Finding Cynthia Ann Parker

 

Cynthia Ann Parker nursing her daughter Prairie Flower

The Scalp Collector

The evening rain fell in torrents, making it difficult to see in the distance. A young cattleman and scout named Charles Goodnight rode from house to house along the western edge of Parker County, trying to raise a company of volunteers to chase down a Comanche war party. A few days earlier, his neighbor, Martha Sherman, was gang-raped, scalped and shot with arrows before giving birth to a dead child. She died too - four agonizing days later.

His last stop, the dogtrot cabin of Isaac Lynn came into view. The curling smoke from its chimney inferred warmth and comfort, which belied the gruesome discovery inside. Under the glow of a burning fireplace, Goodnight found Lynn roasting an Indian scalp on a forked dogwood stick. Along with the pungent order, grease oozed from its skin, eventually becoming dry and tough, thus preserving it against any damaging moisture. After his daughter, son-in-law and their baby were killed by Indians, Lynn began amassing a collection of scalps. Goodnight’s attention was diverted by the arrival of eight volunteers to help him chase down the Comanches. Time was of the essence, or else they would disappear into the vastness of West Texas.

 Governor Houston’s Dilemma

In 1860, Comanche raids had increased sharply in Jack, Palo Pinto, Parker, and Young counties. Newly elected Texas governor, Sam Houston, told legislators, “Depredations by the Indians are so frequent that to hear of them has almost ceased to excite sympathy and attention in the interior of the state.” The U.S. Army, underpaid and overstretched, garrisoned a line of forts across Texas, but could accomplish little against the nimble Comanches. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of War John B. Floyd, Houston wrote, “Unless the Indians are fools enough to go up to a Garrison and be shot down, Garrisons will be of no use only to shelter the inmates.” He also pointed out that Federal horses were grain fed, not grass fed, and of little use in riding the vast distances in search of Indians.  Then there was the problem of money. There just wasn’t enough to pay and supply all the Rangers and volunteers needed. In desperation, Houston turned to an old political crony, Milton Tate Johnson.

 

Middleton Tate Johnson

Milton Tate Johnson Takes Command

A native of North Carolina, Johnson served two terms in the Texas Legislature and ran for governor four times, losing in each attempt. He commanded a regiment of Texas Rangers along the Trinity River. On June 6, 1849, he and Brever Major Ripley A. Arnold established a fort they named after U.S. Army General William J. Worth – Fort Worth.  Johnson also helped organize Tarrant County. He later established a cotton plantation, becoming the largest slaveholder in Tarrant County.

On March 17, 1860, Houston authorized Johnson to raise a force of Rangers. Eventually, seven companies were raised and assembled at Fort Belknap in Young County. Among them was a promising young captain named Lawrence Sullivan Ross. Fort Belknap was a U. S. Army fort abandoned after the nearby Indian reservation was closed and the Indians moved north into the Indian Territory. After a rousing parade, the problems began to emerge, the main one being a lovesick Johnson.     

Love and Rangers

Her name was Mary Louisa Givens, the English widow of a U.S. Army officer, who was suspended after his men tried to burn down their own fort near Abilene, Texas.  Johnson, himself a widower with five children, was head-over-heels to the point he abruptly left Fort Belknap to marry his sweetheart in Galveston. In a private letter to Houston, Johnson wrote, “I am bound to see her, but will be back before I am missed.”   

He was missed all right. Without a firm guiding hand, the Rangers began to drink and fight amongst themselves. A lack of food and water added to the deteriorating morale.  The Rangers, less Johnson, finally set out on June 10, 1860, to take on the Comanches. Under the command of Captain J. M. Smith, they found no Indians. The offensive failed miserably.  Under mounting criticism, Houston was forced to disband Johnson’s command.

