QUANAH  PARKER  TRAIL  

Floydada, Texas

Floydada

Look for a Trail Arrow about eight miles south of Floydada.

The Battle of Blanco Canyon in October 1871 was part of

Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie’s campaign against Quanah Parker and the Comanche.

By night, Quanah caused a stampede through the

camp of the U. S. Cavalry, scattering the soldiers’ horses.

The following day, the Comanche killed one trooper in an ambush of a small Cavalry detachment. Over the next days, the soldiers pursued the Comanche band, but a blue norther with snow and sleet forced them to give up the chase. The story handed down through time by the Comanche tells that the medicine man stopped to smoke tobacco and to beseech a higher power to intervene. The answer came in mid-October flakes of snow -- the kind of weather that normally doesn’t come till mid-November.

Read more about the battle at tshaonline.org, The Handbook of Texas Online.