Pompey Factor

(Wikipedia) ... After having lived in Mexico for the previous two decades, Factor and other Black Seminoles joined the US Army as Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts in August 1870, and served in the Red River War. On April 25, 1875, he was serving as a private by the Pecos River in Texas where, "[w]ith 3 other men, he participated in a charge against 25 hostiles while on a scouting patrol." A month later, on May 28, 1875, Factor was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the engagement. Two of the other men who took part in the charge, Isaac Payne and John Ward, both Black Seminoles, also received Medals of Honor. Continued

Letter from Back East: Roanoke’s ‘Lost Colony’ Was Never Lost, New Book Says

Virginia Dare, the first Anglo child born in North America,
sustained herself on nuts, berries, and product endorsements.
(Virginia Dare Winery)

(NYTimes) In 1590, the would-be governor of a colony meant to be one of England’s first outposts in North America discovered that more than 100 settlers weren’t on the small island where he left them.
More than 400 years later, the question of what happened to those settlers, who landed on Roanoke Island, off the coast of modern North Carolina, has grown into a piece of American mythology, inspiring plays, novels, documentaries and a tourism industry in the Outer Banks. Continued

Dee Brown

(Wikipedia) Dorris Alexander "Dee" Brown (February 29, 1908 – December 12, 2002) was an American novelist, historian, and librarian. His most famous work, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), details the history of American expansionism from the point of view of the Native Americans. Continued

Indian Citizenship Act

Coolidge receives group of Comanche Indians at White House

(Library of Congress) On June 2, 1924, Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S.
The right to vote, however, was governed by state law; until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting. Continued

Why Do So Many Americans Think They Have Cherokee Blood?

Frank De Kova and Edward Everett Horton - not Cherokee

(Slate) ... Today, more Americans claim descent from at least one Cherokee ancestor than any other Native American group. Across the United States, Americans tell and retell stories of long-lost Cherokee ancestors. These tales of family genealogies become murkier with each passing generation, but like Phelps, contemporary Americans profess their belief despite not being able to point directly to a Cherokee in their family tree.
... More often than not, that ancestor was an “Indian princess,” despite the fact that the tribe never had a social system with anything resembling an inherited title like princess. Continued

Jim Thorpe

(Wikipedia) James Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk, translated as "Bright Path" (May 22 or 28, 1887 – March 28, 1953) was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe became the first Native American to win a gold medal for his home country.
 Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, and played American football (collegiate and professional), professional baseball, and basketball.
He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he had been paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the amateurism rules that were then in place. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals. Continued

Preservationist and former Indian captive Rebecca Fisher dies

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1926, Rebecca Fisher died in Austin. She was born Rebecca Gilleland in Philadelphia in 1831.
Her family came to Texas around 1837 and settled in Refugio County.
In 1840 Comanches attacked their home, killing Rebecca's parents and taking Rebecca and her brother.
The children were rescued by Albert Sidney Johnston and a detachment of Texas soldiers. Continued

‘Boy Captives’ Smith brothers straddled disparate worlds

(wkcurrent.com) ... On Feb. 26, 1871, Clint, 10, and Jeff, 8, were out herding sheep at a distance from their house, when they noticed a group of riders. Older family members were not alarmed at first, seeing nothing wrong from a distance.
The boys, however, saw that they were Lipans and Comanches, and began running. As Jeff faltered, Clint picked him up and carried him on his shoulders running as fast as he could, down toward a creek, and out of sight of his family. Soon, Jeff was plucked up by his hair, and when Clint finally realized he was trapped, he relented. Continued

Indian captive reunited with husband

 

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1838, Indian captive Rachel Plummer was reunited with her husband after spending over a year with the Comanches.
Born Rachel Parker in Illinois in 1819, she moved to Texas with her father, James W. Parker, and her family and married Luther Plummer in 1833.
In May 1836 their settlement was attacked by a large group of Indians. Five settlers were taken captive: Rachel and her son James Pratt Plummer, Cynthia Ann and John Parker, and Mrs. Elizabeth Kellogg.
James Pratt was taken from Rachel, and she never saw him again. Rachel became a slave to the Comanches, and traveled thousands of miles with the band. Continued

Rip Ford’s Risky Ranger Raid

Believed to be several of Rip Ford's men.

(Historynet) ... Governor Runnels had decided the only way to check the Comanches was to send Texas Rangers on a preemptive strike over the border into the heart of Comancheria without federal permission.
Rip Ford seemed the perfect choice to head such a force. He had fought with the Texas Mounted Rifles during the Mexican War, earning the nickname “Rip” for his habit of scrawling “Rest in peace” beside the name of each deceased when compiling company casualty lists.
In 1849 he’d signed on as a captain with the Texas Rangers, and for the next two years his company had fought hostile Indians along the Rio Grande. Ford had then taken a six-year hiatus to pursue political and civilian ventures before Runnels appointed him senior captain of all the Rangers in January 1858, tasking him with running down the Comanches. Continued

Indian Slavery Once Thrived in New Mexico: Latinos Are Finding Family Ties to It

(NYTimes) Lenny Trujillo made a startling discovery when he began researching his descent from one of New Mexico’s pioneering Hispanic families: One of his ancestors was a slave.