Lawrence Sullivan Ross

The Tracking

Meanwhile the raids grew worse. The Comanches made off with a huge herd of horses. This time, the response was quicker.  Under the more competent command of Captain Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross, fifty-nine rangers, ninety-three volunteers, including Goodnight and the eight he brought from Parker County, and a detachment of twenty-one U.S. cavalrymen rode out on December 14, 1860. They rode through the Western Cross Timbers until they reached the Pease River near present day Vernon. Goodnight scouted the way, made difficult by thousands of Buffalo tracks. Through experience, he managed to discern the horse tracks from those of the buffalo.  A break came when he discovered Martha Sherman’s family bible. Comanches often took books during raids, using the paper to pad their shields against bullets. Another sign was the nearby chittam trees, which bore a berry Comanches craved. Looking over the ground around the trees, Goodnight saw signs they were not more than ten minutes away. A freshwater creek, Mule Creek, was close by. It was likely the Comanches were camping there.

Ross found them first. Only two hundred miles away were eight or nine grass huts. Not exactly a whole Comanche village filled with menacing warriors, but more of a camp used to process buffalo meat. The Indians were casually packing-up to leave, never noticing what was about to happen. The cavalry
detachment broke away to block of the Indians escape route. The Rangers charged head on, hitting the Comanche camp like a cue ball hitting racked billiard balls. The Indians scattered in all directions. The Rangers shot down squaws and men alike. Ross shot down one Comanche later identified as a chief, Peta Nocona, though Comanche witnesses later testified that it wasn’t him. During the battle of what was latter called The Battle of Pease River, seven Comanches were killed during the charge. Four of them were women. Ranger Hiram Rogers later recalled, “but I am not very proud of it. That was not a battle at all, but just a killing of squaws.”

 

Cynthia Ann

Among the female captives, Ross made a startling discovery. One of the squaws was a blue-eyed Caucasian, holding a baby. Her hair was cropped short in Comanche fashion. Covered with blood and grease from handling buffalo carcasses, she called herself Naudah and was taken captive as a child, but having little recollection of how it happened. Mother and child were taken to Camp Cooper in Throckmorton County. While there, it was revealed she was Cynthia Ann Parker, captured by the Comanches at the age of nine, brought up Comanche, and married to the slain Peta Nocona. Cynthia Ann had two sons and a daughter named Prairie Flower, who was the only child she had with her. Now thirty-three years old, she knew little English and felt more captured than rescued. Cynthia Ann agreed to live with her Uncle Isaac at his farm near Fort Worth, but she was more the grieving Comanche widow than the grateful, long-lost niece finally returning home. She slept on the floor and spent hours by a campfire staring up at the stars, depressed by the loss of her husband and not being able to see her sons. When Prairie Flower died of a fever, she mourned in the Plains Indian way by cutting herself along the arms and breast. Cynthia Ann Parker died in 1870 of an unknown illness, no doubt exacerbated by a broken heart. One of her surviving sons would grow up to become the last great chief of the Comanches - Quannah Parker.

 

Check It Out

Check out the movie, “The Searchers,” based on the novel by Alan Le May about the kidnapping of a Caucasian girl by Comanches. The girl’s half crazed uncle, played by John Wayne, conducts a search for her.

Goodnight Stakes His Claim

Charles Goodnight

In 1876, a bullish, weather-beaten man gazed off into the horizon while scratching his beard. The featureless, boundless expanse of the Texas Panhandle made it difficult to navigate. For days, he and his Mexican guide searched on horseback for a canyon, an anomalous, jagged gash in the Panhandle plains. One that could contain a massive Longhorn cattle herd and their dedicated cowhands. Finally, they found their destination - Palo Duro Canyon. After looking over the deep canyon with its towering cliffs, well-watered pasture, and cedar trees, the old trail herder liked what he saw. One of the greatest cattle barons in U. S. history, Charles Goodnight, had found the location for his new ranch.  

