The canyon is significant to Texas because it is unique geographically and has facilitated human life for thousands of years, but is most notably historically relevant due to the Battle of Palo Duro; the Red River Wars marked the ending of an era of Native American control in Texas, which significantly changed the way the role this land would take in society.
Palo Duro Canyon is a prime example of the impermanent nature of the function of a space. For the majority of its coexistence with humanity, it served as a home to indigenous people who utilized its shelter from harsh weather and plentiful big game animals. Like any place else in America, colonialism was bound to transform the way humanity interacted with it. This specific kind of change brought on by White Europeans is inescapable, and comes with both negatives and positives. Had Colonel Mackenzie or any other never succeeded in his mission to rid the land of local tribes, the canyon today might not be a public space in which people from around the world could witness nearly all the canyon has to offer. Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Reaugh might have never felt its influence in their art. Charles Goodnight’s name might have meant less to Texans and those involved in the cattle drive. However, the byproducts of colonization that humanity enjoys today were only allowed for by the suffering of a marginalized people. In addition, it is impossible to know how this space would function were it still under the control of Native Americans. What Native American O’Keeffe’s of the canyon might’ve changed the art world? Is it possible that the Palo Duro Canyon would’ve still ended up a space which welcomes all to observe its wonders? Perhaps it is irrelevant to ask as time fails to accommodate for the human desire to change the past. Learning about the Palo Duro Canyon begs the question, what do we find to be worth the displacement and forced assimilation of the Native American people?
It should come as no surprise that the otherworldly beauty of the “Grand Canyon of Texas” has inspired artists. Some of the most important artists of the 19th and early 20th century to paint the canyon are Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Reaugh.
Frank Reaugh, 1904. Driving the Herd. Dallas Museum of Art.
Frank Reaugh (1860-1945) located to Texas with his family around the age of sixteen, in 1876. It was around this time that he took interest in the longhorn, which would be one of the primary focuses of his career as an artist. Reaugh viewed the longhorn as an intelligent, courageous creature — what better place to capture the essence of these animals than West Texas? To understand how to portray the body of the longhorn accurately, he used a book on bovine anatomy, made measurements of the livestock, and collected bones he’d find. This sort of dedication to his craft is what gave him nicknames such as “Rembrandt of the Longhorn” and “Longhorn Leonardo”. As well, Michael Grauer, curator of western art at the Panhandle-Plains Museum in Amarillo, says that Reaugh was likely one of the only artists that captured cattle drives as they happened.
Frank Reaugh, “Palo Duro #7,” n.d., pastel on paper, 5 3/8 x 6 3/4 in, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection
Reaugh painted only in two mediums, pastel and oil paint. 90% of his paintings were created with pastels, in fact — he felt that pastel was best suited to portray the landscape of the Southwest. After returning from studying art in Europe in 1889, Frank Reaugh began to regularly take trips to the Panhandle to capture the landscapes. 1893 might have been the first time he sketched and photographed in Palo Duro Canyon, but he frequently visited until his death. He began to take his art students with him on these trips out west, and many of them went on to become successful artists (some even continuing to work in pastels, as their mentor had). Some of his students included Reveau Basset and Alexandre Hogue (known for his realist environmentalist paintings, and series of works on the Dust Bowl).
Frank Reaugh helped pioneer the art scene in Dallas, but his most important contribution to society might be his powerful relationship with and portrayal of the landscape of West Texas; his unending wonder and appreciation can be found in each of the hundreds of works he created in its image.
“I like to be where the skies are unstained by dust and smoke, where the trees are untrimmed and where the wild flowers grow. I like the brilliant sunlight, and the far distance. I like the opalescent color of the plains. It is the beauty of the great Southwest as God has made it that I love to paint.”— Frank Reaugh
Frank Reaugh, “Sunlit Rocks,” n.d., pastel on paper, 8 x 4 1/2 in, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Frank Reaugh Estate Collection.
Georgia O’Keeffe in the Canyon
Georgia O’Keeffe, Sunrise and Little Clouds No. II, 1916, watercolor on paper, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
New Mexico was not the only place in the Southwest that inspired Georgia O’Keeffe with its distinctive terrain, though it is what most think of upon hearing her name. O’Keeffe first arrived in Texas to Amarillo in 1912 and teach art classes at a public school – her initial exposure to the landscape of the Southwest. This time for O’Keeffe was critical in the development of her own style; had she never spent time in the canyon, it is likely that her art wouldn’t quite be the same.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Canyon with Crows, 1917, watercolor and graphite on paper. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
O’Keeffe began to turn away from realism during her time in West Texas. It was the landscape and her introduction to the works of Arthur Wesley Dow in 1912 which cemented her interest in abstraction. From 1914-16, she was in New York City studying with Dow, but later returned to the panhandle for two years to teach at West Texas State Normal College. It was upon her return that she began to actually paint southwestern landscape; 1916 not only marked the beginning of her Southwestern paintings, as well as those in the style of Arthur Wesley Dow, but also her decision to become a professional (female!) artist who would go where no other artist had gone before.
