Vicinity of Indian Fight
Buffalo Gap, Taylor County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On August 29, 1863, Indian riders (probably Comanches) coming north from Mason County, with stolen horses, were caught a mile east of Buffalo Gap by Lt. T. C. Wright and eleven state troopers. The outnumbered soldiers were forced to attack up a steep hill and the Indians, determined to keep the herd, fought stubbornly. Wright and his men - two with severe arrow wounds - finally gave up the unequal fight and the Indians escaped with the horses. A lone rider was sent under cover of night to Camp Colorado (45 miles southeast) to bring an ambulance for the wounded. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On August 29, 1863, Lt. T.C. Wright and eleven Texas state troopers overtook a party of raiders, probably Comanches, driving stolen horses north from Mason County. Forced to charge uphill against a larger, determined foe, the outnumbered soldiers, two badly wounded by arrows, finally broke off, and the raiders escaped with the herd. A lone rider slipped away in the dark to summon an ambulance from Camp Colorado, forty-five miles distant.
Why it matters
Skirmishes like this marked the long, grinding frontier conflict on the Texas plains, where settlement pressed against Comanche power for decades.
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Related people
- · Lt. T.C. Wright
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Near Site of Indian Battle
Merkel, TX
On February 15, 1870, Corporal Hilliard Morrow and five soldiers of Company E, 24th U.S. Infantry, rode from Fort Griffin to relieve the guard at the Mountain Pass mail station. Soon after they arrived, a Comanche raiding party estimated at seventy-five warriors besieged them, but the vastly outnumbered soldiers held their ground and drove off the attack, losing no men though the raiders made off with army mules and a horse from the mail company.
8.6 Miles South to Fort Phantom Hill
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Established by the U.S. Army in 1851, Fort Phantom Hill was one of a chain of frontier posts meant to shield settlers pushing into West Texas. Its regular garrison lasted only until 1854, when the fort was abandoned and burned, but the site kept serving the frontier—as a stop on the Southern Overland Mail, a sub-post of Fort Griffin, and even a temporary county seat.
Town of Buffalo Gap
Buffalo Gap, TX
Buffalo Gap takes its name from the pass in the Callahan Divide that funneled the great herds — buffalo that fed the Apache and Comanche and later drew white hunters around 1874, whose dugouts became the town's first homes. Named county seat in 1878 and sitting on the Western Cattle Trail, it briefly flourished, only to be eclipsed in 1883 when the railroad crowned nearby Abilene as county seat. Its rise and decline mirror dozens of small Texas towns that lived and died by the trail and the rail.
Taylor County
Abilene, TX
Created in 1858, Taylor County honors brothers Edward, James, and George Taylor—Tennesseans aged 18, 20, and 22 who came to Texas in 1833 and died together at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. Organized in 1878 with its first seat at Buffalo Gap, the county saw the Fort Concho–Fort Belknap stagecoach and Kansas-bound longhorn herds pass through before the county seat moved to Abilene in 1883. The marker also surveys how Texas named its 254 counties, most for the heroes of independence, statehood, and the Confederacy.