it has to get you right here, you know. And I think it may have been a worse job to have to hold the horses who were waiting [to be killed]."

For Wallace Coffey, a Native American horseman, the story is a low point in the relationship of man and horse. "There's no honor in slaughter of the animal. So I know that the spirits of those horses are still here. So I'm walking very lightly on this place because it's sacred ground, hallowed ground [in Palo Duro Canyon]. What an unusual way to end a war. I mean, slaughtering of the buffalo was one thing, but slaughtering of the horse was something that grips you pretty good. That ended it right there.. the slaughtering of those horses."

In the Fall of 1995, the horse spirit returned to the Palo Duro. The 4th U.S. Cavalry Re-enactors gave two horses to the Comanche tribe as an apology for what happened here more than a century ago.

| The Ancient Connection | The Horse in Agriculture | Moving Man and Machinery |
| Native Americans and the Horse | Horses and the Journey to the New World |
| Palo Duro Canyon Tragedy | The Sporting Horse | Waging War from Horseback |

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