Vicinity of Indian Fight

A ranger history gathered from a participant, Dick Cunningham, tells a longer story. The men from Camp Colorado in Coleman County, led by Captain Jack Wright, followed a dozen Native riders, probably Comanche (Numunuu), toward Buffalo Gap, lost their pack mules in the first clash, fought again that day, and met a third time on a cedar hill near present Cedar Gap. George Gentry, Elic Powers and Billy Ellison were too badly hurt to move. Accounts disagree on the year, 1862 or 1863. The bodies of nine were found buried under rock and brush.

What the plaque says

Vicinity of Indian Fight On August 29, 1863, Indian riders (probably Comanches) coming north from Mason County, with stolen horses, were caught a mile east of Buffalo Gap by Lt. T. C. Wright and eleven state troopers. The outnumbered soldiers were forced to attack up a steep hill and the Indians, determined to keep the herd, fought stubbornly. Wright and his men - two with severe arrow wounds - finally gave up the unequal fight and the Indians escaped with the horses. A lone rider was sent under cover of night to Camp Colorado (45 miles southeast) to bring an ambulance for the wounded. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 0.4 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Abilene State Park — 5.0 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Frontier Texas! — 13 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 24 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.

More markers nearby

• Town of Buffalo Gap — steps away
• Buffalo Gap College — steps away
• The Ernie Wilson Museum — 0.4 mi
• Buffalo Gap Cemetery — 1.8 mi