 

Bio

Goodnight liked to brag he was born at the same time as the Republic of Texas, March 5, 1836, in Macoupin County, Illinois. In 1845, his family journeyed 800 miles to Milam County, Texas. It was there he learned to hunt and track while hiring himself out to work at neighboring farms and plantations. Ten years later, he and his stepbrother were herding cattle in the Brazos Valley to Palo Pinto County where he eventually moved his mother and siblings. It was there he would meet the man who would dramatically change his life - Oliver Loving. Together they ran cattle through the Indian Territory, Kansas and Colorado. During the Civil War, Goodnight fought Comanches as a Texas Ranger, assisting in the recapture of Cynthia Ann Parker, the famed Anglo mother of Comanche chief, Quanah Parker. After the war, Goodnight and Loving established the Goodnight-Loving trail stretching from South Central Texas to Wyoming. Loving was killed fighting Indians. Goodnight had his body sent back to his home in Weatherford, Texas for burial. In 1869, he established his Rock Canyon Ranch near Pueblo, Colorado. While there, he married Molly Dyer, a schoolteacher from Weatherford. Settling into ranch life proved short-lived, Goodnight lost most of his holdings during the Panic of 1873. To recoup his losses, he decided to make a fresh start, ranching in the remote grasslands of the Texas Panhandle.   

The Panhandle

After sending Molly to California to live with relatives, Goodnight gathered a herd of sixteen hundred longhorn cattle near Trinidad, Colorado before herding them across the Llano Estacado, a region few traveled much less settled. The Comanches and Kiowas, who once inhabited the region, were now corralled in their Southwest Oklahoma reservations after the 1874-1875 Red River War. Goodnight had some knowledge of the Panhandle from his service with the Texas Rangers, but no full understanding of what lie ahead. What did lie ahead was a region of buffalo hunters, Indian traders, and bandits on the lookout for horses and cattle to steal. The most dangerous being a demented, half-French, half-Mexican gunfighter named Sostenes Archiveque; who claimed to have killed 23 Americans before being run out of New Mexico.  Adding to this seedy array were the sheepherders who weren’t exactly thrilled to share their land with cattle ranchers. What little law and order there was came  from distant army forts. The nearest Texas civilian court of law was over two hundred miles away in Henrietta. Law, for the most part, was law of the six-gun or rope.

Home Ranch

After herding his cattle into the canyon, Goodnight’s cowhands chased off any nearby grazing buffalo herds by firing their six-shooters at their feet, setting off a massive buffalo stampede out of the canyon. Next, they built corrals, a house and a smokehouse. Goodnight christened his collection of buildings and cattle the “Home Ranch.” Provisions were shipped by wagon from Colorado or Kansas. During shortages, food, namely buffalo, antelope and wild turkeys, were hunted on the plains.  Highly sought tobacco, that was either smoked or chewed, was replaced with coffee grinds.   

The Negotiations

Dutch Henry Born

While on the way back from buying provisions, Goodnight encountered one of Old West’s most notorious horse thieves, Dutch Henry Born, a German immigrant and former scout for General George Armstrong Custer. Not one to settle for a menial job, Dutch Henry turned to theft, specializing in Indian ponies and mules. After introducing himself, Goodnight  and Dutch Henry reached an agreement.  Dutch Henry’s band of horse thieves would not cross into Goodnight’s ranch and face his well-armed cowhands.  In return, the land above the Salt Fork of the Red River was Dutch’s to plunder. The deal was sealed over a bottle of French brandy. Surprisingly, Dutch honored the agreement. 

The sheepherders, on the other hand, were a touchy issue. For years, prior to Goodnight’s arrival, vast herds of sheep or pastores were herded out of Las Vegas, New Mexico into the Panhandle for winter grazing. In the spring, the sheep were returned to Las Vegas for shearing. At that time, there were no fences. Until the arrival of barbed wire, custom dictated boundaries. Respecting those customs was another matter. When a pastores drifted into Goodnight’s ranch, his cowhands herded them into the Canadian River, drowning four to five hundred sheep. A deputy arrived from Las Vegas and arrested the guilty party. Goodnight was forced to pay damages for their release. In an agreement with the sheepherder leaders or mayordomos, Goodnight would keep his cattle out of the Canadian River Valley. The sheepherders would stay out of the Palo Duro Canyon.  

