‘WORSE THAN THE HOSTILE COMANCHES’
Captain Thomas M. Tolman and a detachment of 6th U.S. Cavalry troopers were under siege. Regrouping in a brick store at the heart of Sulphur Springs, Texas, they had hurriedly built a 10-foot-high stockade that encompassed an entire block. It was August 1868. To the north in Kansas raiding Cheyennes were terrorizing settlers along the Solomon and Saline rivers and giving Major General Philip Sheridan fits. But Tolman had his own worries. His men were trapped. Supply wagons could not get through. From the occasional news that got in, anywhere from 150 to 500 heavily armed enemies surrounded the troopers, waiting to blast them to pieces. Like a scene from the Alamo, Tolman sent out couriers to beg for at least 200 more soldiers.
Tolman did finally receive succor. Lieutenant James H. Sands with 35 men of the 6th Cavalry, Lieutenant Charles A. Vernou with a detachment of the 4th Cavalry and a squad of 7th Infantry soldiers left Pilot Grove, to the northwest, and marched nearly 80 miles over two days to reach Sulphur Springs. As the reinforcements neared town, the enemy fled. Vernou found Tolman “in a desperate position” with only 24 men, many of them sick. But the siege was broken.
At the post in Jacksboro 6th Cavalry trooper H.H. McConnell took note of the situation and later mentioned it in his book, Five Years a Cavalryman. He wrote of the usual soldier complaints about poor food, hard work and dangerous patrols after Indians, but what really aggravated him was how the Army sent its soldiers to protect settlers in east Texas, “leaving this entire frontier exposed to the ravages of Indians.”
In the case of Sulphur Springs, however, McConnell was mistaken. The “Indians” besieging that town were actually white
