Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Buffalo Wallow Fight (Texas panhandle, 1874)

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/btb03

BUFFALO WALLOW FIGHT. The Buffalo Wallow Fight was one of the most unusual engagements in the Red River War. On September 10, 1874, Col. Nelson A. Miles, whose command was running short of rations, sent two scouts, Billy Dixon and Amos Chapman, and four enlisted men, Sgt. Z. T. Woodhall and privates Peter Rath, John Harrington, and George W. Smith, from his camp on McClellan Creek with dispatches concerning the delay of Capt. Wyllys Lyman's supply train, then under siege by Indians on the upper Washita River (see LYMAN'S WAGON TRAIN).

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qfl02

The six-man contingent set out on the trail to Camp Supply in Indian Territory. On the morning of September 12, as they approached the divide between Gageby Creek and the Washita River in Hemphill County, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by about 125 Comanche and Kiowa warriors, some of whom had come from the siege of the wagon train. Since retreating Indians had burned off the prairie grass only days before, there was no shelter close by; Dixon and his companions thus decided to dismount and make a desperate stand. In a few minutes George Smith, who took charge of the horses, fell with a bullet through his lungs. The horses then stampeded, carrying with them the men's haversacks, canteens, coats, and blankets. The mounted Indians indulged in a cat-and-mouse game with their intended victims by circling them and firing on a dead run. Soon Harrington and Woodhall were hit, and Chapman's left knee was shattered by a bullet. When the Indians desisted for a few minutes, Dixon, who had a slight wound in the calf, spotted a buffalo wallow a few yards away. He bade his companions take cover in this shallow depression, which was about ten feet in diameter. By noon, all except Chapman and Smith had reached it safely and with their hands and butcher knives began throwing up the sandy loam around the perimeter of the wallow for better protection. In the process, the men managed to keep their adversaries at bay and away from Smith and Chapman.

As the fight progressed, Dixon tried several times to reach Chapman but was forced back repeatedly by a hail of bullets and arrows. Since the crippled scout had lived as a "squaw man" among the Indians for a time and was known to many of the warriors present, they taunted him by shouting, "Amos, Amos, we got you now, Amos!" Finally, early in the afternoon, Dixon made it to Chapman and carried him back amid the gunfire to the safety of the wallow.

As the day wore on, the five men suffered terribly from hunger, thirst, and wounds; but their expert marksmanship continued to hold back the Indians, who could not even capture Smith's guns. Late in the afternoon an approaching thunderstorm brought relief to the parched men and served to break off the Indian attack, but the blue norther that it heralded resulted in more suffering from a severe drop in temperature. Taking advantage of the lull in the skirmish, Peter Rath went to recover Smith's weapons and ammunition and was astonished to find Smith still alive. Dixon and Rath carried the unfortunate trooper back to their makeshift fortress, where he died later that night.

At nightfall the Indians disappeared. Dixon and Rath fashioned crude beds for themselves and their wounded comrades out of tumbleweeds they had gathered and crushed. Afterward Rath went to bring help but was unable to locate the trail and returned in two hours. The following morning, September 13, dawned clear with no Indians in sight. Dixon then volunteered to go for help and found the trail less than a mile away. Soon he saw a column of United States Cavalry in the distance and fired his gun to attract their attention. As it turned out, this contingent consisted of four companies of the Eighth Cavalry from Fort Union, New Mexico, about 225 men in all, under the command of Maj. William R. Price. Price's appearance had caused the Indians to withdraw from the wallow and Lyman's wagons.

Price accompanied Dixon back to the wallow but had no ambulance wagon and was running short of supplies himself. What was more, Dixon's companions mistook the approaching column for Indians and, before the scout could stop them, shot the horse of one of the surgeon's escorts. As a result, the piqued surgeon only briefly examined the men, and Price refused them ammunition or reinforcements, although some of his troops did give them hardtack and dried beef. Price then moved on, promising to notify Colonel Miles and send aid immediately. Not until nearly midnight, however, did aid arrive and the beleaguered men receive food and medical attention. George Smith's body was wrapped in an army blanket and buried in the wallow, and the disabled survivors were taken to Camp Supply for treatment. Amos Chapman's leg was subsequently amputated above the knee, and Woodhall and Harrington recovered and continued their military service. After "severely censuring" Price for his failure to render further aid to the survivors, Colonel Miles recommended that they be given the Medal of Honor for bravery under adverse circumstances. The medals were awarded, including a posthumous one to Smith; Dixon personally received his from Miles while they were encamped on Carson Creek near Adobe Walls.

