THIS WEEK IN TEXAS HISTORY
THIS WEEK IN TEXAS HISTORY
Although everything was in their favor, the Kickapoos, who were only passing through West Texas en route to Mexico, went out of their way to avoid a fight on Jan. 8, 1865.
The first sign of the Kickapoo exodus from the Indian Territory was detected the previous month at the headwaters of the Brazos River. Militiamen on routine reconnaissance came across an empty camp of 92 wigwams and ten tents that had been vacant no more than a couple of days. The two dozen volunteers hurried home with the unfounded hunch that hundreds of hostiles were on the warpath.
Since nearly all ablebodied Texans were away at war, a “home guard” had been created to deal with domestic emergencies. As a result, 325 adolescents, old men and maimed veterans of the North-South carnage assembled at Meridian the week before Christmas under the command of Capt. S.S. Totton.
Everyone had something to prove. For the ragtag rank and file, the expedition offered the opportunity to refute the charge that they were the cowardly dregs of Lone Star society. For Totton, whose military career had been cut short by a Yankee bullet, it was the chance to show he was still fit for combat.
Equally as eager for a share of the glory was the captain of the Rebel regulars at Fort Chadbourne. While common sense dictated that he wait for the militia, Henry Fossett set out in search of the unidentified Indians on Jan. 3, 1865 with an insufficient force of 165 troops.
During four days in the saddle, the Confederates discovered a string of four large campsites. On the fifth day, scouts found the migrating Kickapoos on Dove Creek 16 miles from present-day San Angelo.
The elated Fossett announced his plan for an immediate attack only to have the party crashed by several home guardsmen. He grudgingly agreed to rendezvous with the “flop-eared militia,” as the regulars called them, in a ravine three miles from the Kickapoo stronghold.
The Confederates reached the location at two o’clock in the morning seven hours ahead of their civilian counterparts, who had to ride all night to keep the appointment. The impatient Fossett not only ruled out a nap and a meal for the exhausted volunteers but also put a five-minute time limit on the strategy session with co-commander Totton.
As orders filtered down through the ranks, a tribal elder appeared out of nowhere to plead the Kickapoo case. He explained that his people were “friendly Indians” whose sole desire was safe passage to Mexico. Fossett retorted that any Indian caught in Texas was by definition up to no good and had the emissary executed on the spot.
The militiamen with Capt. Totton in the lead were already wading Dove Creek in a suicidal storming of the Kickapoo defenses. From the dense brush on the opposite bank, as many as a thousand warriors opened fire with Einfield rifles killing 18 part-time soldiers and seriously wounding 14 others.
The panic-stricken survivors “fled like stampeded cattle,” according to an eyewitness. Totton begged and bellowed, but his frightened followers refused to budge from their flickering campfires. There was nothing the captain could say to persuade them to return to battle.
The initial wave of 75 Confederates escaped a similar ambush with minor wounds. However, when the regulars regrouped for a counterattack, they were pinned down by a cleverly conceived crossfire that would have made a West Point graduate proud.
The troopers spent the rest of the day flat on their stomachs rarely rising to risk a shot at their invisible foe. The estimated 1,400 Kickapoos could have crushed the Confederate contingent at any moment yet were content to inflict a few token casualties.
The Indians pulled back soon after sunset allowing their helpless opponent to slip safely out of the trap. The uniformed Rebs and their plainclothes comrades owed their lives to a wise Kickapoo chief.
Common sense rather than compassion guided No-Ko-Wat’s decision not to slaughter the whites, whose actions merited no mercy. He knew that a massacre would mean annihilation of the Kickapoos because Texans never let a bloodbath go unavenged. By sparing his adversaries, the chief saved his own people.
Captains Fossett and Totton colored their accounts of the debacle at Dove Creek in a clumsy attempt to save face and salvage their reputations. Both minimized the scope of the humiliating defeat, while wildly exaggerating the losses suffered by the other side.
The record was eventually set straight by an Austin newspaper that published an Eagle Pass interview with No-Ko-Wat. Readers were shocked to learn that his dead totaled 14 instead of the hundreds claimed by Fossett and Totton.
In other words, the Kickapoos pulled their punches and still kicked butt.
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