John George Adair

The Money

Like any growing business, you need money.  Money to buy provisions, buy cattle, buy land, lobby government officials, and pay the ranch hands. The problem was where to get it.  For Goodnight, the solution was investment. The investment, however, came from an unlikely source, an Irishman and heir to a large estate in Rathdair, Ireland - John George Adair. Trained for diplomatic service, he decided finance was more to his liking. In 1866, Adair established a brokerage firm in New York, getting rich by lending to the English at low interest rates and lending to Americans at higher rates. His wife, Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie, was an attractive, widowed New York socialite. Both of them had a taste for the sporting life and wanted to go out west to hunt buffalo. No buffalo were killed, but Adair did accidentally shoot and killed his horse, and almost himself, when his horse stepped into a prairie dog hole. Nevertheless, the West fascinated him, and he moved his brokerage firm to Denver in 1875. It was there he met Charles Goodnight, who invited him and his wife to his new ranch in Texas. Goodnight’s wife, Molly, would accompany the Adairs and her husband. In 1877, the Goodnights, the Adairs, four wagons, a light ambulance, and a hundred head of short-horned Durham bulls set out from Trinidad for the Texas Panhandle. 

Anxious to get into the cattle industry, Adair agreed to invest nearly $500,000 at 10% interest for a five year period. The name of the ranch was changed to the JA (Adair’s initials) Ranch. Goodnight would manage the ranch for an annual salary of $2,500. With the investment money, Goodnight purchased 24,000 acres in a scattered, elongated crazy-quilt fashion that included crucial hayfields and watering holes. By doing so, he was able to gain control of the entire canyon.

Paving the way for such acquisitions was the firm of Gunter, Munson and Summerfield, surveyors and lawyers  out of Sherman, Texas. Jot Gunter traded in land certificates like baseball cards. Millions of Texas acres were granted to railroads, corporations and cash-laden individuals. Goodnight’s cattle expertise held him in good stead with the firm, who was more than eager to entice him with additional acres. He later recalled, “I bought land anywhere and everywhere I could get it, provided I could get it right. I paid different prices for it. Some land cost me twenty cents per acre, some twenty-five, som thirty, and some thirty-five cents per acre.” 

In five years, Adair made a profit of $512,000. After 1878, the JA Ranch went through a period of expansion. The buffalo were killed off by hunters, leaving the grass to the cattle.  Improved breeds, artificial watering holes and barbed wire followed.  Goodnight's herd grew to 100,000 head. More land adjacent to the canyon was purchased from Gunter, including the Tule and Quitaque Ranches. Through Goodnight's careful guidance, the JA Ranch became the best managed ranch on the plains.

Check It Out

Check out J. Evetts Haley's fine book, "Charles Goodnight Cowman and Plainsman." Goodnight's life is like a Hollywood western, but better.  

Big-Foot's Bad Afternoon

Big-Foot Wallace

Danger at the Watering Hole

Early in the afternoon, a nondescript mail coach parked alongside a watering hole near Devil’s River in Southwest Texas. Tired and very thirsty, the eight-member crew had been traveling non-stop since twelve o’clock midnight from El Paso to San Antonio. The crew leader, referred to as “Cap” (short for Captain) decided to let the horses and mules forage for two to three hours while the crew rested, commonly referred to back then as “nooning it.” To prevent them from wandering off too far, the animals were hobbled by tying ropes or leather straps around their legs.