The Buffalo Wallow Fight was widely publicized as a heroic engagement; Richard Irving Dodge presented a somewhat inaccurate narrative of the episode in his book Our Wild Indians (1882). While nearly all accounts of the battle, including Dixon's, claimed that the six men killed as many as two dozen warriors, Amos Chapman, who spent his later years in Seiling, Oklahoma, once told George Bent that no Indian actually fell to their guns. Some years later, the medals of Chapman and Dixon were revoked by Congress since they had served the army as civilian scouts. Dixon, however, refused to surrender what he felt he had justly earned. His medal is now on display at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon. In 1925, under direction of J. J. Long and Olive King Dixon, a granite monument was erected on the Buffalo Wallow site, twenty-two miles southeast of Canadian. It bears the names of the six heroes "who cleared the way for other men."

"Life of Billy Dixon" - Olive K. Dixon
I recommend this book.

Awesome story. I'll have to look for that buffalo wallow.

The standoff continued into the third day, when a group of Indians was sighted about a mile east of Adobe Walls. It is said Dixon quickly took aim with a borrowed .50-90 Sharps
buffalo rifle and fired, knocking an Indian near Chief Quanah Parker off his horse, nearly a mile away on his third shot."

I believe the Buffalo Wallow Fight was a completely different engagement than The Second Battle of Adobe Walls, which is where Billy Dixon made his famous shot. That engagement was in June of 1874, and the Buffalo Wallow Fight was in September of 1874.

I agree. I was referencing the book I recommended.
How's that for CYA?

lol

Sorry. I misunderstood ya'.

I think there's been alot of arguments over the "almost a mile" shot.

A mile is a long way with open sights

Great story! Thanks for posting.
The Comanche were some real bad asses. Took the Texans 50 years to conquer them, without the Colt six gun never would have done it.

I believe the role of the revolver is considerably over-stated. For close-quarters combat, sure. The hard part was getting close enough to use one and the PREMIER Indian fighter of his era, Texas Ranger Captain RIP Ford wrote that even then the Comanche bow and the sixgun were evenly matched at such times. Outside of dueling of course, fighting fair is something to be avoided at all costs.

The way to fight Plains Indians was to get off of your horse, take careful aim with your rifle, and shoot the other guy off of HIS horse, a tactic generally employed by the Eastern Tribes when they moved out West, cutting a wide swathe. This was also the usual tactic employed by Ford hisself.

MOST Comanches of course died from diseases, just like pretty much every other tribe, second to that you can make a pretty good case that more of 'em fell to other Indians, especially displaced Eastern Indians than to the Texans.

By the Red River War, MOST Comanches were already on reservations in Oklahoma, getting heavily into the cattle business (Comanches traded more'n 30,000 head of Texas cattle to the Army in New Mexico in 1873), a hothead minority was still out.

Out of desperation this minority faction of Kiowas and Comanches actually put on a Sun Dance in the summer of '74, a rite borrowed from the Northern Tribes and a thing they hadn't done before.

After that religious event Quanah Parker wanted to go against the dreaded and implacable Tonkawas, who had been eating Comanches regularly for more'n forty years by that point and who had repeatedly led Ranald MacKenzie down upon them.

It was actually the Feds as represented by MacKenzie that finally broke these holdouts, capturing many of their women and children and using these hostages as leverage to bring them in. Who actually brought them in was the German Physician JJ "Doc" Sturm who by that time had been looking after the Comanches since the Brazos Reserve days, twenty years earlier. Sturm rode out to the Comanche camps alone, bringing them the Govt terms.

This good and gentle man, whose memory is still esteemed in Comanche country today, in company with the middle-aged Comanche chief Mow-Ray, travelled all over West Texas in '74 and '75, locating and bringing in scattered Comanche refugees.

Interestingly enough, the Comanche Medicine Man Isha-tai, whose bullet proof medicine failed so spectacularly at Adobe Walls, went on to play an active role in reservation politics after the shooting was all over, mostly as a political opponent of Quanah Parker.

