The Buffalo Soldiers and Indian Hot Springs
Sierra Blanca, Hudspeth County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The natural hot springs in this area have been used for centuries by people seeking curative waters. Known as Indian hot Springs, they were used by generations of nomadic Indian tribes. Following the Civil War, the U.S. army established several regiments of black soldiers, including the 10th Cavalry. Called "buffalo soldiers", by their Indian adversaries, the soldiers conducted numerous scouting and mapping expeditions in this region. Pursuing raiding bands of Mescalero Apache Indians, members of the 10th Cavalry were sent to guard water holes and river crossings known to be frequented by the Indians. At dawn on October 28, 1880, soldiers of companies B and K were attacked on a ridge near this site by Apaches. Although official and contemporary accounts of the battle vary, at least five buffalo soldiers were reported slain in the attack and were buried where they fell. They were: Carter Burns, George Mills, William Backus, Jeremiah Griffin, and James Stanley. Two soldiers, Scott Graves and Thomas Rach, were reported missing. Their bodies were said to have been found and buried with their comrades weeks later. The seven graves were relocated in this vicinity in the 1960s. (1988)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For centuries these natural hot springs drew people seeking their curative waters, including generations of nomadic Indian peoples. After the Civil War the U.S. Army raised regiments of Black soldiers, and troopers of the 10th Cavalry, called buffalo soldiers by their adversaries, patrolled and mapped this rugged West Texas country. At dawn on October 28, 1880, companies pursuing Mescalero Apaches were attacked on a nearby ridge; at least five soldiers were killed and buried where they fell, their graves later relocated to this vicinity.
Why it matters
The site honors the buffalo soldiers whose service on the western frontier, amid the Army's campaigns against Native nations, is a defining and complicated chapter of African American and American history.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the decades after the Civil War, the far reaches of West Texas were among the last stretches of the American frontier still contested by force. The country around Indian Hot Springs — rugged, dry, and remote near the Rio Grande — was a landscape where survival often depended on knowing where the water was. The natural hot springs here had drawn people for centuries, and generations of nomadic Indian peoples had come to these waters seeking their curative powers long before any soldier arrived.
This was the era of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age back East, but on the western frontier the federal government was pursuing a hard and often brutal campaign to force Native nations onto reservations and open the land to settlement and commerce. The Army built its presence outpost by outpost, and control of the region turned on control of its scarce water holes and river crossings.
Into this harsh country the Army sent regiments raised specifically after the Civil War from among Black soldiers, including the 10th Cavalry. Their Native adversaries called them "buffalo soldiers," and these troopers took on some of the most demanding duties on the frontier — the long scouting and mapping expeditions across a punishing landscape that few maps yet described.
People & events
The buffalo soldiers of the 10th Cavalry knew this country as few others did, having crisscrossed it on scouting and mapping expeditions. When bands of Mescalero Apaches moved through the region, troopers were sent to guard the water holes and river crossings the Army knew they would need — a strategy built on the simple, unforgiving logic of the desert, where water was life and whoever held it held the advantage.
At dawn on October 28, 1880, that strategy turned into a deadly fight. Soldiers of companies B and K were attacked by Apaches on a ridge near this site. Official and contemporary accounts of the battle vary — the fog of a frontier skirmish is honestly acknowledged rather than smoothed over — but at least five buffalo soldiers were reported killed and were buried where they fell.
Their names are recorded so they will not be lost: Carter Burns, George Mills, William Backus, Jeremiah Griffin, and James Stanley. Two more soldiers, Scott Graves and Thomas Rach, were reported missing after the fight; their bodies were said to have been found and buried with their comrades weeks later. In the 1960s, the seven graves were relocated to this vicinity, so that the men who died here would continue to be remembered together on the ground where they had served.
Its place in the American story
The buffalo soldiers occupy a defining and genuinely complicated chapter of American history. These were Black men serving a nation that, even as it sent them to the frontier, denied them full citizenship and equal rights at home. Their courage, discipline, and endurance in some of the hardest conditions the Army faced stand as a powerful testament — and a pointed irony — in the story of African American service.
