The Texas Canyon Battle Where U.S. Cavalry Captured 1,400 Native Horses — Then Destroyed About 1,000 Of Them
The Army’s five-column campaign was designed to find and destroy the winter camps before the cold made survival without those camps impossible.
Finding and destroying those camps in September, with winter approaching, maximized the pressure on the off-reservation population.
The families who fled the canyon in September 1874 faced a winter that their own preparations had been designed to survive.
Those preparations were ash.
The Question Of What The Army Intended
The destruction at Palo Duro Canyon raises an inevitable question about the Army’s intentions: was the goal to make winter survival difficult enough to force surrender, or was the destruction intended to produce deaths?
The historical record suggests the former.
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