As for Billy Dixon's famous shot, I am fully prepared to believe it may have been from the better part of a mile away, mostly because of the testimony of Billy Dixon hisself, who alway said it was a "scratch" ie. lucky shot, almost a fluke. Of course, if he weren't an outstanding shot, the shot would never have connected, lucky or not.

Birdwatcher

As an addendum to your post:

http://www.palodurocanyon.com/

"Humans have resided in the canyon for approximately 12,000 years. Early settlers were nomadic tribes that hunted mammoth, giant bison, and other large game animals. Later, Apache Indians lived in the canyon, but were soon replaced by Comanche and Kiowa tribes who resided in the area until 1874. At that time, Col. Ranald Mackenzie was sent into the area to transport the Native Americans to Oklahoma. Col. Mackenzie and the 4th Cavalry were able to capture more than 1,400 horses belonging to the tribe. After keeping some of the best horses for themselves, the remainder were taken to nearby Tule Canyon and destroyed. Cut off from their only means of transportation, the Native Americans soon surrendered.

In 1876, Charles Goodnight entered the canyon and opened the JA Ranch. At its peak, the ranch supported more than 100,000 head of cattle. Goodnight operated the ranch until 1890. Although only a fraction of its original size, the JA Ranch remains a working ranch today."

Several pages of great photo's of Palo Duro Canyon SP at the link above.

Buffalo and Creedmoor guns,....

Do you know anything about the "Billy Dixon Match" that some BPCR loonies hold / held ?

Kenny Waserburgers 1 mile match ?

.....really depends on what one calls a "long way".

Dixon himself called it a lucky shot.

GTC

GREAT lyric , herein

regarding Comanches, revolvers, and Texans...

I think they ended up shooting over a thousand of em'.

I've been there. Adobe Walls is literally out in the middle of nowhere, and there was probably not another human being within 10 miles of us when we visited this battlefield. Although the violence is long since gone and it is utterly quiet and peaceful there, there is something that still lingers. I suppose spooky is the wrong word, but eerie is pretty close to the feeling I got, if eerie can also be fascinating.

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I've read that having a few drinks, while pelting away at rocks up on the ridge on which that poor Comanche bastid caught some of Bridgeport's finest had been popular for some time prior....e.g. they already HAD the elevation sorted out.

Thinkin' Red Meineke ( sp ?) wrote about that in his series in SPG's BPCR News.

GTC

That's WAY cool. Is that site on private land...?

The battlefield is on a small tract of public land accessible by a one-way dirt track county road. It's basically right in the middle of a large private cattle ranch, but still accessible to the public.

Thanks.

A participant in the Red River Wars, the Black Seminole Scout Adam Payne.



Well over 6ft tall, Payne cut a distinctive figure in his buffalo headdress, having been captured by and lived with the Comanches for some years in his youth. One one occasion Payne and a party of Indian scouts were trailing a band of Comanches well in advance of MacKenzie's column. The scouts followed the trail to full dark and, having the bearing, pressed on further before stopping for the night.

Turns out both sides had made cold camps that night, the morning light revealed the Comanche camp within sight, the Comanches immediately attacked the little band of scouts.

In the scramble to get away one of the scouts, a Creek Indian, lost his horse which ran away in a panic. Payne gave the man his own horse, stood his ground with his rifle and then shot the lead Comanche and took THAT horse. A running fight ensued, Payne bringing up the rear, pausing occasionally to shoot at his pursuers. By the time he made it to MacKenzie's camp the lathered horse was on the point of collapse.

MacKenzie, no slouch in the warrior department hisself, awarded Payne a Medal of Honor for "habitual boldness".

Shortly thereafter Payne left the employ of the army and took up horse theft along with a White partner, one Frank Unwin. To add context this was in the Backettville/Uvalde/Eagle Pass area, then the domain of the notorious cowboy mafia leader John "King" Fisher.

Payne got in a fight in a Brownsville bar and killed a soldier with his knife, a warrant was put out for his arrest. Sheriff Clarence Windus of Uvalde and his deputy confronted Payne in a Bracketsville saloon. All three men were armed, Payne with a Winchester rifle on the bar and his revolver on his hip, and he was just too dangerous a man to take on in anything approaching a fair fight. Payne backed down both men and made his escape.

After that episode tho Payne's eventual death was a certainty. It is a testament to Payne's formidable reputation that Windus waited until a New Years Eve celebration at the Black Seminole community outside of Fort Clark, stepping out of the darkness to shoot the unarmed Payne in the back point blank with both barrels of a shotgun, the blast so close as to set the man's shirt on fire.

