Great Panhandle Indian Scare of 1891

The scare started near the site of present Wellington in Collingsworth County, where Mrs. Will Johnson reported "bloodthirsty yells" and distant smoke. A depot agent at Salisbury wired for help, Clarendon's hardware store was picked clean of guns and ammunition, and Temple Houston was chosen to lead the defense of Panhandle City. Rangers under Capt. William J. McDonald came by rail and traced the alarm to Rocking Chair Ranch hands cooking a steer. News of the Ghost Dance and of Wounded Knee the previous December had fed the fear, and some settlers blamed ranchers for spreading it.

What the plaque says

Great Panhandle Indian Scare of 1891 Although most Indians had left the Texas Panhandle by the 1880s, fear of Indian attacks was still prevalent among settlers who arrived in the next decade. On Jan. 29, 1891, rumors of approaching Indians spread throughout the entire region. For three days settlers barricaded their homes and communities and prepared to defend themselves. Later it was discovered that the rumored Indian war cries and smoke signals were actually cowboys in pursuit of a steer they finally caught and cooked over an open fire. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gem Theatre — steps away
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The two-story house the Goodnights moved into on December 27, 1887, after leaving the JA, with a porch that looks over bison descended from the calves Mary Ann saved.
• Carson County Square House Museum — 16 mi
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• Lighthouse Trail — 21 mi
  The park's most walked trail, 2.8 miles each way across the canyon floor to the Lighthouse, a hoodoo of Triassic sandstone balanced on a pedestal of softer red shale.

More markers nearby

• Boy Scout Troop No. 17 — steps away
• Charles Howard Roan — steps away
• Town of Claude — steps away
• Route of Coronado Expedition — steps away