Black soldiers in the U.S. Calvary were segregated units that came to be known as Buffalo Soldiers:
Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!
We're in a series about the Wild West and the incredible story of an 11 year old German boy, Hermann, who was captured by an Apache war party from his family's farm in 1870 in Central Texas.
He's now about 15-16 years old at this point in the story and has become a full blown warrior and is both terrified of the White man and also hates him. In the last post his band had gone to stay at a reservation but then left almost as soon as they arrived.
Today's story
So now they were free again and traveled to the very center of Texas near what is called Packsaddle Mountain.
This was the perfect type of area for the tribe because they could disappear into the foliage or rocks above if needed:
Their location was just a couple hours from my place:
One day on a raiding party they'd stolen 20 head of horses when it started raining and got their bow strings wet so they went into a thicket to build a fire and dry them. Apparently they were followed because they got taken by surprise with an ambush.
Dang Rangers again!
They stayed together at first but after several of their braves fell they scattered and met up at another location. There they stole more horses but discovered that the dreaded Texas Rangers were trailing them. They were overtaken by the Rangers on the morning of the second day.
The fight was hard and they lost one brave, had several wounded and the Rangers got the horses which they'd stolen but they were able to escape. The party headed back to their camp but when they got there it had been moved.
The story is in the bones
They found buffalo bones which had pictures cut into them telling what had happened. There was a fight with white people. The pictures showed seven men pierced with arrows and the bones pointed toward the North.
There were 12 bones so that meant they moved on to a location which was 12 day's journey to the North. The raiding party traveled for 12 days and on the 12th day they saw smoke from fires in rows pointing West.
Smoke signals
They read that to mean head West and that the enemy were on their trail so they had to keep moving and also that Hermann's party needed to come fast and rescue them.
Hermann's group rode West for about a hundred miles. There was very little water in the region but the Indians knew where there was a spring.
The white men pursuing the tribe turned out to be soldiers instead of Rangers so they were relieved. This would be easy killing.
The Indians knew the soldiers didn't know where any water was and they decoyed them off the real trail so the soldiers were going out into the desert with no water source.
A desert massacre
Well, the Indians knew what would happen so they took their fill of water and relaxed at the spring, filling their water bags before going after the soldiers.
Soon they started finding dead horses along the way and then a lone soldier. He was stripped, dispatched and scalped. That's putting it as nicely as I can.
The Indians resumed the chase and found 8 others who met the same fate as the first one.
And this is why the army employed so many Apaches as scouts. For some reason this detachment didn't have any and it cost them their lives.
The band then went back to the spring and their tribe had gotten there by that time but were exhausted, worn out, and almost starving.
How Buffalo Soldiers got their name
Some of the soldiers who'd attacked the village were black, and most of the Indians had never seen black men before. The Indians thought they came from under the water because of the fact that a person's reflection in the water appears black.
The hair reminded them of buffalo's curly hair and their heads were like the buffalo so they called them Buffalo Soldiers.
They thought their skulls were thick like a buffalo's and that arrows would bounce off and bullets would smash and not penetrate so they were told to aim for the heart!
They were told by the chief that if they hit them in the head with a spear it would break the spear. lol.
I looked up the question online of why Buffalo Soldiers were called that and none of them gave this answer. I believe Hermann's explanation, he was there!
In the next post Hermman engages in a dramatic battle which changes his life forever.
Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas
the gentleman redneck