No coward, Windus hisself had previously won a Medal of Honor in combat with the Kiowas back in his cavalry days, this Payne incident being the only case in American history where one Medal of Honor recipient slew another.

Birdwatcher

I believe that is right. I also seem to recall that Mackenzie had lead an expedition up on the plains a year or so earlier, captured a huge number of horses and tried to get them back to civilization. The Comanches casually stole them back. So the second time around Mackenzie just destroyed all he couldn't hold on to.

The Comanches had been decimated by disease, saw the buffalo being exterminated and finally encountered a white soldier who could carry the war to their homeland and callously destroy their wealth. Quanah was smart, he decided to bow to the inevitable and make the best deal he could with the government; it worked out well for his tribe until Congress decided to break up the reservation.

It always amazes me to hear those who say Billy's shot was a fluke, lucky, probably not as far as stated, etc., even though he said it was a scratch shot himself. He was shooting at the bunch on a hill and hit one. I don't count that as luck.

Had he been blindfolded, spun in circles, handed a rifle and told to shoot while everyone around him ducked and knocked one off the hill, that would have been luck. He hit what he was aiming at, even if shooting at the bunch.

No flies on MacKenzie, or Parker...

...but the Comanches had been seriously into cattle since at least the 1860's, when in the absence of serious opposition they started running off Texas stock in a big way. By the 1870's, the free-living Comanches and Kiowas were living an essentially pastoralist lifestyle, which was only common sense when the buffalo were declining but where livestock abounded.

Quanah Parker might have led a band of Traditionalist holdouts but MOST Comanches were settled in Oklahoma by that time, raising cattle. This is why Parker was able to slip so easily into cattle ranching after hostilities ended. Quanah Parker was one of a number of Comanche combatants during those years, WHY he got so singled out after the wars were over was of course because of his pedigree.

Birdwatcher

Having pulled targets at Raton, 1000 yard Creedmoor Match,
5-600 grain slugs singing overhead,...
I always muse on being in that group of Horsemen,...
Watching the BP smoke drift away from the lone shooter below and way so far out there,....than hearing the rolling boom of the shot,...THEN hearing that big slug come arcing in and thumping my Compañero.

....talk about one of those "Oh Chit!" moments.

GTC

Greg, you painted a LMAO picture. Thanks.

The Comanches who witnessed it said the guy didn't die. I think he was just bruised badly.

Billy Dixon's shot was not pure luck. The man was a practiced, cool shot and acknowledged as a superior marksman. He was shooting a weapon he was intimately familiar with. Now. Here's the rest of it.

According to Dixon's biography, in his own words, the buffalo hunters passed a lot of time at Adobe Walls shooting at a mark. It seems that a favorite target was a big rock on the side of the hill overlooking Adobe Walls--the same spot the group of indians that Dixon shot at had stopped their horses.

How do we know this? A number of years ago, a group of graduate students from the history department of Texas A&M were doing research at Adobe Walls and decided to go to the spot on the hill with a metal detector and look around. They found a large number of spent bullets and bullet fragments on the ground around a particular large rock--and the rock itself was pock marked from bullet strikes.

Dixon and his friends had been using the rock where the indians stopped as a target. That means he already had the elevation setting for his ladder sight, and knew where to hold for bullet drift. He had in fact been practicing for the shot, and didn't realize it! I would say that it was a good shot, but hardly pure luck. A Sharps buffalo rifle handled by a man that knows how to use it is effective at that distance, and Billy Dixon definitely knew how to use a Sharps.

I will add that before the Comanches became in volved with Cattle as Birdy mentioned, in the late 18th and early 19th century they were the premiere horse and mule raisers/traders on the western frontier. White traders such as Anthony Glass and Philip Nolan left Natchitoches La on a regular basis, and traveled west to do trade with them.

Nolan had a slight run in with Spanish authorities he did not survive. This occurred on the Brazos River between present Cleburne and Glen Rose Tx.

The old buffalo hunters were very skilled rifleman, they had to be if they were going to make a living at it! There is no doubt about this shot, yea he had to walk his bullets up and hit on the third shot, Ok, guys did the same thing in the 21 century in the current war! He may have called it luck, but there was also a great amount of skill too!

Great song. Who's singing it?

