Palo Duro Canyon Floor – Art on the Land

Visited on site: [7/19/2025]

Down in the Canyon

Standing on the canyon floor where U.S. troops once descended in silence, I painted near the site where more than 1,400 Comanche horses were taken and later slaughtered. The air is still, the brush thick — but the land remembers what happened here in 1874.

The Final Strike

After burning Comanche lodges and supplies during the Red River War, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie ordered the captured horses to be marched out and shot. It was a brutal but strategic move — the Comanche’s power rested in their mobility. Without horses, they could no longer resist.

Art in the Ashes

What I painted here wasn’t beauty. It was memory — of movement cut short, of freedom halted by gunfire. There’s no monument here. Just the echo of hoofbeats lost to time.

Artist’s Reflection

Beneath the cliffs, I painted in silence.
Not far from where the horses fell.

Their power wasn’t just in numbers — it was in motion.
That’s what was destroyed here.

The canyon didn’t echo that day — it absorbed.
And still holds it.