Cap or his real name, William “Big-Foot” Wallace, had a bad feeling about the campsite.  Shortly before their arrival, telltale signs of Indian activity were encountered such as distant smoke signals and a hoof-beaten trail where fifteen to twenty horses crossed the road they were traveling on. While his crew slept on their blankets, he walked fifty yards over to a knoll to survey the area. Again, those signs appeared.  One of the horses looked up while grazing and stared into the distance.  More disturbing, a deer ran past him, but no wolves were chasing it.  Something was coming! He hurried back to camp to wake his men.

Big-Foot

William Alexander Anderson Wallace was born on April 3,1817 in Lexington, Virginia. He departed for Texas after his brother and cousin were killed in the Goliad Massacre, stating he was going to “take pay out of the Mexicans.” He got the nickname “Big-Foot” after being mistaken for an Indian who had exceptionally large feet. Wallace fought at Salado and Honda River before joining the ill-fated Mier Expedition.  After surrendering to Mexican forces, he and his fellow prisoners were forced to march south to the notorious Perote Prison.  Along the way, Wallace avoided execution by drawing a white bean from a jar. The prisoners who drew a black bean were shot. Suffering from the effects of disease, malnourishment and hard labor, he barely survived his time in prison.  He returned to Texas after his release, later volunteering to fight in the War with Mexico.  Wallace joined John Coffee Hay’s Texas Rangers after the war, fighting mostly Comanches. During the 1850’s, he became captain of his own ranger company. At the same time, Wallace became an expert tracker, frequently called upon to track down runaway slaves heading for freedom in Mexico. He also operated a mail coach, carrying mail from San Antonio to El Paso and back, a hazardous undertaking that included predatory animals, bandits, and Indians, especially Comanches.  

                   

Texas Long Rifle

The Comanches Attack

“Get up, Ben,” said Wallace. “Get up and help me bring in the horses.”

Ben rubbed his eyes. “Injuns about?”

Wallace replied,”I haven’t seen any yet, but they are about here certain.”

They no sooner brought the mules and horses into camp when Ben blurted out, “Cap! They are coming! I hear their horses feet!” Out of the nearby boulders and brush, twenty-three Comanches came galloping toward the camp.  A hail of arrows fell on Wallace and his men while they ducked behind chaparral bushes.  The Texans shot back with rifles and six-shooters, killing four. Three to four charges followed.  With six guns blazing, they held off the Comanches. Overcome with fear, one of Wallace’s men cowered behind a cactus.

“Come out of that,” said Wallace. “And stand up and fight like a man.”

The young man replied, “I would if I could, but I can’t stand it.”

Wallace let him stay there and promised not to say anything about it. Unfortunately, an arrow found its mark and pinned him to the cactus he was hiding in.  The only one of Wallace’s men to be wounded.

The Comanches, however, were not finished. Wallace had his men take cover beneath the coach. This time the Comanches approached on foot, curious about the coach that appeared to have been abandoned.  Holding their fire until they were well within range, Wallace yelled out, “Now score ‘em boys!” Four fell dead from gunfire. Not ones to simply abandon their dead, the Comanches employed a curious method of retrieval. From concealed positions in the brush, they lassoed the feet of their dead fellow warriors and then pulled them into the brush. For Wallace, it was a clear signal the Comanches were retreating. 

Comanche Attack

Bait Then Escape

After emerging from beneath the coach, Wallace’s men began harnessing the horses. Wallace prudently walked over to the knoll to see if the Comanches had left - they hadn’t. A second Comanche war party rode toward him, unaware of the previous fight that had taken place. The war party’s leader or chief rode out  alone for about thirty or forty yards to confront Wallace.  He would find a cool, tough and disdainful adversary. In Spanish, the chief asked him what had happened. Wallace cleverly baited him, telling him that he and his men had fought Comanches and “flogged them genteelly, too!” The chief bristled, replying that, “You are all squaws, and you don’t dare to poke your noses out of the chaparral.” Wallace stated that his mail coach would continue to travel on the road and camp eight miles down the road at California Springs, regardless of any Comanche threats. Turning his back toward the chief, Wallace casually walked back to his camp, leaving the Comanches thinking he would be camping at California Springs that night and vulnerable to their attack.  Instead, Wallace took the opposite direction on the road.  He headed toward Fort Clark and sanctuary from the Comanches. Before the Comanches realized they had been duped, Wallace had put too much distance between them and the mail coach.  It was a masterful escape from certain death. Escorted by a U. S. Cavalry detachment, the mail coach arrived in San Antonio a few days later.