Was my neighbor once, long ago, in a place far away....The High River Country, in SW Alberta.

Ian Tyson

GTC

About 35 years ago I got to examine a buffalo shield that came from the Mackenzie raid. It was in a private collection and was going to auction. Still had one revolver projectile Inbedded in it.

What is your source for the statement that Dixon walked the bullet in and made the hit on the third shot? I have researched this a lot, and never heard that.

I read something of the same, Cross.

When I was much younger and knew a lot more "settled shooting science" than I know now (ahem) I scoffed at such long-range shooting claims. How could a primitive weapon like a Sharps rifle possibly perform at long range to such exacting specifications? Impossible, I'd say. As for Elmer Keith's claim of shooting a wounded mule deer at 600 yards, well, that had to be one of the most laughable tall tales of all time. Right?

Wrong.

When I started working heavy-duty revolvers a dozen years ago out of curiosity I thought I'd try ol' Elmer's "long-range" shooting technique to see if I could plunk some 265 gr bullets into a bucket at 100, 200, and 400 yards. I had time on my hands, y'unnastan.

My initial results weren't good. It was hard knowing just how high I was holding the front sight up above the notch of the rear sight, so my shots were falling long and short all the time, but pretty good for windage, with some practice. So then I used some super-glue and fine gold fly-tying wire to make some horizontal hashmarks on the front sight of my Ruger Bisley revolver, in much the same manner as Elmer had the gold bars notched into the front sight of his No. 5 sixgun.

Well, lo and behold, I found that once I could consistently index my front sight, I could lob 45-caliber bullets onto a 12" steel plate at 200 yards, and I did it often enough at 400 yards to know I could probably get pretty good at that range, too, if I took the time to practice. (This was not guessed-at 400 yards. This was on a NRA-certified 100-, 200-, 400- and 600-yard rifle range.) And using the vernier sights on my eye-talian replica 45-70 Sharps rifle, I could do the same at 400 yards.

That's as far as I took it, but I know sharpsguy here on the 'Fire has experience ringing gongs way farther than that with his smokepoles. As have others, like jorgeI and Eviltwin.

Now, as to range: I read an interestin' column by a BP aficionado who goes by the handle of Duke. Y'all who know who he is, he's the guy who gave Shrapnel his handle. I happen to have a PM link to Duke on another site, and we have been known to discuss things Darksiders are interested in at length and in detail from time to time. Stuff that non-Darksiders aren't that interested in. So he and I discussed this following incident at length. Here's the article:



A heavy,soft lead bullet travelling at 400 fps is a deadly projectile. I have killed deer DRT with my old Hawken-style muzzleloader with a dead soft round ball travelling at velocities approaching that. (Yes, I put a telescopic sight on a front-stuffer. I may be a Darksider, but I ain't no politically-correct purist.)

I have no doubt that Billy Dixon killed that Comanch at 1538 yards with his Sharps rifle.

Thise guys shot enough that they became very good at range estimation and the correct holdover. I have no doubt he did it either.

I suspect the scientists' surprise is they were used to tracking projectiles that stayed supersonic throughout their effective range. The round nose on a typical Sharps bullet is not very efficient at supersonic speeds, but very efficient subsonic - which is why airliners flying at Mach .9 have round noses.

Lots of folks don't have a 'clue' as to how to use iron barrel sights!

Here's an example of how to use:

Using_the_Peephorn by Sharps Man, on Flickr

At 200 yards I can put all my shots into the size of a baseball cap (not counting the bill) shooting my left-handed Hawken caplock using a tight-patched .54 caliber round ball! With any rifle....one has to shoot it to find out what it's capable of!!

Applies to handguns, too.

Longview, IIRC...

Love these type of threads. Thanks guys

Three hits out of eight shots, 1540 yards. .45-70, paper patched bullets, iron sights, 75 y/o eyes.

Note the elevation and windage on the Hoke. All 44 minutes of windage weren't enough; had to hold off and still should have given it more, as the right side hits indicate.

Paul

Which implies a great deal of commerce, and if not cash then large amounts of trade goods passing into the hands of Comanche middlemen.

Likewise breeding mules ain't a random event but something which requires a great deal of husbandry, and the Comanches were trading a lot of mules, presumably not all of these were stolen or traded from Mexico.

