Buffalo Soldiers & Fort Bayard

Buffalo Soldier Memorial

The reason I drove to Fort Bayard on Monday was to take pics of the statue commemorating the famous Buffalo Soldiers. These were African American men (and some women), most former slaves, who served in the military after the Civil War. The Native Americans were so impressed with their fighting skill, they honored them with the name buffalo soldiers, because their hair resembled that of the buffalo mane. This is a very simplistic explanation, but you get the idea. Of course, my only connection until I read more about this and visited the fort, was the Bob Marley song of the same name. I used to play a lot of Bob Marley when my daughter was learning to walk (which she did, just shy of nine months). I would hold her up and sing “Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up: don’t give up the fight.” I think that explains a lot about her personality…

But I digress. Buffalo Soldiers received medals of honor for their bravery. In a hugely ironic twist, so did Apache scouts working for the US military. Then, as one brochure notes, ‘they [the Apaches] were later deemed POW’s and forcibly shipped off to prisons in Florida.’  I have to ask – will we ever get it right?

Fort Bayard, once a well-tended and beautiful post, has become a beautiful ruin. It is mostly a ghost town. When I walked to the statue of the Buffalo Soldier in the middle of the ‘green,’ I saw the hoof prints of a herd of deer in the dirt and gravel. A glorious row of homes, formerly the Officer’s Quarters were abandoned, with the exception of one that housed a museum open a few days a week. The hospital was closed.  A new modern facility was opened in 2010 a mile away. The cemetery was tended. I ran into a young woman in Silver City right after my visit to the fort, and she told me her grandmother was just buried there with her grandfather. So they are still taking in the soldiers and spouses. 

Officer Quarters

I am not a cemetery person. But I drove through, and at a turnaround, a marker caught my eye. It seems that the soldiers that served (the males anyway) have their names engraved on the side facing west. If their wives are buried there, their names are engraved on the east. And I saw a few women soldiers with their names engraved only on the east, with the west side left blank. So when I saw the name and dates on the east facing side of a particular marker, I stopped and walked over to it and took a picture. Her (middle) name was Eileen, and her birth date was May 6^th – the same as mine. Eerie.