Comance Warrior

Check It Out

Check out John C. Duval’s book, “Big-Foot Wallace, The Texas Ranger and Hunter.” The book was published back in 1871. Based on the author’s interviews with an aging Wallace, the book certainly contains embellishments and half truths.  Wallace  had his prejudices against Hispanics and Native Americans but the book provides an interesting account of frontier Texas.       

“Surrender or I’ll Charge You With The Texas Rangers!” Nathan Bedford Forrest and Terry’s Texas Rangers at 1st Murfreesboro

Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest

Overture

During the early morning hours of July 13, 1862, slumbering members of the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry were wakened by the sounds of gunfire, galloping horses and yelling rebel cavalrymen. Running out of their tents in their night shirts, their only recourse was to head for the neighboring camp of the 9th Michigan Infantry Regiment. Already awake and alert, the Michiganders, along with members of the 7th, tried to form a hollow infantry square, a common tactic used to repulse cavalry charges. Failing in their formation amidst the chaos, they formed a sturdier defensive line behind a cedar fence in front of the Maney house, just north of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The charge stalled, but the rebels’ resolve didn’t, especially among the men of Terry’s Texas Rangers.   

The Importance of Chattanooga

Railroads were vital in maintaining Confederate armies, especially the Army of Northern Virginia. The East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad supplied Robert E. Lee’s troops with food, munitions and manpower. The Southeast Tennessee town of Chattanooga was a crucial  junction on that railroad that must be held. In May 1862, the Union Army of the Ohio, under Major General Don Carlos Buell, was advancing toward Chattanooga from the East. To destroy his supply lines and stall his advance, guerrilla warfare was conducted behind his lines. One Confederate general was more than well-suited for such operations - General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

The Wizard of The Saddle

When it came to fighting, Nathan Bedford Forrest had few, if any, equals.  A self-made man, the Tennessee native made a fortune in cotton and the slave trade, enough to recruit and equip his own calvary battalion. At 6 feet, 2 inches with an explosive demeanor, Forrest cut an imposing figure on a battlefield. His command style was simple - fear and respectability!  You obeyed his orders or suffered the consequences. Before the end of the war, Forrest killed thirty men in hand-to-hand combat, an astounding number for a Major General. He had no formal military training, but had a flair for tactics. Forrest’s genius was in the use of cavalry as mobile infantry to flank Union lines quickly, disrupt their rear and surround them, usually forcing their surrender. His tactics are used today by the U. S. Army, only they use Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles instead of horses. “Get there first with the most,” said Forrest. Who better to get there first than the 8th Texas Cavalry - Terry’s Texas Rangers.

Opposing Forces

Forest arrived in Chattanooga on June 11,1862 to a new cavalry command consisting of the 2nd Georgia Cavalry under Colonel J. K. Lawton and Terry’s Texas Rangers under Colonel John H. Wharton.  Their target was the garrison and supply depot at Murfreesboro. The garrison, under the command of Brigadier General Thomas L. Crittenden, consisted of a company of the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry, a Kentucky artillery battery, the 9th Michigan Infantry under Colonel William W. Duffield, and the 3rd Minnesota Infantry under Colonel Henry T. Lester. Three months earlier, the officers of the well disciplined 3rd awarded Lawton a Tiffany sword. Because of a simmering animosity between the 9th and the 3rd, both Union camps were carelessly kept separate, making them vulnerable to a massive cavalry attack.    