O’Keeffe created fifty-one paintings while living in Canyon, Texas — all watercolors, likely due to the fact that watercolor was accessible, and she had little free time. She completed five paintings specifically of Palo Duro between 1916-18. Though they aren’t her most well-known works, they’re some of the most vivid and colorful works she’s done, and contain themes and elements that continue to be found throughout her later works. She never returned to the Texas panhandle after 1918, but the Palo Duro landscape has been featured in a few paintings from her later years as an artist.
“Thereis something wonderful about the bigness and the lonelyness and the windyness [sic] of it all,”Georgia wrote in regard to Amarillo and its surroundings.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Red Landscape, oil on board, 1916–1917, Panhandle–Plains Historical Museum.
Citations:
Ledbetter, Roy C. “Frank Reaugh: Painter of Longhorn Cattle.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1950): 13-26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30241842.
Most of the Palo Duro Canyon was purchased from private owners by the Texas government in 1933, and soon after became one of Texas’ first state parks. However, citizens of Canyon, Texas had been advocating for the development of a park in the canyon for around twenty-five years before. Palo Duro was visited for its beauty by locals before its days as a park, and became a popular spot for to camp or picnic around the 1880s.
In 1908, 1911, and 1915 Congressman John H. Stephens introduced legislation proposing the creation of a forest reserve and park in Palo Duro Canyon, but issues such as land ownership, interdepartmental disputes, and environmental problems prevented the park from becoming reality. In the early 1930s, the National Parks Service suggested the Palo Duro Canyon as a potential candidate as a Civilian Conservation Corps project. Finally, after a series of complications, plans were underway for the construction of a state park in the panhandle.
The Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC were handed the daunting task of transforming this vast, winding space into an accessible park. The CCC was one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s most successful efforts — Palo Duro Canyon was only one of the fifty parks the CCC built within Texas alone during its nine years — and was created to combat unemployment during the Great Depression while conserving and breathing life into American landscapes. This program cost more money per worker than many New Deal programs, but unlike the others, it fed, housed, clothed, and in some camps, even educated the men involved. The CCC employed a fair amount of disadvantaged Americans; two of the seven CCC companies commissioned to work on the canyon were exclusively comprised of African American men, and four were all Veterans. These men worked for four years to create eleven miles of roads, lodges, lookout points, trails, etc., though the park was actually opened, incomplete, in 1934.
Today, the park reels in around 300,000 annual visitors with its trails that go deep into the canyon, camping sites and cabins, an amphitheater for shows, roaming herds of longhorn and bison, diverse nature, and gorgeous views wherever you go.
Wilson, Mary L. “Texans and the Civilian Conservation Corps: Personal Memories.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 117, no. 2 (2013): 144-63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24388470.
Charles Goodnight was born in Illinois in 1836, but moved near the Brazos River in Texas around the age of nine. Goodnight is referred to by some as the “Father of the Texas Panhandle” for his part in establishing the region. Goodnight, Texas was named after him, and this is where he and his first wife, Mary Ann Goodnight, were laid to rest.
He held several jobs in this younger years to support his widowed mother, but didn’t begin ranching until he was introduced to it by John Wesley Sheek, his step-brother, in 1856. In 1866, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving created the first trail that drove cattle to Western Markets, where the beef would make its way to Natives on reservations and soldiers. The Goodnight-Loving Trail (as its known today) went all the way from Fort Griffin to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. This trail became one of the most used, and helped expand the cattle industry.
Ten years after the Goodnight-Loving Trail was established, Charles Goodnight stopped driving cattle on that road to establish the first great ranch in the Panhandle in Palo Duro Canyon. He was not the only person to scout out the area after the Natives had been evacuated, but held claim to the land by bringing 1,600 longhorns to the area. A year later, after finding an investor, Goodnight was able to purchase the canyon and the land around it. At its peak, around a decade after JA Ranch had been established, the ranch encompassed 1,325,000 acres, and at one point had 100,000 cattle. Not a full two years after the Comanche had lost their claim to the canyon, Palo Duro’s function in society had been radically transformed by Anglo-Americans and in true American form, capitalized upon.
