Black History Month In New Mexico: Buffalo Soldiers

This is the first of three pieces designed to bring you a taste of the contributions African Americans have made to New Mexico history and culture.  Nothing in any of these pieces is intended to be all-inclusive; it's merely a sepia-toned snapshot of three distinct points in the state's historical timeline that go too often unremarked and unremembered. 

New Mexico makes much of its triracial inclusion and harmony (which, truth be told, is not so much as an inch deep, but that's another story).  What isn't obvious to folks from elsewhere is that the three races to which it refers are, as they are known in the polite version of local parlance, "Anglos," "Hispanics," and "Indians."  In most of the state, African Americans aren't even on the public radar screen (nor are Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders, people of South Asian and Middle Eastern descent, or those of Caribbean ancestry - but, again, that's another story). 

According to the 2010 census, African Americans constitute 12.6% of the national population.  In New Mexico, that figure drops to a scant 2.1%.  [Despite the fact that the U.S. stole this land from Mexico, which in turn had stolen it from the indigenous populations, 68.4% of New Mexico's total population comprises "Anglos," whether "Hispanic" or "non-Hispanic."] 

African American history and culture are a bit of a unicorn in this state:  occasionally reported, but mostly elusive, and largely invisible to all but those who actually go looking for it.  And yet, Black Americans have a long and storied history in New Mexico, with a vibrant presence predating statehood by half a century.  It's long past time for that presence to assume its rightful place in the state's past and present. 

Come with me.  I'm going to take you on a little tour of three New Mexico towns that play a role in African American history. 

PORTALES

We begin in Portales, in the southeastern quadrant of the state, nearly on the west Texas border.

The town itself describes the derivation of its name as follows:

Portales takes its name from a spring and natural landmark six miles to the southeast called Portales Springs, which were utilized by early Indians in the area. The springs, located at the mouth of one of a series of even caves, were reportedly ice cold and supplied a shallow lake. The caliche rock outcroppings where the caves were located looked like porches (portales in Spanish) of a hacienda. Today, the lakebed is dry and the springs, located on private land, no longer flow. 

Perhaps true; perhaps not so much.  Portales is a Spanish word, correctly prefaced by los, and the plural form of the word portal [pronounced por-tTHAHL].  The word does translate loosely as "portal," and originally referred to the archways lining courtyards and homes in the old traditional Spanish hacienda-style architecture, but is now generally understood as referring to a front door or vestibule in a home or other building.  It certainly is not the word that local Indians - at that time, Apache, Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Ute - would have used for the caves.  Nonetheless, I suppose the first encampment to grow up around that area must have seemed a bit like a portal to tired wagoneers on the dusty dirt track leading out of Texas into the (to them) uncharted territory of the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains, where the buffalo did indeed roam and the deer and the antelope played.

Today, it's still a small and dusty town at the northern reaches of the portion of the state known as Little Texas:  so called partly for the number of generations of transplanted Texans living there; partly for the accents, far more West Texas than classic New Mexico; but mostly for the arch-conservative, fundamentalist Protestant politics and religion of its populace.  Today, it's first and foremost the home of Eastern New Mexico University; otherwise, it's mostly the last real stop south before heading to Roswell, or the first one on the way north before reaching Clovis on the way to Amarillo.

It's also an unlikely place to find a significant part of the state's Black history:  After all, while just over 2% of the state's population is Black, that number drops to 1.8% for Roosevelt County, and only 1.6% for Portales itself, which is nearly 75% White.

No matter; we're not staying in town.  We're actually heading a few miles southeast of town, along State Road 114, just this side of the Texas state line.

We're heading to Buffalo Soldier Hill.

BUFFALO SOLDIERS

After the Civil War, the U.S. Army saw an opportunity to dispense with two groups it found troublesome and in the way of good old white Manifest Destiny:  Indians and [nominally freed] African Americans.  And what better way to do it, in their eyes, than to pit these two persecuted populations against each other in the most direct way possible, with the greatest possibility of permanent effect:  War.

Originally founded in 1866 as two all-Black post-Civil War regiments based out of Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, they were then known as the "Negro Cavalry."  Among the available U.S. soldiers, African American soldiers were, of course, regarded as particularly expendable, making them perfect cannon fodder for the U.S. Government's Indian Wars.  And so they found themselves dispatched to the ever-shifting, ever-expanding front lines established by the U.S.'s [Ex]Termination Policy.

Once they met their foes, however, the appellation "Negro Cavalry" was largely forgotten.

"Buffalo Soldiers" was the honorific Indians bestowed upon the African American soldiers they encountered during the Indian Wars:  first and most obviously, because their curly hair reminded them of that of the buffalo; but second, because of their great courage and heart in battle - again, traits that many tribes ascribed to the buffalo, in literal, metaphorical, cultural, and spiritual senses.  

Reportedly, white authors of the period attributed coinage of the name variously to the Cheyenne and the Comanche, but it's likely that most, if not all, of the Plains tribes that encountered them each have their own stories about having come up with the name.  Regardless, the name stuck:  African American soldiers adopted it with pride, which may have taken some of the sting out of hearing white men use it as yet another euphemistic slur.

