The year 1870 was a time of war on the northwest Texas frontier. Kiowa and Comanche raiders striking out of the vast southern Plains punished the line of Anglo settlement as it inexorably pushed its way north and west. The Indians felt compelled to lash out, given renewed postwar encroachment into their lands, unfair or broken treaty agreements, the impending specter of forced reservation life and their own intertribal politics. The U.S. Army was likewise compelled to maintain peace and safety for its citizens on the Texas frontier.
For 15 years one of the hottest spots in this unrelenting contest was sparsely populated Jack County, up near the Red River in north-central Texas. Settlers there were usually the first to suffer with the coming of each full moon, and their protests and cries for protection had resulted in 1868 in the establishment of a military post, Fort Richardson, on the outskirts of the county seat, Jacksboro. If the settlers thought their problems were solved, however, they were soon bitterly disappointed.
Fort Richardson became the headquarters of the 6th U.S. Cavalry, a regiment that boasted a far thicker record of desertions than of Indian fights. Over its 39-month tenure at the fort the regiment sent out 26 full-scale scouting parties, but only five intercepted Indian raiders, resulting in the deaths of three troopers and unknown casualties to the warriors. During that same period Indian raiders killed or captured more than 200 settlers and drove off thousands of head of livestock. The 6th seemed powerless to prevent such depredations.