3rd Minnesota Infantry Flag

Forrest’s Plan of Attack 

Forrest set out on July 9, 1862.  He stopped at McMinnville for reinforcements and provisions. Two companies of Kentucky infantry and two detachments of Tennessee cavalry were added, bringing the total number of men to 1,400. Scouts and civilian spies kept Forrest informed on the Union camps and locations in Murfreesboro.  During the early morning hours of the 13th, the Rangers took out the union pickets outside of town. Forrest divided his command into three groups. The Rangers would attack the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry and 9th Michigan Infantry camps north of Murfreesboro. Forrest himself would proceed down Woodsbury Pike with the 1st Georgia Cavalry and a detachment of Rangers to capture the courthouse.  The 2nd Georgia Cavalry would charge up between the Nashville Pike and the Lebanon Pike to attack the 3rd Minnesota and cut off any contact between the 3rd Minnesota and the 9th Michigan.  

Murfreesboro (Rutherford County) Courthouse

Forrest Rides

 As the Rangers were routing the Union camps north of Murfreesboro, Forrest raced ahead to secure the town’s courthouse and jail. Inside the jail were 150 political prisoners; local civilians who were arrested for suspected espionage or outright defiance toward Union authorities. The provost guard took positions on the second floor of the courthouse and resisted until Forrest’s men broke through the door and subdued them. The jail was set on fire by a vengeful guard. Fortunately, the prisoners were freed from their cells before the fire could consume them. The Rangers entered the nearby Lyle Hotel, capturing a humiliated General Crittenden. Other officers were rounded up from nearby homes and taverns. The hated provost marshal was found hiding under his wife’s bed.

The Ranger’s attack north of town stalled. Through miscommunication, only a fraction of the Rangers attacked the Union camps, while the rest charged downtown with Forrest and the Georgians. Colonel Wharton was wounded and replaced by Colonel Thomas Harrison. The 9th Michigan’s Colonel Duffield was severely wounded and taken inside the Maney House. His replacement, Lt. Colonel John G. Pankhurst, fortified the 9th’s line with overturned wagons and bales of hay. The outnumbered Rangers kept Pankhurst’s men pinned down with rifle fire.

The attack on the 3rd Minnesota’s camp proved a tougher nut to crack until Forrest personally led a charge after the first two failed, flanking the Union line and capturing their camp. Having surrounded the 3rd, Forrest ordered his men to keep them pinned down. When Forrest’s officers suggested he had done enough and should break off the attack, he replied angrily, “I did not come here to make half a job of it. I mean to have them all.”  Forrest mounted his horse and galloped over to the Rangers position near the 9th Michigan’s line.  It was there, Forrest applied another tactic he became famous for-deception. Under a flag of truce, Pankhurst received a demand to surrender or be put to the sword. According to Ranger Captain J. K. P. Blackburn, Forrest added to the threat with “If you refuse I will charge you with the Texas Rangers under the black flag.” Forrest’s cleverly backed his threat by having his cavalry ride in a continuous loop around the town, giving the illusion to Pankhurst that an overwhelming force was about to storm his position. After conferring with the wounded Duffield, Parkhurst surrendered his command. Forrest applied the same tactic on the 3rd Minnesota - surrender or else.  Surrounded and cut off from their camp, they too surrendered.

Ranger Hat with Lone Star Pin

Aftermath 

By mid-afternoon, Forrest had captured the entire Murfreesboro garrison. The total haul was 1,200 prisoners, a quarter of a million dollars worth of supplies, an artillery battery, and fifty wagons, teams included. Confederate casualties were 65 to 85 men. More important, Buell’s advance was stalled. Fearing a Confederate attack on their base at Nashville, Union troops, to be used against Chattanooga, were dispatched to Nashville instead. Forest and the Rangers had made the ideal pairing.

Terry's Texas Rangers Flag