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A painting of several buffalo and American Indians on horseback riding across the prairie
Comanche Indians Chasing Buffalo with Lances and Bows. (Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum)

In the summer of 1874, the U.S. Army launched a major campaign against the Southern Plains Indians in an attempt to permanently remove the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians from the region and move them onto the reservations established in western Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. This campaign, fought largely in the Texas Panhandle, is known today as the Red River War.

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A photo of a man sitting on a stack of buffalo hides circa 1870
Stacks of buffalo hides (Credit: Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas)

Cattle barons like Charles Goodnight established large ranches in the Texas Panhandle within a year after the battles ended. Roads and railroads soon crossed the region. With the influx of new settlers and the establishment of towns across the plains, the locations of many of the battle sites of the Red River War were quickly lost or forgotten.

Recognizing the historical significance of the battle sites, the Archeology Division of the Texas Historical Commission (THC) initiated the Red River War Battle Sites Project in 1998, aided by a grant from the National Park Service's American Battlefields Protection Program. The project had three purposes: to precisely locate and document the more significant sites; to nominate sites for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places; and to evaluate each of the sites for heritage-tourism potential. This project resulted in a book published in 2008 by Texas A&M University Press titled Battles of the Red River War: Archeological Perspectives on the Indian Campaign of 1874.

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A family of American Indians pose for a portrait
Isatai (seated to the right) is shown here with members of his family. He became known as a prophet of the Comanches in 1874. (Credit: Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas)

Download the 2010 travel guide, Red River War of 1874-1875, Clash of Cultures in the Texas Panhandle (PDF) or travel through time with our Red River War mobile tour.

Read more about Texas military heritage.

Read more about the Red River War in the Handbook of Texas Online.

Texas Beyond History – Learn more about the Red River War from a collaboration between the THC and The University of Texas at Austin.

Archeological Spotlight Links