Dove Creek Battle
Mertzon, Irion County, Texas
Marker Inscription
[front] On January 8, 1865 eight miles east of here Confederate troops and Texas militiamen engaged a large party of Kickapoo Indians. The Indians, formerly hostile to the South, had entered Texas without authority and were making their way to Mexico. Troops attacked them and following five hours of desperate fighting, withdrew, having suffered the loss of 22 killed and 19 wounded. Indian losses from the encounter were probably less. Later raids by the Kickapoos were traced to the Dove Creek fight. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy Erected by the State of Texas 1963 [back] TEXAS CIVIL WAR INDIAN TROUBLE War brought turmoil to Indians living in Kansas and the Indian Territory, with unfortunate results for Texans on the frontier. Most Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles aided the South, while others adhered to the North. The Comanches made a treaty with the South but a great majority, with their allies the Kiowas, held aloof from either side, and plundered the frontier at will. Apaches and the Kickapoos did the same from Mexico. Texas and Confederate troops, despite poor arms and mounts, held defense lines until war's end.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On January 8, 1865, Confederate troops and Texas militia clashed with a large party of Kickapoo who had entered Texas without authority while making their way toward Mexico. After some five hours of fighting, the Texans withdrew, having suffered 22 killed and 19 wounded. The encounter embittered relations, and later Kickapoo raids on the frontier were traced back to the fight at Dove Creek.
Why it matters
Dove Creek is a stark reminder that the Civil War on the Texas frontier was entangled with conflicts between settlers and Native peoples, with consequences that outlasted the war itself.
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Related events
- · Battle of Dove Creek
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Chadbourne, C.S.A.
Bronte, TX
When Texas seceded, a company of the First Regiment of Texas Mounted Rifles occupied Fort Chadbourne — a stop on the old Butterfield stageline — to guard settlers against Indian raids and to watch for Union sympathizers heading west. Permanent troops withdrew in 1862 as the state pulled its frontier defense line more than fifty miles eastward, but Confederate and state scouting parties used the post intermittently until the war's end. Often supplying their own horses, guns, and provisions, these men held a thinly defended edge of the Confederacy.
Dove Creek Battlefield
Mertzon vicinity, TX
On January 8, 1865, in the closing weeks of the Civil War, some 2,000 Native people clashed here with Texas Rangers and state troops under Captains John Fossett and S. S. Totten in one of the bloodiest frontier fights of the era. Four officers and twenty-two of their men were left in unmarked graves near the mountain. The battle exposed how the frontier's Indian conflicts raged on even as the great war between the states drew to a close.
John R. ("Sarge") Nasworthy
San Angelo, TX
Born in Georgia and a Confederate soldier in the closing years of the Civil War, John R. "Sarge" Nasworthy came west to Texas and helped build the institutions of a raw frontier region around San Angelo. He bought beef for the army mess halls at Fort Concho, served as deputy county clerk and sheriff and the city's first treasurer, and ran the town's first brick kiln, wagon yard, and livery stable. A county commissioner who promoted an early viaduct and a major Baptist encampment, he left his name on Lake Nasworthy, the area's first conservation lake, built on land he once owned.
Major Ben Ficklin, C.S.A.
San Angelo, TX
Dubbed the "Mystery Man of the Confederacy," Ben Ficklin packed extraordinary adventure into 44 years: a corporal in the Mexican War at 18, a pioneer of Western stagecoach and mail lines, a founder of the Pony Express in 1860, and an early promoter of the transcontinental railroad. During the Civil War he ran Union blockades as a Confederate purchasing agent, and afterward won a U.S. mail contract, headquartering near Fort Concho—until he died in 1871 from swallowing a fish bone. A town later named for him became Tom Green County's first seat until an 1882 flood destroyed it.