The JA Ranch’s reign wasn’t long due to drought and the decline of the beef market, but Goodnight kept a some of the land and a small herd until the end of his life. Though he initially drove out most of the buffalo when establishing the ranch, eventually Goodnight tended to a herd of bison on land to prevent them from being over-hunted, and occasionally allowed Native Americans to come down from their reservations in Oklahoma to hunt them. As well, he experimented in the cross-breeding of his cattle and the buffalo to produce “Cattalo”. Goodnight’s bison, photographed in 1918:
A bit of a side note, because I find it a tad ironic: In 1857, Goodnight joined the Texas Rangers under Captain Jack Cureton as a scout and guide. In December of that year, he led the Rangers to the Comanche camp on Mule Creek where Cynthia Ann Parker, the white American mother of Chief Quanah Parker who had been present for the Battle of Palo Duro, was located. Though Cynthia had become apart of the Comanche tribe and had no desire to return to white America, the Rangers captured her in the raid. Cynthia was unable escape to be back with her tribe, and died a few years after. Eighteen years after her recapture, Charles Goodnight would sign a treaty with Quanah that offered to supply the Comanche people with cattle so long as they didn’t disturb the JA Ranch (which as previously noted, used to be their territory). The two maintained a professional friendship through the years.
Campbell, Randolph B. Gone to Texas : A History of the Lone Star State. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Hacker, Margaret S. “PARKER, CYNTHIA ANN | The Handbook of Texas Online| Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).” Tshaonline.Org, 15 June 2010, tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpa18. Accessed 8 Nov. 2019.
Before the Comanche were empowered by the horse, they lived along the Rockies. Comanche reign over West Texas was relatively new, as the Apache were present for three-hundred years before them. However, their presence in the eighteenth and nineteenth century was significant. Their empire was vast, and stretched from present-day southern Colorado to central Texas. Their nomadic lifestyle, culture of resilient warriors, and mounted warfare enabled them to flourish in the Great Plains.
Comanche existence was intrinsically linked to the buffalo, who made effort to waste no part of the animal; the hunting of buffalo was a direct attack on their means of survival. The mass hunting of buffalo by the Americans was done for their hides, but they embraced the way in which it would cripple the plains tribes making them more willing to capitulate to American will. Feeling as though they were left without a choice, in 1874 the Comanche attacked a group of buffalo hunters in Adobe Walls. This battle, though unsuccessful, infuriated the United States government and led to the launch of a military campaign that ended the Comanche empire. The Red River Wars of 1874 – 1875, also known as the Buffalo Wars, were a series of battles fought by the U.S. Army (largely led by Colonel Mackenzie) against the Comanche and Kiowa, an attempt to end Indian resistance for once.
This war’s relevance to Palo Duro Canyon is in the way it shifted the dynamic of this land, and the battle that took place here four months after Adobe Walls. The Battle of Palo Duro began late one September night in neighboring Tule Canyon when a band of Kiowa and Comanche warriors charged the camp of the 4th Calvary, unsuccessfully attempting to cause a stampede. Early morning the next day, the Natives fired into the camp, but ended up retreating hoping to cut their loses at sixteen men. Regardless of their strategy and understanding of the land, the Quahada Comanche failed to compete with the advanced firearms of the Americans.
The next morning, scouts came back with knowledge of the Natives camping in Palo Duro Canyon and the 4th Calvary set out. Daylight rose as the soldiers approached the camps, leading to the Natives discovering them. They began to escape, deserting belongings and herd animals in hopes of avoiding capture or death. While the battle continued, one company was ordered to round up the Comanche’s horses. In total, Colonel Mackenzie’s men captured and marched 20 miles with around 2,000 horses. Most of which, were slaughtered in the canyon the next morning without reason, other than to further the disadvantage the Natives were at. In a letter, Mackenzie justified his actions by saying they weren’t of condition to be sold: “…there were but a few good ponies among them and I had killed all except which I thought would satisfy,”
The Red River War burned out, and ended after Colonel Mackenzie had received orders to take command at Fort Sill within Indian Territory in early 1875. By Spring, the Comanche had been coerced into surrendering. The land was now up for grabs, and Americans wasted no time getting to it. Charles Goodnight, who invented the chuck wagon, opened the first cattle ranch in the panhandle in Palo Duro a mere two years after the Natives suffered defeat. Never again would the canyon belong to the original Americans.
Lipscomb, Carol A. 2010. “COMANCHE INDIANS | The Handbook of Texas Online| Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).” Texas State Historical Association. June 12, 2010. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bmc72.
