The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon

The camps here belonged to Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne bands, peoples now represented by the Comanche Nation, the Kiowa Tribe and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. The Kiowa shaman Maman-ti had promised them safety in the canyon. Tonkawa scouts under their chief, Johnson, found the way down, and the Comanche leader Red Warbonnet fired a warning shot before he was killed. With the camps strung along the canyon floor, the Cheyenne chief Iron Shirt, the Comanche leader Poor Buffalo and the Kiowa chief Lone Wolf could not mount a united defense.

What the plaque says

The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon September 28, 1874 One of the most significant battles of 1874-75 Indian campaign; columns of troops converging from five directions harassed Indians on the Panhandle Plains for over six months. The 4th Cavalry under Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, moving north from Fort Concho, tracked a large band of Indians to their secret canyon camp. Moving silently at dawn down a perilous path on the south rim, the first troops reached the floor of the canyon before the aroused camp fled. Some of the warriors took up positions on the canyon walls from which they fired on the troops, seeking to give their families time to escape. Realizing his tactical disadvantage, Mackenzie ordered the Indian camp and supplies burned and withdrew, taking along 1,400 captured horses (1,000 of which he later destroyed). The cavalry suffered no causalities in the fight and only four Indian dead were counted. Having lost half their horses as well as all their supplies and shelter, the Indians drifted back to their reservations at Fort Sill and Fort Reno. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lighthouse Trail — 2.3 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.
• TEXAS Outdoor Musical — 3.4 mi
  A summer pageant of Panhandle settler life staged since 1966 in the Pioneer Amphitheater, built into a basin of Palo Duro Canyon below a 600-foot cliff.
• Palo Duro Canyon State Park — 4.6 mi
  The upper end of the canyon the state bought in 1933, where CCC crews built the road to the floor and the army burned the winter camps of the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne in 1874.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 16 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.

More markers nearby

• The Civilian Conservation Corps at Palo Duro Canyon State Park — 4.6 mi
• The Old JA Ranch — 5.2 mi
• The S.P. Hamblen Family — 14 mi
• Hamblen Drive — 15 mi