U.S. Army on the Texas Frontier

The annexation of Texas and the acquisition of the Southwest following the war against Mexico posed significant challenges for the United States army in the west. Previously, idealistic policy-makers had assumed that expansion would occur from east to west, in a gradual, predictable process. To protect this westward movement, the army had attempted to establish military posts at strategic points. Indians would be relocated west of these garrisons. Separating the two groups might limit the opportunity for mischief on both sides. Some had even envisioned a north/south military road dividing the two peoples, further reducing the potential for conflict.

In practice, the War Department had never fully implemented these plans. The army never had enough troops to be everywhere at once, and political and economic pressures rather than sound military principles often dictated the location of frontier posts. In any event, the new western realities shattered traditional thinking.

Lured by the discovery of gold in California, tens of thousands of civilians rushed west, ruining any hopes of an orderly American occupation of the newly acquired territories. And in Texas, the army had to position its troops not only to face Indians from the west and north, but to protect the international border with Mexico. Furthermore, the Lone Star state's ownership of its public lands prevented the federal government from establishing large Indian reservations in the western part of the state, save for an unsuccessful attempt to carve out two enclaves on the Brazos River between 1854-1859.

In the absence of a comprehensive national strategy, the first two commanders of what evolved into the military Department of Texas, Maj. Gen. William J. Worth (1848-49) and Maj. Gen. George Mercer Brooke, vice Brig Gen., (1849-51), began the work of confirming United States authority along the southern and western frontiers of Texas. Along the lower Rio Grande, Forts Polk and Brown had been established during the war against Mexico; to these, Brooke added Ringgold Barracks, Fort McIntosh, and Fort Duncan.

Finally, the inexorable expansion of non-Indian settlement meant that the lines of posts would be temporary. Forts Polk, Gates, Lincoln, Croghan, Graham, Worth, Terrett, Ewell, and Merrill were soon rendered obsolete.

Texas' declaration of secession in early 1861 caught federal military officials off guard. Although members of several garrisons made their way to the safety of New Mexico, the Indian territory, Kansas, or were evacuated from coastal ports, nearly four hundred troops from stations west of San Antonio were forced to surrender to state authorities. Texas or Confederate troops occupied several of the abandoned posts, especially in northwest Texas, but Indians burned and looted some of the others, such as Fort Davis. In the absence of federal troops, some Texans tried to defend themselves by "forting up" in rude blockhouses or walled positions.

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War in mid-1865, military officials were more interested in reinstalling federal authority in Texas than they were in reestablishing the army's presence on the state's sparsely settled frontiers. "Texas has not yet suffered from the war and will require some intimidation," asserted Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, military commander of Texas and Louisiana. But as reports of depredations attributed to Indians escalated, in 1866-67 the regulars in blue began marching west. The army once again occupied Forts Bliss, Clark, Davis, McIntosh, Ringgold, and Stockton, which became stalwarts of the post-Civil War frontier system.

By contrast, the federals only briefly returned to Lancaster, Belknap, Martin Scott, Mason, Inge, Chadbourne, Hudson, and Verde. In their stead came newer positions, further west and north—Forts Richardson, Concho, Elliott, and Griffin. Many garrisons also tended sub-posts to help them patrol the long, sparsely settled distances of west Texas; in some cases, such as the Fort Davis subposts of Camp Pena Colorado and Fort Hancock, these former sub-posts evolved into semi-permanent forts that outlived their mother bases.

Frontier forts served as bases from which scouts, pursuits, large-scale offensives, and escorts or guards were launched. Before the Civil War, most common was combat resulting from a successful pursuit, triggered by information gleaned by post or detachment commanders that Indians had been discovered. Following the war, however, most engagements stemmed from routine scouts, sent to interdict likely avenues of approach or widely used trails or waterholes.

Most of the successful large-scale expeditions, involving several companies engaged in campaigns that were projected to take longer and involve greater distances, also came after 1865. Combat involving mail parties, stagecoaches, and construction teams accounted for less than 10 percent of all engagements. The overwhelming majority of the fights were short and badly fragmented skirmishes involving about three dozen combatants per side. Sixty-four soldiers were killed and 116 wounded during these clashes; the army reported 424 Indians killed, 112 wounded, and 267 taken prisoner.

Assessing the true military effectiveness of the frontier forts in Texas is difficult. As historian Robert Utley has noted, many officers saw the wars against the Indians as a "fleeting bother," not worthy of the time or energy it would take to develop tactics or strategy suitable to such conflicts. Successful officers developed methods through personal observation, by trial and error, by word of mouth, or by individual ingenuity rather than through recognized army doctrine.

The vast majority of scouts, pursuits, and large-scale campaigns found no Indians. Pointing to the futility of such efforts, Texans often charged that the federal government never devoted sufficient resources to their state. Although such claims often made for good politics with the folks back home, in reality Texas probably exceeded its fair share of War Department resources; in 1856, for example, fully twenty-five percent of the entire army was based in Texas. More telling, if less politically popular, was the argument that the army was simply too small to carry out all the responsibilities expected of it. In addition to fighting Indians, regulars garrisoned coastal defensive fortifications, provided assistance to civilians in times of crisis, helped to maintain domestic order, patrolled national parks, conducted scientific research, and engaged in civil engineering jobs. The chronic shortage of mounted troops exacerbated the army's difficulties.

Despite these shortfalls, the frontier forts had an enormous impact on Texas history. As one observer exclaimed, army forts served "as the oasis in the desert" for many a weary traveler. The forts also provided a tremendous economic stimulus. From 1849 to 1900, the army disbursed some $70 million in Texas, an amount equivalent to more than twice the valuation of all the assessed property in the state at the time of its annexation. And with the army often came schools, churches, roads, and surveys.

Offering jobs, profits, a modicum of American culture, the army's forts often served as the genesis for permanent civilian settlement, resulting in new towns like San Angelo, Gatesville, Fort Davis, Fort Stockton, and Fort Worth. Their presence also boosted the chances of existing sites like San Antonio (usually the site of department headquarters), Eagle Pass, Brownsville, and El Paso. As a legendary Texas historian once put it, "No story of the Texas heritage can be complete without telling the role its forts played in making that heritage possible."