Battle of Yellow House Canyon - Aftermath

Aftermath

Although the battle itself was a failure, it marked the beginning of the end of the war. Word of the fight soon reached Fort Griffin, and Captain P. L. Lee responded by going after the hostiles with 72 soldiers of the 10th Cavalry. At Lubbock Lake, they turned north, and on May 4 overtook the natives at Quemodo Lake in Cochran County. A brief skirmish erupted, in which one Ekawakane and his wife were killed. As a result, the remaining natives surrendered and returned to Fort Sill.

Several accounts of the battle exist, told from different points of view. Two of the Texan participants, John Cook and Willis Glenn, left descriptions of the action in their memoirs. Herman Lehmann, too, gave an account of the affair in his autobiography, telling it from the Indian point of view.

The site of the battle is today located in the Canyon Lake Project in Lubbock. Monuments mark a number of sites within the area associated with the battle. Some accounts place the frontiersman Charles "Buffalo" Jones, the cofounder of Garden City, Kansas, and a leader in the efforts to prevent the extinction of the buffalo, at the battle site.