At the same time, the marker does not flinch from the fuller truth: these soldiers were instruments of the federal campaign against Native nations, here pursuing Mescalero Apaches who were themselves fighting to hold onto their homeland and their freedom. The site sits at the intersection of two histories often told separately — African American history and Native American history — and honors the reality that both peoples were caught, in different ways, inside the machinery of frontier conquest.
That layered honesty is what gives the place its national weight. The story of the American West is not a simple one of heroes and villains, and this ridge in West Texas holds the evidence: Black troopers dying far from home in a war between the United States and Indigenous peoples defending their own. Remembering the five named dead, and the two who went missing, keeps that difficult, essential history in view.
If you visit
This is remote, rugged West Texas country near the Rio Grande, and part of what the site offers is exactly that sense of isolation — the feeling of standing in a landscape where water was precious and the distances were vast. Take in the terrain and the nearby ridge, and you begin to understand both why the springs mattered so much and how an ambush at dawn could unfold across such ground.
The heart of a visit here is the human one: seven soldiers, relocated to this vicinity in the 1960s so they could rest near where they fell. Reading their names — Carter Burns, George Mills, William Backus, Jeremiah Griffin, James Stanley, and the two once reported missing, Scott Graves and Thomas Rach — is a quiet act of remembrance for men whose service is easy to overlook in the broad sweep of frontier history.
Given the setting, come prepared for backcountry conditions and treat the site and its graves with respect. For travelers drawn to the deeper, harder stories of the American West — the buffalo soldiers, the Apache wars, and the meeting of African American and Native American history — this is a profoundly evocative stop, a place where the frontier's beauty and its violence are held together in the same still landscape.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Carter Burns
- · George Mills
- · William Backus
Related events
- · Battle near Indian Hot Springs, 1880
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Killing of General J. J. Byrne
Sierra Blanca, TX
In August 1880, the Apache leader Victorio's raiders ambushed a Fort Davis–bound stagecoach in a steep West Texas canyon, killing its lone passenger, retired general and surveyor J. J. Byrne, almost instantly while the driver wheeled the mules around and raced back to Fort Quitman. It was among the last acts of a two-year campaign in which Victorio's guerrilla tactics baffled and impressed the U.S. Army across Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico. Later that year, thousands of American and Mexican soldiers hunted Victorio down and killed him in Mexico.
Apache Last Stand
Presidio County, TX
On June 12, 1880, in the rugged Big Bend country of Presidio County, four Pueblo Indian scouts serving under General Benjamin H. Grierson fought and turned back a band of twenty Apache warriors. The marker records it as the last Apache stand in the county — a small but telling episode in the long, grinding conclusion of the Indian Wars in far West Texas. It reflects the era when the U.S. Army relied heavily on Native scouts to fight other Native peoples.
Crow Springs
Salt Flat, TX
Named for the birds that flocked to its water, Crow Springs was an oasis in the far West Texas desert used by Indigenous peoples for centuries. The Butterfield Overland Mail built a stage relay station here in 1858, though the route soon shifted south toward Fort Davis, and during the Apache wars of the early 1880s Texas Rangers and Buffalo Soldiers of the U.S. 10th Cavalry camped at the springs to keep New Mexico's Apaches from joining the leaders Victorio and Nana. Today the springs have gone dry, the station has crumbled to dust, and the crows are gone.
San Elizario Chapel
San Elizario, TX
When Spain governed the far reaches of northern New Spain, it strung presidios—fortified garrisons—along the Rio Grande to guard settlements and trade routes. This chapel belonged to the Presidio de San Elzeario, relocated to this site in 1789 after floods battered its earlier home downriver. Rebuilt from fresh adobe and salvaged presidio bricks, it still carries the name of a 13th-century French patron saint of soldiers.