The U. S. Army Forts

Without the army protection, it is doubtful the hide towns would ever have emerged, or that the buffalo hunters would have come and stayed. The forts were established to create a line of protection for the settlements in Texas to the east, but instead made a handy refuge for the hunters to the north and west. Once the supply lines were established, bringing goods to the army posts, and with them mail, and women, and whiskey, the forts became sitting ducks for sin and degradation... and burdened with extended duties into the wilderness... which was crawling with hostile Comanches and Kiowas.

Not much is left of Ft. Griffin, the legendary frontier outpost where the worst in America cut their teeth. The stone ruins tell us that the Government had semi-permanent plans for the region, and that the buildings were intended to be used a long time. It's not the first time the Federal Government made an expensive misstep. Ft. Griffin sprung up like a desert flower and shriveled fairly quickly, even for an army post. As the Indians were subdued and gathered on the reservations, the need for them evaporated and the Government put its money elsewhere. With the Indians and the buffalo gone, the people there had to find a new reason for living on the edge of the earth... and they soon found it. These forts opened up a vast cattle rangeland that stretched all the way to Canada.

One army experiment, undertaken by U. S. Secretary or War Jefferson Davis ( that name should sound familiar), was to introduce camels into army service. It seemed like a natural solution to the military needs of the "Great American Desert." Brought into Texas from Africa at the port in Indianola, they were distributed around Texas forts until they were all sent on to the bad place, or escaped. It was not one of the Army's most glorious moments. But no one should blame the camels. They actually proved themselves admirably. It was the soldiers, who hated them and found them preposterous and insulting to their profession. The cavalry would not suffer such brass born assaults on their dignity. The indignant camels of course knew they had been used successfully by Alexander the Greeat, and Napoleon, and THE WISE MEN for gosh sakes. So the two sides bowed their stubborn necks and refused to learn to like one another. This photo, (stolen from the Internet and tweaked) is a ghostly reminder of this past "pilot project," which like its instigator, the future president of the Confederate States of America, saw its pilot light snuffed out.