Mar 17, 2022

The Buffalo Soldiers

Among the most audacious figures in Oklahoma history were the post-Civil War African American troopers—some of them former slaves, all of them victims of a racist society—known as the Buffalo Soldiers. The Comanche apparently bequeathed them their legendary moniker after claiming, with their curly, dust-coated black hair, the “Negro Cavalry” resembled the rugged bison with whom they shared the Southern Plains. rom 1867 through most of the 1870s and 1880s, the Buffalo Soldiers rode in the United States military vanguard for Indian Territory and the rest of the Southwest.

They protected Natives from encroaching white and black “Boomer” settlers, did the same for American citizens from renegading Indians, escorted citizens of various races, freighters, and stagecoaches, constructed forts, roads, and telegraph lines, supported law enforcement officers, and pursued and when necessary fought outlaws of every stripe and color. Indeed, the Buffalo Soldiers rode in the fulcrum of the American pioneer experience in Indian Territory and the rest of the southwest.