Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Elliott
Mobeetie, Wheeler County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Fort Elliott, established June 5, 1875 to help keep Native Americans on their Indian Territory Reservations, was partially garrisoned by African American soldiers called “buffalo soldiers” by Native Americans. Various companies of the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry were stationed at Fort Elliott in its 15-year existence. Typical post duties included patrolling the boundary between Texas and Indian Territory, keeping order among settlers, protecting mail coaches, and building roads and telegraph lines. Commanding officers of the troops were white, but the black soldiers were included in every part of daily and social post life. One black officer stationed at Fort Elliott was Henry O. Flipper, commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1877. Born of slave parents in 1856, he was the first black graduate of the United States Military Academy and the first black commissioned officer in the United States Army. Flipper embarked on a forty-year military and civilian career on the western border and frontier. In the fall of 1879, his regiment of the 10th Cavalry was ordered to Fort Elliott. As post adjutant, Lt. Flipper served as the executive officer. All post business was transacted through him. Being educated as an engineer at West Point, one of his duties was to oversee building the telegraph line across the Canadian River to Fort Supply. The black soldiers’ role in clearing the Texas panhandle of indians, outlaws and rustlers may have been tedious sometimes, but was crucial to fulfill the goal of settling the west. Fort Elliott was abandoned in 1890 when indians were no longer a threat and law and order was established by civilian courts. The original Fort Elliott flag pole now stands at the Mobeetie Jail Museum 1.5 miles east of this marker. Several soldiers who served here purchased land in the area to homestead and are buried in the Mobeetie Cemetery. (2012)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Fort Elliott was raised in 1875 to help confine Native peoples to Indian Territory reservations, and it was garrisoned in part by African American "buffalo soldiers" of the 9th and 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry. They patrolled the Texas–Indian Territory line, guarded mail coaches, and strung telegraph lines. Among them served Lt. Henry O. Flipper—born to enslaved parents in 1856, the first Black graduate of West Point and the Army's first Black commissioned officer—who oversaw building a telegraph line across the Canadian River.
Why it matters
The post honors the Buffalo Soldiers whose labor and service helped open the Panhandle, and Henry O. Flipper's barrier-breaking place in American military history.
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Related people
- · Henry O. Flipper
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Fort Elliott
Mobeetie, TX
Established in June 1875, Fort Elliott was among the last military posts built in Texas as the U.S. Army sought to force Indigenous peoples off the Panhandle plains. Around its walls sprang up Mobeetie, a rough rendezvous for buffalo hunters and traders, until the fort was abandoned in 1889 and the frontier era it enforced drew to a close.
Emanuel Dubbs
Mobeetie, TX
Ohio-born Emanuel Dubbs (1843–1929) first came to know Texas as a buffalo hunter and fought in the famous 1874 Battle of Adobe Walls between hunters and Plains Indian warriors. He went on to become the first county judge in the Texas Panhandle and in Wheeler County, earning wide respect when he had a lawless U.S. marshal arrested. Serving on the bench in 1879–80 and 1885–90, he helped establish the rule of law in a region barely emerged from the frontier.
Fort Elliott Flagpole
Mobeetie, TX
When Fort Elliott was established in 1875 to secure the Texas Panhandle, teamster-merchant J. J. Long was hired to supply its flagpole. He cut two great cedar trees in the breaks near Antelope Hills, thirty miles away, hauled them by wagon, and fashioned this fifty-foot pole. After the fort closed in 1890 Long bought the pole for his store, and it later stood at the Mobeetie school for two decades before being raised again here in 1949.
Custer on the Sweetwater
Wheeler, TX
The banks of Sweetwater Creek lay in the heart of the Comancheria, where Plains peoples wintered in country rich with buffalo. In the winter campaign of 1868-69, George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry and Kansas volunteers to recover two Anglo women captured from Kansas settlements. Rather than open fire on a large Cheyenne village and risk the captives' lives, Custer detained several chiefs, opened tense negotiations with the Cheyenne leadership, and by ultimatum won the women's release in March 1869.