Dove Creek Battle

The Handbook of Texas calls Dove Creek a controversial battle. About 325 militiamen under Capt. S. S. Totten and Confederate troops under Capt. Henry Fossett set out without a unified command. Scouts took the camp on Dove Creek for Comanche or Kiowa, and some historians argue the leaders should have seen that the Kickapoo people there were peaceful. The Kickapoos, bound for Mexico to escape the war, later said they lost twelve in the fight and two more after reaching Mexico. The Handbook says the battle embittered them and led to raids from Mexico.

What the plaque says

[front] On January 8, 1865 eight miles east of here Confederate troops and Texas militiamen engaged a large party of Kickapoo Indians. The Indians, formerly hostile to the South, had entered Texas without authority and were making their way to Mexico. Troops attacked them and following five hours of desperate fighting, withdrew, having suffered the loss of 22 killed and 19 wounded. Indian losses from the encounter were probably less. Later raids by the Kickapoos were traced to the Dove Creek fight. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy Erected by the State of Texas 1963 [back] TEXAS CIVIL WAR INDIAN TROUBLE War brought turmoil to Indians living in Kansas and the Indian Territory, with unfortunate results for Texans on the frontier. Most Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles aided the South, while others adhered to the North. The Comanches made a treaty with the South but a great majority, with their allies the Kiowas, held aloof from either side, and plundered the frontier at will. Apaches and the Kickapoos did the same from Mexico. Texas and Confederate troops, despite poor arms and mounts, held defense lines until war's end. (1963)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Angelo State Park — 23 mi
  A 7,677-acre park around O.C. Fisher Reservoir on the edge of San Angelo, where four Texas landscapes meet and the state's official longhorn herd grazes beside a bison paddock.
• Concho River Walk — 26 mi
  Four miles of lit trails along the North Concho through downtown San Angelo, rebuilt after voters taxed themselves in 2004, with gardens, sculpture, a river stage and stocked trout.
• Fort Concho National Historic Landmark — 27 mi
  The stone post at the forks of the Concho, headquarters of the Tenth Cavalry from 1875 to 1882, saved by a woman with a museum and now a city-run landmark of 23 original buildings.
• San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts — 27 mi
  A free art museum on the Concho beside Fort Concho, founded in the fort's 1868 quartermaster building and known nationally for its biennial ceramics competition.

More markers nearby

• Irion County — 1.8 mi
• Sherwood Courthouse — 2.1 mi
• Knickerbocker Schools — 12 mi
• Knickerbocker — 12 mi