On the one hand we have the image of the Indian pony as an unprepossessing mount, on the other we have the famous example of the Nez Perce who only acquired horses late in the game selectively breeding fine horseflesh. We know that Comanches also practiced selective breeding and gelded those colts deemed lacking, if only because at least some extended this practice to some unfortunate youths captured in raids who were then set to tend the herds.

Such organization of effort and large-scale commerce jibes poorly with our popular conception of a rather simplistic Comanche society revolving around buffalo, skin tents, and raiding.

A pity the inner workings of Comancheria were so poorly documented by literate observers at the time, so much so that many thousands, fully half of their population, could be wiped out by cholera in '49-'50 with scarcely a peep from contemporary American or Mexican observers. This followed by the catastrophic but likewise poorly documented drought years of the 1850's that impoverished many Comanche survivors of that epidemic, further reducing their numbers and driving hundreds to settle in the Brazos Reservation, disease and drought together removing the more Southern and Eastern Comanche bands as major players from the Texas scene.

In the same way that the remote Lakota Sioux up on the Northern Plains rose to historical prominence as a result of being pretty much the only ones left after disease and attrition had decimated adjacent tribes closer to the advancing Frontier, so it was the remote Quohada (??) Band of Comanches, the Antelopes way up on the Panhandle, still remained intact enough to become protagonists in the Indian Wars of the 1870's.

Birdwatcher

A further note on the weapons and revolver thing.

One of the more catastrophic blows ever inflicted on the Comanches by force of arms, indeed one of the major blood lettings of Western History, occurred when Texas Ranger Captain John Moore led 90 Texan volunteers, guided by a party of Lipan Apaches, deep into Comancheria in October of 1840.

The previous year Moore had led a similar strike on a Comanche village on the San Saba, but that had ended ignominiously when the Comanches reacted to the attack by stealing Moore's own horses, leaving the party on foot with a long walk home.

On this second attempt, heeding the advice of his Lipan allies, Moore did everything right, and succeeded in surrounding a large Comanche camp on the Colorado completely undetected.

In the subsequent flawlessly-executed dawn attack, Moore's men killed between 120 and 180 Comanches at no loss to themselves. That death toll puts this attack right up there with the likes of Sand Creek, the Marias Massacre and Wounded Knee, but unlike those infamous incidents Moore did not strike a camp of Indians who believed they were safe, hit the wrong camp, nor was he attempting to disarm a captive band.

On the contrary Moore penetrated deep into hostile territory against a numerically superior enemy at a time when a state of war acknowledged by both sides was in effect. WHY this highly significant event has been almost totally overlooked in contemporary popular history is a mystery.

Pertinent to this discussion, by 1840 a prosperous plantation owner like Moore may have been packing a brace of what were then very expensive Paterson revolvers but no mention is made of it if he did. We do know that only one member of his force had a repeating firearm in the form of a Paterson carbine.

The rest of Moore's force were packing muzzle-loading rifles, the best estimates are that about half of the rifles carried by the Texas ranging companies in those years were still flintlocks.

So, possibly the greatest Comanche loss of life in a single fight was achieved by guys carrying what would have been mostly longrifles, about half of 'em flinters.

Birdwatcher

Lots of us read Venturino's article when it came out. Whereas the gist of your post seems to be that Dixon could make the shot, I say again, he didn't kill the Indian. Eyewitnesses (other Injuns) said the dude was hit and IIRC, knocked off his horse. I don't think he was even seriously wounded though as again IIRC, the bullet didn't break the skin.

I have no doubt Dixon made the shot...but for the sake of accuracy the Injun didn't die.

IIRC, Billy Dixon's long arm in the Buffalo Wallow incident was a Springfield 1873 Cavalry Carbine in 45-70. Probably the same gun the other men were issued. Just in case any here have confused the two battles.

In the Adobe Walls fight where Dixon made the famous shot with a borrowed 50-90 Sharps, much of the motivation of the attackers was due to a Comanche who said he had "big medicine" that would make the Indians impervious to the big buffalo rifles of the hunters. When that turned out to not be true, the Indians backed way off. They also beat the [bleep] out of the Comanch that didn't have the medicine, IIRC.

All too true. Especially handguns. Make some "impossible" shots and see what the naysayers have to say.

Re: the Billy Dixon shot being "luck
Tiger Woods has a much greater chance of making a hole-in-one than I - due to skill, alone.
The consistently tighter the groups, the better the odds of a pure bullseye, so to speak.