Slideshow
...
...
...
A gallery of all the photos
Indian and Buffalo Removal precede the coming of the JA Ranch & the Open Range
Where and how our fates are linked
The Many Endings of ‘Staked Plains’
Free Indian life ended on the Southern Plains when 1500 Commanche & Kiowa horses were destroyed in Tule Canyon in the Red River War of 1874.
Adair and Goodnight put down stakes in Palo Duro Canyon
Indian and Buffalo Removal precede the coming of the JA Ranch & the Open Range
Commanche land map The vastness that once was Commancheria.
From Catlin’s 18xx trip to Comancheria. (Smithsonian American Indian Collection)
The Second Presbyterian Church was erected close to Sheridan’s Chicago mansion in 1874. That September, the Adair’s visit Sheridan in Chicago, perhaps prey ...
Ranald “Bad Hand” Mackezie was the primary scourge and pursuer of Indians in the Red River War. He ordered his men to destroy over 1500 captured horses in T...
Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator. J A Ranch Headquarters, Paloduro, Armstrong County, TX. Armstrong County Paloduro Texas, 1933. Documentation C...
“Before the hunters invaded Texas, the market had priced the buffalo. The slaughter was so efficient that the remaining herds panicked, and both the hunted a...
Eyewitness Testimony: How the Buffalo became “The Bone Boom”
“Quanah Parker was the child of a Commanche father, Peta Nocona, and Cynthia Ann Parker, a white woman. Once Charles Goodnight found their encampment, Quanah...
“The Adair’s were soon to enter a Texas economy ablaze with pent-up Railroad Frenzy, put on hold by the Civil War. Not only would this soon spell the end of ...
“Goodnight’s admiring biographer records the inscription engraved on the barrel of young Charlie’s “fine rifle” from his days as a Confederate Frontier Regim...
“In 1879, Gen. William “Tecumseh” Sherman, took time out from fighting Indians out West to go East and address the Centennial of Gen. Sullivan’s 1779 victory...
“In May of 1871, the Army’s Col. Richard Dodge, who escorted Russian Crown Prince Alexi’s grand western hunt, could wade through an ocean of buffaloes. In Se...
“Charlie Goodnight grew large on massive cattle drives and trail blazing. When the Santa Fe Railroad reached Amarillo, it marked the end of that trail. Then ...
“How the allure of Indian lands made partners out of Civil War opponents.”
“After dispossessions - east and west - Indians were shoe-horned into “Indian Country.” The next step was to legally atomize it into individual saleable unit...
“In 1873, the year before the Adair’s went West, Mark Twain published his amazing The Gilded Age, and captured the tone of inevitable private abundance at th...
“A purely reverential portrait of Goodnight by his famed biographer.”
“All the romance and passion of a landed tradition that eclipsed - but doesn’t refer to - the Indian tradition that it supplanted.”
“The great herds of the middle region were wiped out then, and the kill moved south to Texas for its second major phase…”
“They caught the scent of water on the air and began a great motion, until the broad shadow lake became a wallow of virtually all the southern herd… The hide...
“To maintain their landed Victorian lifestyle, the Adair’s required a Bonanza. Their JA Ranch investment did not disappoint.”
“I delighted in a plunge at the big spring, formerly a watering place of the Indians…”
“Where buffalo first emerged, free Indians last migrated”
“Charlie Goodnight, while decidedly brilliant, ruled his great cattle drives like a feudal overlord.”
“Charles Goodnight was a legendary trailblazer before Adair arrived on the scene with financing. For all the romance of his great cattle drives, they have a ...
“The historic existence in Texas of these people [Indians and Tejanos] will always live on in John Wayne films and the distorted history created by Anglo fou...
“Crony legislation, unappropriated holdings bought with land scrip, and loan-fueled survey teams carved up Indian Country into the Almighty grids and lots th...
“Speculators Jot Gunter and Bill Munson got a law through the Texas Legislature authorizing a man to file on a whole county for one dollar and a half; and, a...
“Adair and Goodnight were five years ahead of their time. In 1881, a “Beef Bonanza” was proclaimed by General James S. Brisbin, who stampeded English and Ame...
“From the memoirs of a soldier who guarded the pacified…”
“So every time has its own special joys, and the great thing is to miss as little as possible, and to share as much.”
“Back East, settlement required deforestation; out West, it mandated buffalo harvesting.”
“The official online description of the current exhibit, “JA: The Paloduro Ranch,” forgets the “I-word”. (Check back for our coming review of the most import...
“Captain R. G. Carter was there, in Tule Canyon with Mackenzie, when 2000 Commanche horses were destroyed. While barely remembered, this event broke Indian r...