Neeley, Bill. 2007. The Last Comanche Chief: The Life and Times of Quanah Parker. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The first people likely to have arrived in the canyon were Paleo-Americans that we call the Clovis people, named after a town in New Mexico (located in the Llano Estacado, which also Palo Duro lies within) where the distinctive tools they used were first discovered. Though evidence of this culture is found throughout most of America and even as far as Venezuela, their significance is to Texas history specifically is not to be ignored. The Clovis are believed to be the ancestors of the majority of modern Native Americans, and a genetic link was found proving so. It is estimated they arrived from around 13,000 years to 5,000 years ago. The Clovis people were big game hunters and gatherers, who hunted mammoth and bison. Tools used to hunt these creatures, like points and stone knives were made out of stones provided abundantly by the panhandle such as Alibates flint. After the Clovis, post-Ice Age, emerged the Folsom culture. Though they didn’t live significantly different lives from the Clovis, the extinction of the mammoth led them to exclusively rely on herds of bison. As well, the Folsom had access to the technological development of the atlatl and dart, which enabled hunting from a distance.
Skipping ahead to around one-thousand years before present day, the Antelope Creek people likely emerged from the Eastern Woodland tribes. They existed within the panhandle up until around forty years before Columbus reached the Americas. Due to a boom in bison populations, these Plains people were able to transition from a solely hunter gatherer organization to one that began to practice agriculture and establish a more settled, village-based existence. Petroglyphs, or rock-carvings can be found throughout the area, and likely were of great significance. It’s suggested that the abrupt migration out of the panhandle for these Natives were due to either Apache aggression or environmental conditions.
It’s quite the understatement to say that Native Americans have had a long history in the Texas panhandle (let alone anywhere else in this continent), but their ties to this land are unmatched. Up until the nineteenth century, their lives in the canyon had generally been free of geographical disruption by white people, with the exception of events such as conquistador Francisco Vaquez de Coronado’s unsuccessful quest to find Cibola in 1540. The tribes who lived in this land varied throughout time – however, it was inevitable that all Native Americans, regardless of tribal affiliation, would be displaced.
Wyckoff, Don G. “ARCHAIC CULTURAL MANIFESTATIONS ON THE SOUTHERN PLAINS.” Revista De Arqueología Americana, no. 5 (1992): 167-99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27768315.
Boyd, Douglas K. 2008. “Prehistoric Agriculture on the Canadian River of the Texas Panhandle: New Insights from West Pasture Sites on the M-Cross Ranch.” Plains Anthropologist 53, no. 205 (2008): 33-57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25670975.
John Miller Morris. Texas State Historical Association. 1997. El Llano Estacado : Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536-1860. Austin, Texas ; Great Britain: Texas State Historical Association.
Palo Duro Canyon’s signature banded layers of sedimentary rock reveal a time span of nearly 240 million years. One can see four different geographical periods represented within this canyon: Permian, Triassic, Tertiary, and Quaternary. This time span, along with differential erosion, help to provide the canyon’s visually-pleasing multitude of distinct rock formations and layers. One of the most popular features of the canyon, referred to as the Lighthouse, is due to differential erosion.
Its formation is due to the weathering and erosion done by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, which has taken place for likely ninety million years. The canyon has primarily been eroded by the river, by forces like hydraulic action and sedimentary abrasion. (The Geologic Story, Matthews) Palo Duro has an impressive range of 800 feet, and averages at a little more than six miles wide.
The canyon lies on the east of the Llano Estacado, a high plains mesa, and the western edge of the Caprock escarpment. Once referred to as the “Great American Desert” by settlers, the Llano Estacado was formed as a result of the materials brought by the uplift of the American Rocky Mountains during the Cenozoic period.
Although Palo Duro Canyon is considered to be quite arid, it has made a fairly hospitable space for humans to live for thousands of years. Next week, I’ll dive into the impact of Palo Duro’s geography on the various people who’ve made lives in this canyon.
Citations:
William H. Matthews III, The Geologic Story of Palo Duro Canyon (Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin, 1969
Conroy, William. 2010. “PALO DURO CANYON | The Handbook of Texas Online| Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).” Tshaonline.Org. Texas State Historical Association. June 15, 2010. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/rkp04.
Leatherwood, Art. 2010. “LLANO ESTACADO | The Handbook of Texas Online| Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).” Tshaonline.Org. Texas State Historical Association. June 15, 2010. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ryl02.
Carved by the Red River, the Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest in the nation and thought by many to be one of the greatest sights in Texas – artists like Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Reaugh have considered the canyon to be a muse. Not only is it beautiful, but Palo Duro has quite the history as well. This region has been inhabited for millenniums, originally by the Clovis people up to 12,000 years ago. Much of Texas history is entangled with Native American history, and the Palo Duro Canyon is no different. Before Palo Duro was a state park, the first cattle ranch in the region belonged to this canyon – and for much longer than that, it was called home by several different Native American tribes in its course. Palo Duro canyon had an important role in the Red River War. It served as a battleground, as well as camp to a mix of Comanche and Kiowa natives seeking refuge from reservation life. The canyon witnessed the end of the Comanche empire’s reign on the Southwestern plains, and the end of their fight against colonialism.
Palo Duro Canyon 