Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877 in Lynn County
Tahoka, Lynn County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Known as Buffalo Soldiers, African-American troops played a vital role on the western frontier following the Civil War. On July 26, 1877, Buffalo Soldiers of Company A, 10th Cavalry left Double Lake in Lynn County in pursuit of a Comanche party. The Comanche led the soldiers away from watering holes and they suffered from extreme dehydration and sickness, enduring heat, dryness, and 86 hours without water. A number of soldiers became lost while searching for water and many of their horses and mules died. On July 30, the remaining troops returned to Lynn County for recuperation. Four died on the expedition, including Pvt. John T. Gordon, who is buried at Double Lakes. (2010)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After the Civil War, African American "Buffalo Soldiers" patrolled the western frontier, and in July 1877 Company A of the 10th Cavalry set out from Double Lake in pursuit of a Comanche party. The Comanche drew the troopers away from water, and the soldiers endured extreme heat and 86 hours without water; horses and mules died and men became lost searching for springs. Four soldiers died on the expedition, including Pvt. John T. Gordon, buried at Double Lakes.
Why it matters
The tragedy captures both the brutal cost of frontier campaigning and the vital, often overlooked service of Black cavalrymen in the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars of the West.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years after the Civil War, the U.S. Army turned its attention to the western plains, and West Texas — the vast, flat Llano Estacado — was among the last places where the old frontier still held. This was Reconstruction-era America, a country stitching itself back together even as it pushed its borders and its railroads west. On the southern plains, the Comanche and their allies had ranged freely for generations, and the Army built a chain of forts to press them onto reservations.
Into this hard country rode the Buffalo Soldiers. Congress had created regiments of African American cavalry and infantry in 1866, and the 10th Cavalry became one of the most storied among them. For Black men only a few years removed from slavery, army service offered steady pay, a measure of dignity, and a place in the nation's story — earned in some of the most punishing terrain and climate the continent could offer.
Lynn County sits on the South Plains, where summer heat is merciless and surface water is scarce and unreliable. Out here, water is not a convenience but the difference between life and death — a fact that would define the events this marker remembers.
People & events
On July 26, 1877, troopers of Company A, 10th Cavalry set out from Double Lake in pursuit of a Comanche party. What followed was less a battle than a brutal contest of endurance. The Comanche, who knew every seep and playa on the plains, led the soldiers away from water and out into the open country, where the sun and the dry wind did the rest.
For 86 hours — more than three and a half days — the command went without water. Men grew sick and delirious with thirst; horses and mules collapsed and died; soldiers wandered off alone in desperate searches for a spring or a puddle, and some became lost. On July 30, the survivors straggled back into Lynn County to recuperate.
Four men did not come back. Among the dead was Pvt. John T. Gordon, who lies buried at Double Lakes. The marker names him so that a single soldier's sacrifice does not dissolve into a statistic — one man, in one troop, on one expedition that went terribly wrong.
Its place in the American story
The Buffalo Soldiers rode through a chapter of American history that is easy to romanticize and easy to forget. Their service on the frontier was real and often decisive, yet it came in the middle of the Indian Wars — a national expansion that pressed Native peoples like the Comanche off lands they had held for centuries. This site holds both truths at once, without letting go of either.
It also corrects a long silence. For decades, the story of the West was told as though it had been won by white pioneers and soldiers alone. In fact, Black cavalrymen made up a significant share of the frontier army — and they served while their own civil rights back home were being contested and, in the South, rolled back.
The 1877 tragedy is a reminder that the frontier's deadliest force was often not combat but the land itself: thirst, heat, and distance. That four soldiers could die without a shot being fired says everything about the conditions these men accepted as the price of their service.
If you visit
Stand near Tahoka and look out across the South Plains, and the story tells itself. The land is famously flat and open, the horizon enormous, the sky the dominant feature. In high summer the heat presses down and shade is nowhere to be found; it takes little imagination to feel how quickly a command could get into mortal trouble out here without water.
This is a memorial, so come in a reflective frame of mind rather than expecting a visitor complex. Read the inscription slowly and let the names and the plain facts land. The nearby Double Lakes area is tied directly to the events — the departure point, and Pvt. Gordon's resting place.
If you're building a road trip across West Texas, this marker pairs naturally with the wider story of the frontier forts and the Buffalo Soldier regiments who garrisoned them. It's a short stop that adds real depth — and a note of hard honesty — to a drive across some of the emptiest, most beautiful country in the state.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Pvt. John T. Gordon
Related events
- · Buffalo Soldier expedition of July 1877
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lynn County
Tahoka, TX
Lynn County honors G. W. Lynn, remembered among the defenders who fell at the Alamo, but its ground tells a longer story of the South Plains. Its lakes and springs watered Indian, Spanish, army, and cattle trails; it saw the last great buffalo hunts and the U.S. Cavalry's 1874–77 campaign against the Comanches, with the final skirmish at Double Lakes in 1879. Open-range ranchers arrived in the 1880s, the county organized at Tahoka in 1903, the Santa Fe Railroad reached it in 1910, and it grew into one of the nation's leading cotton counties.
Spanish Explorers' Route
Wilson, TX
This ancient road across the Llano Estacado was first traced by Native peoples and later followed by Spaniards, U.S. Army units, and cattle drovers, running from Gholson Spring past Tahoka Lake toward Big Spring and the North Concho. In the 17th century it carried Spanish visitors including Father Salas, who came from New Mexico in 1629 at the pleas of the Jumano Indians, and treasure- and pearl-seeking expeditions in 1650 and 1654. The trail knit together centuries of movement across the high plains.
Site of Mackenzie Cavalry Camp
Wilson, TX
On December 4, 1874, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie and two companies of the U.S. 4th Cavalry were caught by a brutal snowstorm at this spot on the Llano Estacado. With no wood, water, or grass, the troopers spent what they called the most miserable night of their Southwestern service, and several horses froze to death. Mackenzie was scouting for scattered bands during the closing weeks of the 1874 campaign to force the Southern Plains tribes onto reservations.
Route of Nolan Expedition
Meadow, TX
In July 1877, Captain Nicholas Nolan led some sixty Buffalo Soldiers of Company A, 10th U.S. Cavalry—joined by 22 buffalo hunters who called themselves 'The Forlorn Hope'—onto the parched Llano Estacado in pursuit of Comanche raiders. Eluded by their quarry and finding the water holes dry, the men went 86 hours without water, surviving by drinking the blood and urine of their horses before staggering back to a supply base. All but four soldiers lived through the ordeal.