Major Price’s column engaged Comanche and Kiowa groups in eastern New Mexico and the western Panhandle.

Buell’s column operated through the southern Panhandle, finding and destroying camps wherever they could be located.

Davidson’s column pressured the eastern approach from Fort Sill.

Each column, when it found a camp, did the same thing: burned the lodges, destroyed the food stores, captured or killed the horses.

The cumulative effect of five columns operating simultaneously was a level of material destruction that no single column could have produced.

The Texas Historical Commission marker explicitly acknowledges this context: “columns of troops converging from five directions harassed Indians on the Panhandle Plains for over six months.”