In 1927, Harley True Burton submitted his classic JA Ranch History for his MA Degree. wordlcat
“After the Red River War, 73 Indians were designated as ringleaders of the rebellion and transported, in a reverse Trail of Tears, to Ft. Marion Florida. The...
“As the Adair’s hunt buffalo, this pincer operation drives Indians back to their hated reservations, marking the first use of the Gatling gun againts Indians...
“Accounts blandly say he opened a loan brokerage in 1866 in New York; the place where he, a presumably very landed gentleman, meets and marries his presumabl...
Spain declared the New World hers by the Vatican’s Doctrine of Discovery. Read aloud to native peoples, in Spanish, by Conquistadors like Coronado, the Requi...
“Larry McMurtry’s description of the Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne in 1864 seems just as true of Mackenzie’s record destruction of at least 1,500 Commanche...
On August 30th, 1874, the Adair’s take the Great Southern & Western Railway(!) train from Portarlington, Ireland down to Queenstown, to catch the SS Cuba...
An evolving Who’s Who of this Staked Plains/Palo Duro saga and its aftermaths (In progress… Please add your players!)
Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis proposed in 1851 by physician Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, of the Louisiana Medical Association, to explain the tendenc...
Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis proposed in 1851 by physician Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, of the Louisiana Medical Association, to explain the tendenc...
Civilization is extending in opposite directions, Westward across the great Valley of the Mississippi, and Eastward traversing the auriferous regions of the ...
The way through the Staked Plains to and from Palo Duro is a moonlit clash of civilizations.
Hunt Buffalo! Plant Corn! Hunt Buffalo! Reap Corn! The Solutions to the “Indian Question” fly fast and furious. But wherever there is land, only one solution...
Satanta, the revered Kiowa chief, fought, then tried, then died on the white road. As 1870 approaches, he speaks his poignant truths to Indian Agent Lawrie T...
An homage to the JA Ranch will open at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon Texas. Curated by Bill Green, it will open February 17th and run throug...
The Adair-Goodnight Project barbed-wires the land. In the Panhandle and beyond, it first eclipses the Indian’s hunting grounds, then the Cowboy’s free range ...
The “Llano Estacado” - Staked Plains - is the name affixed by the Conquistadors to an unquenchable western vastness. They were far from empty plains. Andy Wi...
Charlie Goodnight’s dream is to ranch the Palo Duro. Hitched to Goodnight’s voracious savvy, John Adair’s voracious wealth makes it possible. Goodnight’s nep...
In early October 1874, the Adair’s meet formally with a band of starving Ogalala Sioux. The couple asks permission to follow behind, so that John can watch h...
The Time for Amarillo, Texas, the nearest big city to Palo Duro Canyon
On September 28, 1874, Mrs. Adair writes this piqued diary entry. Her travel snafus come on a day, when, to the south, “Bad Hand” Mackenzie’s troops surprise...
America’s first Gilded Age rises from the brutal Depression of 1873-1879. Just then, two wealthy Victorians - Ireland’s John George Adair and his American wi...
Llano map A satellite view of the Staked Plains and Texas Panhandle. The Staked Plains are the vastne...
Palo Duro today map A Texas highway map pinpoints Palo Duro Canyon and the counties it spans. (Texas ...
Coronado map Spanish Conquistador Coronado’s fabled trek through the Southwest, crossed the Llano Est...
Commanche land map The vastness that once was Commancheria.
Commancheria gallery Traditional Commanche Territories.
forts Federal forts that occupy Texas, 1860-1890.
Indian country map Indian Country as War Looms (1874) The location of tribes on the eve of the Red...
Lubbock map A Park in Lubbock Homage to Ranald “Bad Hand” Mackenzie
Red River map Key sites of the Red River (Buffalo) War of 1874 (Texas Beyond History)
Territory map Just 13 years before this map, the region hosted sovereign Indian homelands. The map sh...
“Accounts blandly say he opened a loan brokerage in 1866 in New York; the place where he, a presumably very landed gentleman, meets and marries his presumabl...
An evolving Who’s Who of this Staked Plains/Palo Duro saga and its aftermaths (In progress… Please add your players!)
Ranald “Bad Hand” Mackezie was the primary scourge and pursuer of Indians in the Red River War. He ordered his men to destroy over 1500 captured horses in T...
Watch this space The coming year will see a number of public lectures, panels and events devoted to the Staked Plains saga as an event and a powerful symbol....
“The coming year will see a number of public lectures, panels and events devoted to the Staked Plains saga as an event and a powerful symbol. These will plac...
“The creator of StakedPlains.com, Dr. Robert Spiegelman, offers powerful and informed presentations to groups of all ages and backgrounds on the dramatic his...