Students Trace History of Buffalo Soldiers in Guadalupe Mountains
GUADALUPE MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK, Texas
In June 1866, Congress authorized the creation of six regiments of Black soldiers — two cavalry and four infantry. The two cavalry regiments would go down in history as the “Buffalo Soldiers.”
Now, 139 years later, a group of Black and American Indian college and high school students dug in the dirt for hours under a hot sun in Guadalupe Mountains National Park to learn more about the Buffalo Soldiers and the Apache Indians.
But the task was more than just digging to find evidence of the soldiers and their turbulent co-existence with the Apaches, who had a strong presence in the area during the 1800s.
For the students, it was also an opportunity to take a look at their heritage.
For the second year, 10 college students from the predominantly Black Howard University in Washington, D.C., and five high school students from Mescalero participated in the National Park Service Warriors Project, which gives students the opportunity to get a feel for archaeology and anthropology and get a glimpse of the past.