“I didn’t know about New Mexico’s slave trade, so I was just stunned,” said Mr. Trujillo, 66, a retired postal worker who lives in Los Angeles. “Then I discovered how slavery was a defining feature of my family’s history.”

Mr. Trujillo is one of many Latinos who are finding ancestral connections to a flourishing slave trade on the blood-soaked frontier now known as the American Southwest. Continued

Clyde Kluckhohn

(Wikipedia) Clyde Kluckhohn (January 11, 1905, Le Mars, Iowa – July 28, 1960, near Santa Fe, New Mexico), was an American anthropologist and social theorist, best known for his long-term ethnographic work among the Navajo and his contributions to the development of theory of culture within American anthropology.
... In 1949, Kluckhohn began to work among five adjacent communities in the Southwest: Zuni, Navajo, Mormon (LDS), Spanish-American (Mexican-American), and Texas Homesteaders. Continued

Battle of Bear Valley

(Wikipedia) The Battle of Bear Valley was a small engagement fought in 1918 between a band of Yaquis and a detachment of United States Army soldiers.
On January 9, 1918, elements of the American 10th Cavalry Regiment detected about thirty armed Yaquis in Bear Valley, Arizona, a large area that was commonly used as a passage across the international border with Mexico. A short firefight ensued, which resulted in the death of the Yaqui commander and the capture of nine others.
Though the conflict was merely a skirmish, it was the last time the United States Army engaged hostile Native Americans in combat and thus has been seen as one of the final battles of the American Indian Wars. Continued

Kit Carson

(Wikipedia) Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman. The few paying jobs he had during his lifetime included mountain man (fur trapper), wilderness guide, Indian agent, and American Army officer.
Carson became a frontier legend in his own lifetime via biographies and news articles. Exaggerated versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels.
... During the American Civil War, Carson led a regiment of mostly Hispanic volunteers from New Mexico on the side of the Union at the Battle of Valverde in 1862.
When the Confederate threat to New Mexico was eliminated, Carson led forces to suppress the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. Continued

Texas Legislature establishes Frontier Regiment

(TSHA) The Frontier Regiment is the name history has given to a regiment of rangers authorized by the Ninth Legislature of Texas on December 21, 1861, for the protection of the northern and western frontier of Texas. The act and the raising of the regiment was the state's political and military response to the vulnerabilities posed to the state's frontier settlements by the planned withdrawal and redeployment of the Confederate First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, from their frontier forts.
Already withering Comanche and Kiowa Indian raids in 1861 were killing settlers, slaughtering livestock, and stealing horses in communities along the entire northern and western frontier. These settlements, substantively weakened by the mass exodus of their young men for service with the Confederacy in the Civil War, faced the grim prospect of continuing Indian depredations, as they were known in that time. Continued

Bad Hand's Sad End

(Texas Day By Day) On this day in 1883, Ranald Slidell (Bad Hand) Mackenzie, hard-driving cavalry officer, was diagnosed as suffering from "paralysis of the insane."
... he became one of the leading cavalry commanders on the frontier, leading the Fourth United States Cavalry in a number of campaigns against varous Indian tribes. In Texas he is best known for his victory against the Comanches at Palo Duro Canyon and for the extralegal Remolino raid into Mexico in pursuit of Kickapoo raiders. Continued

Sand Creek Massacre

Black Kettle

(Wikipedia) The Sand Creek massacre (also known as the Chivington massacre, the Battle of Sand Creek or the massacre of Cheyenne Indians) was a massacre in the American Indian Wars that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 675-man force of Colorado U.S. Volunteer Cavalry attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 70–163 Native Americans, about two-thirds of whom were women and children.
The location has been designated the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site and is administered by the National Park Service. Continued

150 Years Ago Today: Battle of Washita River

 

(Wikipedia) The Battle of Washita River (also called Battle of the Washita or the Washita Massacre) occurred on November 27, 1868 when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne camp on the Washita River (near present-day Cheyenne, Oklahoma), part of a major winter encampment of numerous Native American tribal bands. Continued

First Battle of Adobe Walls

Kit Carson

(Wikipedia) The First Battle of Adobe Walls was a battle between the United States Army and American Indians. The Kiowa, Comanche and Plains Apache (Kiowa Apache) tribes drove from the battlefield a United States Expeditionary Force that was reacting to attacks on white settlers moving into the Southwest. The battle, on November 25, 1864, resulted in light casualties on both sides but was one of the largest engagements fought on the Great Plains.
Continued

Cavalry column launched against Panhandle Indians

 

Fort Bascom Ruins c1907

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1868, the Canadian River Expedition was launched as part of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan's winter campaign against the Indians of the southern plains. Maj. Andrew Evans left Fort Bascom, New Mexico, with more than 500 officers and men.
Following the left bank of the Canadian, the column encountered a blizzard two days later, but despite deep snow, sleet, and freezing temperatures the troops trudged their way over the Fort Smith-Santa Fe route across the Panhandle and established a supply depot probably in what is now Hemphill County, Texas. Continued