Yellowhouse Canyon
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Known to Spanish explorers of the 17th and 18th centuries - Described by Albert Pike who visited the region in 1832 - The last battle in Lubbock County between white buffalo hunters and the red men who had called the plains their own occurred on this site in 1877 Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Yellowhouse Canyon was known to Spanish explorers in the 17th and 18th centuries and described by traveler Albert Pike in 1832, long before Anglo settlement reached the Llano Estacado. It was here in 1877 that white buffalo hunters clashed with the Native peoples who had long ranged these plains—remembered on the marker as the last such battle in Lubbock County. The canyon stands as a threshold between the era of the free plains tribes and the settlement that displaced them.
Why it matters
The site marks the violent close of the open-plains world, where the destruction of the buffalo and the last armed resistance sealed the dispossession of the region's Native nations.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Albert Pike
Related events
- · 1877 battle in Yellowhouse Canyon
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Battle of Blanco Canyon
Floydada, TX
By the 18th century the Comanche had made the canyons and plains of what became Floyd County their stronghold, dominating trade and warfare across Texas after pushing rival tribes south. In October 1871, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie led U.S. cavalry, guided by Tonkawa scouts, against the Kotsoteka and Quahadi bands who refused reservation life. In Blanco Canyon, Quanah Parker's warriors struck first and drove off the soldiers' horses; the fighting wounded both Mackenzie and Lieutenant Carter, and though the campaign frustrated the army, it began the destruction of Comanche power on the Southern Plains.
Coronado in Blanco Canyon
Floydada, TX
Between 1540 and 1542, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vazquez de Coronado led a vast expedition—more than a thousand people and thousands of animals—north from Mexico chasing rumors of golden cities. Their exact path across the southern plains has long puzzled historians, since surviving accounts are brief and contradictory. In the spring of 1541 the company camped in a wide canyon, and chain mail, crossbow points, and other European artifacts later unearthed around Blanco Canyon helped archaeologists confirm that Coronado passed this way.
One of the Trails of Col. Ranald S. MacKenzie
Fieldton, TX
In the summer of 1872, Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie of the U.S. Army marched 240 men and eight officers along the draw near this spot as part of the Army's campaign to force Native peoples off the Texas frontier. His swift, secret movement toward New Mexico aimed to break up a network of traders who paid Indians to raid settlers' cattle and horses. The track his soldiers beat across the plains served later scouts and settlers and is still remembered as Mackenzie's Trail.
Comanchero Trail
Littlefield, TX
Across the Llano Estacado ran one of several routes where New Mexican traders — the Comancheros — met the Comanches to barter weapons, whiskey, and goods for cattle, horses, and captives taken in Texas raids. The traffic reached back to the 1760s, when Mexican hunters first ventured onto the 'Staked Plains' after buffalo, and explorers from Zebulon Pike to Randolph Marcy later found the traders' campsites and wagon ruts. The trade finally ended in the mid-1870s as the Comanches' power on the plains was broken.