The Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877, also known as the Staked Plains Horror, occurred when a combined force of the all-Black Buffalo Soldier troops of the United States Army's 10th Cavalry and local buffalo hunters wandered five days in the Llano Estacado (sometimes translated as Staked Plains) region of northwest Texas and eastern New Mexico during July of a drought year, where four buffalo soldiers and one buffalo hunter died.
News of the ongoing event and speculation about it reached East Coast newspapers via telegraphy, where it was erroneously reported that the expedition had been massacred. Later, after the remainder of the group returned from the Llano, the same newspapers declared them "back from the dead."
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