page_title: Buffalo Soldier tragedy of 1877
section_title: Historical marker
hierarchical_section_title: Buffalo Soldier tragedy of 1877 / Historical marker
caption_attribution_description: English: United States Crossed Cavalry Sabers, 10th Cavalry, paint shop modified from hand drawn color sketch with a number 10.
context_page_description: The Buffalo Soldier tragedy of 1877, also known as the Staked Plains Horror, occurred when a combined force of Buffalo Soldier troops of the 10th Cavalry and local buffalo hunters wandered for five days in the near waterless Llano Estacado region of north-west Texas and eastern New Mexico during July of a drought year, where four soldiers and one buffalo hunter died.
  Due to the telegraph, news of the ongoing event and speculation reached Eastern newspapers where it was erroneously reported that the expedition had been massacred. Later, after the remainder of the group returned from the Llano, the same papers declared them "back from the dead."
context_section_description: Remembering the dead soldiers of Troop A, 10th U.S. Cavalry, Captain Nicholas M. Nolan commanding.
  Trooper John H. Bonds, 24, a day laborer from Virginia who enlisted in the Army in Washington, D.C. in early 1877.
  Trooper John T. Gordon, 28, joined the Army in Baltimore, Maryland in December 1876.
  Trooper John Isaacs, 25, a waiter from Baltimore who joined the Army in January 1877.
  Trooper Isaac Derwin, 25, a laborer from South Carolina who joined the Army in Tennessee in November 1876.
  The Nolan Expedition route received a historic marker in 1972. 33°17′46.122″N 102°13′33.4158″W
  On July 1, 2008, Texas placed a new historical marker to honor the men of the "Buffalo Soldier tragedy of 1877." Markers were placed for the four fallen soldiers of Company A, 10th Cavalry at Morton Memorial Cemetery. The cemetery is not the burial site of the four fallen soldiers. The Cochran County Historical Commission had applied for the marker and headstones of the fallen and money was collected from the community. No mention was made of the death of the white bison hunter.
caption: 10th Regiment United States Cavalry insignia
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