THE NEW MEXICO CAMPAIGNS

The Buffalo Soldiers first arrived in the New Mexico Territory in August of 1866, as part of eight companies dispatched by the 125th Infantry to battle the Apache, who were harrying the sparse white populace.  In addition to fighting Indians, they were tasked with building the various Army forts that would soon dot the southeastern scrub of the Llano Estacado.  It was not an easy existence for either soldiers or invading settlers.

In 1875, their numbers increased dramatically as war with the Apache heated up again.  The 9th Cavalry, under the [white] leadership of Col. Edward Hatch left Texas for the southern New Mexico Territory, where its troops spread among nine separate forts.  [It is for Col. Hatch, of course, that the town of Hatch and Hatch chile are named.]  During the remainder of the decade, Buffalo Soldiers would also play significant roles in numerous episodes of internal warfare, including the Lincoln County War, and take on a supporting role in early territorial law enforcement.

Perhaps their most famous hour, however, came between 1879 and 1881, as they led battles against Apache leader Victorio and other campaigns.  Twelve Buffalo Soldiers were killed in action against Victorio, and eight were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their bravery.  [And, no, the irony is not at all lost on me that some of my persecuted ancestral brothers were thus rewarded for killing other persecuted ancestral brothers and sisters.  Such is the conflicted legacy of multiracial identity in colonial societies.]  By the end of the 19th Century, however, extermination and interment had taken their toll on the Apache and other area tribes.  By the end of 1896, both Ft. Selden and Ft. Stanton were closed, and the Buffalo Soldiers were largely shipped elsewhere.

BUFFALO SOLDIER HILL

But back to Highway 114 southeast of Portales.

It's a place marked by a war crime, by tragedy, and by strength and valor.

The war crime was ongoing:  the U.S. government's attempts to round up the Comanche, steal their lands, and intern their people in a concentration camp in the Oklahoma Territory.  In July of 1877, Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry were dispatched to capture a band of Comanche that had escaped their Oklahoma prison.  The Indians, of course, knew the territory well; the Cavalry, not so much.  One night, at the base of a hill within sight of what would become the New Mexico/Texas border, the soldiers lost all trace of their quarry.  They bedded down for the night, and in the morning, abandoned the mission as hopeless.

And thus arose the tragedy.  Reportedly, the entire chase encompassed some 55 miles, in the heat of a southwestern desert summer.  And the soldiers ran out of water.  In those days, there was water to be found . . . if you knew where to look. It was not necessarily drinkable.  Further south, natural wetlands (today drying up at an alarming rate) existed, but were salt marshes; still further south lie vast white expanses of salt flats.

Some twenty Buffalo Soldiers reportedly died trying to make it back.

And their strength and valor should not be in question.  Even today, with towns in driving distance, it's possible to die out on the Llano.  Heatstroke in the summer; exposure and frostbite in the winter; hunger and thirst any time.  The fact that these soldiers went headlong into unfamiliar territory, inadequately provisioned by their superiors, and yet tried to complete their mission anyway bespeaks courage and heart.

And how was their memory rewarded by the locals?

They named it "Nigger Hill."

And then promptly forgot about it.

Until 1990, when Oscar Robinson, then Director of Personnel Services at ENMU, heard the story.  And Mr. Robinson knew what he had to do.

It took fourteen long years.  But in 2004, After a campaign spanning nearly a decade and a half, Mr. Robinson succeeded in his quest to get the U.S. Registry of Geographic Names to change the hill's name, officially, to "Buffalo Soldier Hill."  More, the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee approved creation and placement of a historical marker for the site.  In June of that year, descendants of Buffalo Soldiers presented the colors at a ceremony marking its installation.

There is a small monument [shown in the photo at left] on the grounds of the New Mexico Veterans Memorial Park in Albuquerque, but it's only one small part of a larger park, and the story is swallowed by the park's broader focus on veterans of all U.S. military actions.  Perhaps tellingly, it's also relegated to the last of four pages of captioned monuments on the organization's Web site, in next-to-last place.   Other than this marker, the memories are kept alive mostly through the efforts of the   , a group of a little more than two dozen descendants of actual Buffalo Soldiers who tour state schools to teach young people about their ancestors' storied role in both New Mexico and United States history.

Some 30-plus years ago, there was a memorial on the grounds of ENMU; I saw it once on a trip, and it was the first I'd ever heard of the Buffalo Soldiers having a presence in New Mexico.  I've tried in vain to find any online evidence of that marker, which makes me think that I no longer exists.  If so, then the only real on-site tribute to these brave men exists by the side of an old two-lane state road in the arid Llano, with a small hill in the distance.

But it's there.

And we do not forget.

Author's Notes:   

The Buffalo Soldiers are in the news again in New Mexico this year; more about that later.

First in a series of three.  Still to come:  The "Battles for Socorro" and Blackdom.

Note:  This diary first appeared at Daily Kos on February 27, 2012. It is reposted here with very minor edits to update it for 2014.

Text copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.