Site of Lyman's Wagon Train Batttle

The Handbook of Texas adds a strand the plaque leaves out. Just before the attack, Lt. Frank D. Baldwin's scouts left with Lyman's wagons a White captive raised among the Kiowa, called Tehan, taken while skirting Lone Wolf's camp. During the siege Tehan slipped away to the people who had adopted him. Kiowa leaders present included Lone Wolf, Maman-ti, Satanta and Big Tree, whose descendants belong today to the Kiowa Tribe. Thirteen soldiers received the Medal of Honor, and the fight probably helped return Satanta to prison at Huntsville.

What the plaque says

(2.5 miles south, 1.7 miles east) During the U.S. Army campaigns in 1874 against marauding Indians, Captain Wyllys Lyman led a wagon train to Camp Supply, Okla., for rations for Gen. Nelson A. Miles' troops on duty in Texas. On the way, Indians attacked, and the longest Indian battle in Panhandle history ensued. Fighting from a wagon corral Sept. 9 to 14, Lyman and 95 soldiers held off about 400 Comanche and Kiowa Indians. A scout escaped and reached Camp Supply for help. Company K, 6th Cavalry, traveled 80 miles without rest in a raging rainstorm to aid the wagon train. On its arrival, the Indians fled. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Marvin — 6.8 mi
  A small 1930s conservation lake on Boggy Creek east of Canadian, named for the Panhandle congressman whose name is on the 1937 law that turned the plains' ruined farms back to grass.
• Gene Howe Wildlife Management Area — 9.2 mi
  Five thousand acres of sand sage and cottonwood bottomland along the Canadian River east of Canadian, bought by the state in 1950 for wildlife research and open to walkers with a permit.
• The Citadelle Art Museum — 12 mi
  A 1910 Baptist church saved from demolition in 1977, made into a family home filled with art, and given to Canadian in 2009 as one of the Panhandle's few art museums.
• River Valley Pioneer Museum — 13 mi
  The Hemphill County museum in Canadian, a Santa Fe division town of 1887 on the river breaks that held one of the first commercial rodeos in Texas and voted itself dry in 1903.

More markers nearby

• Old Military Road — 6.8 mi
• 133 yards east to site of Historic Cottonwood — 6.8 mi
• Fletcher and Donley Stage Station — 7.6 mi
• Gene Howe Wildlife Management Area — 9.2 mi