Battle of the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos

Robert Goldthwaite Carter was born at Bridgton, Maine, in 1845 and enlisted as a private in the Twenty-second Massachusetts Infantry, serving from 1862 to 1864. He graduated from West Point in June 1870, married that September, and set out with his bride, Mary, for San Antonio and the Fourth Cavalry. Disability contracted in the line of duty ended his career in 1876. Besides his Texas pamphlets, later collected as On the Border with Mackenzie (1935), he wrote The Boy Soldier at Gettysburg. He died in 1936 and lies in Arlington.

What the plaque says

Battle of the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos In Sep. 1871, Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie and the 4th U.S. Cavalry received permission to lead an expedition from Fort Griffin (Shackelford County) and engage Comanche who had refused to move to their designated reservation at Fort Sill (Oklahoma territory). Soon after midnight on October 11, 1871, the Comanche surprised Col. Mackenzie's U.S. Cavalry Troops as they camped on the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos River (now White River). The camp near the mouth of Blanco Canyon was infiltrated by numerous warriors with the goal of delaying the army's advance into the Texas panhandle. After the Comanche stampeded the camp, scattering and taking dozens of horses, a chase ensued. Col. Mackenzie, Lt. Robert G. Carter and a small contingent of soldiers followed the Comanche. During a pursuit of more than forty miles, two Comanche and Pvt. Leander Gregg were killed, Lt. Carter's leg was crushed when his horse slipped, and Col. Mackenzie was shot in the leg when returning to Blanco Canyon. The army's pursuit ended soon after the wounded and sick retreated back to the post on Nov. 5th. Carter, who kept a pocket diary of the expedition, wrote books and articles about his exploits in the Civil War and Indian wars. In 1900 he received the Medal of Honor for "most distinguished gallantry" in what had become known as the Battle of Blanco Canyon. Col. Mackenzie's command marched more than 500 miles on the expedition before returning to their posts. This marked the initial contact between Quanah Parker and the Quahadi Comanche and Col. Mackenzie and the U.S. Army, and the beginning of the end of Comanche dominance in the Panhandle, concluding with the Red River War of 1874. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum — 3.6 mi
  Crosbyton's museum of Blanco Canyon, built in 1958 as a copy of Hank Smith's Rock House, and the place to learn the canyon's 1871 fight between Mackenzie's cavalry and Quanah's Quahadi Comanche.
• Spur-Dickens County Museum — 23 mi
  Dickens County's museum on the main block of Spur, a town born on November 1, 1909, when the first train reached the land a New York syndicate was selling off from the Spur Ranch.
• Motley County Historical Museum — 31 mi
  Matador's museum in the 1928 Traweek Hospital, in the county seat a Scottish-owned ranch created by having its cowboys open one-day businesses to pass a state rule.

More markers nearby

• Main Supply Camp on Historic Mackenzie Trail — steps away
• Texas Ranger Campsite — steps away
• Two-Buckle Ranch Headquarters, Kentucky Cattle Raising Company — steps away
• Old Dewey Lake — steps away