Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

by S.C. Gwynne

After breakfast Mackenzie gave the best of the horses to his scouts, cut out a few for his own use, and then ordered the others – more than a thousand – shot. Custer had shot horses on the Washita in 1868, but that was mere expediency, since his column was in grave danger of annihilation. Mackenzie now did it as a military tactic, a way to take away the Indians’ means of survival. It was a gruesome job, and it took time. The infantry roped the crazed horses and led them into firing squads. As more and more horses were killed, they became harder to handle. The last one was not shot until almost three o’clock in the afternoon. The result was a massive pile of dead horses. They rotted at the head of Tule Canyon, then turned to bleached bones that remained there for many years, becoming both a navigational landmark and a grotesque monument marking the end of the horse tribes’ dominion on the plains. Eventually some enterprising person gathered what was left up and sold it for fertilizer. Mackenzie’s slaughter of the Comanche horses also spawned a legend. On certain nights, it is said, a phantom herd can be seen galloping through the canyon, riderless, their spectral manes flying in the wind.