Chief Placido - Battle of Little Robe Creek

Battle of Little Robe Creek

The last battle the Tonkawa fought with and for the Texans was the Battle of Little Robe Creek. Texas Governor Hardin Runnels had campaigned for office in 1856 on a platform to put an end to the continuing Comanche and Kiowa raids from those bands of both tribes off the reservation. He publicly expressed astonishment and rage when the 2nd United States Cavalry was transferred to Utah, and ultimately disbanded altogether. Governor Runnels determined to reestablish disbanded Ranger battalions which were reduced after Texas' annexation by the United States. The end result was that on January 27, 1858, Governor Runnels appointed John Salmon "Rip" Ford, a veteran Ranger of the Mexican-American War and frontier Indian fighter, as captain and commander of the Texas Ranger, Militia, and Allied Indian Forces, and ordered him to carry the battle to the Comanches in the heart of their homeland on the Comancheria.

Ford, whose habit of signing the casualty reports with the initials "RIP" for "Rest In Peace,” was known as a ferocious and no-nonsense Indian fighter. Commonly missing from the history books was his proclivity for ordering the wholesale slaughter of any Indian, man or woman, he could find. Ford’s reason for this was simple: Comanche raids were brutal in their treatment of settlers. Thus, Ford determined to meet brutality with brutality. Governor Runnels issued very explicit orders to Ford, "I impress upon you the necessity of action and energy. Follow any trail and all trails of hostile or suspected hostile Indians you may discover and if possible, overtake and chastise them if unfriendly.

On March 19, 1858, Ford went to the Brazos Reservation, near what today is the city of Fort Worth, Texas, and recruited the Tonkawa into his forces. Tonkawa Indians, the latter commanded by their “celebrated” chief, Placido, are hailed today as the “faithful and implicitly trusted friend of the whites” (with limited mention of their cannibalism) . Without the Tonkawa, and their 100 experienced warriors, Ford simply did not have enough men to launch a campaign into the Comancheria. After recruiting Placido, Ford undertook a campaign with approximately an equal number of Texas Rangers and Tonkawa Warriors against the Comanches. Ford and Placido were determined to follow the Comanche and Kiowa up to their strongholds amid the hills of the Canadian river, and into the Wichita Mountains, and if possible, “kill their warriors, decimate their food supply, strike at their homes and families and generally destroy their ability to make war.” In April 1858, Ford established Camp Runnells near what used to be the town of Belknap. Ford, still operating under Governor Runnell’s explicits orders to “follow any and all trails of hostile and suspected hostile Indians, inflict the most severe and summary punishment,” and to “allow no interference from any source.” (That source was interpreted to mean the United States, whose Army and Indian Agents might try to enforce federal treaties and federal statutory law against trespassing on the Indian territories in Oklahoma).

On April 15, Ford's Rangers, accompanied by Tonkawa warriors, and Anadarko and Shawnee scouts from the Brazos Reservation in Texas, crossed the Red River into Indian Territory. The force then advanced into the portion of the Comancheria in the Indian Territories in Oklahoma. Ford led his men across the Red River, into the Indian Territory, violating federal laws and numerous treaties, but stating later that his job was to “find and fight Indians, not to learn geography.”

At sunrise on May 12, 1858. Ford and his joint force of Rangers and Tonkawa began an all-day battle with a dawn attack on a sleeping Comanche village. The so-called Battle of Little Robe Creek was actually three distinct separate incidents which happened over the course of a single day. The first was the attack on the sleeping village. The second was a follow up attack on the village of Iron Jacket, somewhat further up the Canadian River. Iron Jacket, so named for the coat of iron mail he wore in battle was killed in this exchange, and the remainder of his village was saved by the timely intervention of Peta Nocona with a third force of Comanche who arrived to engage Ford while all the villages along the Canadian made a swift withdrawal. Before the withdrawal, a dozen Tonkawas were killed in single combat with Comanches whose challenge to single combat they accepted. Ford, enraged by the losses, finally forbid the Tonkawa to accept anymore.

Peta Nocona knew that his warriors were no match for the Rangers in an even exchange of gunfire, and had no intention of engaging in such an exchange. He used every trick available to him, including attempting to lure the Rangers and Tonkawas into individual duals, to delay the enemy so the villages upriver would be able to withdraw safely. In this, he was successful.

The Battle of Little Robe Creek was notable in that the Texan forces first, invaded the United States against every tenet of federal law and numerous Indian Treaties, attacked Indian villages without warning of any kind, and allowed their allied Indians, the Tonkawa, to eat some of the Comanche killed in battle.