Jan. 28, 2010 - In 1878, a young graduate of West Point, Henry O. Flipper, was assigned to duty at Fort Sill in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) where malaria had run rampant for years. The source of the disease -- mosquitoes -- thrived in a swampy area near the fort that the Army wouldn't, or couldn't, drain.
Flipper, an engineer by study, designed a drainage ditch made with rocks from the surrounding hills that drained the water away from the fort by making it run uphill. The ditch was a marvel in its day, and Flipper's Ditch at Fort Sill is a national historical landmark.
While stationed at Fort Sill, Flipper also constructed a road and installed a telegraph line. In Texas, he served as a scout on the Llano Estacado and helped escort Quanah Parker's last defiant band of Comanches from the Palo Duro Canyon to Fort Sill. He fought in two battles against the Comanches and received high marks for his service.
All this was enough to earn Flipper a post as quartermaster and commissary officer at Fort Davis, in the mountains of West Texas. But for everything else Flipper had going for him, he faced one major obstacle as an Army officer in the 19th Century -- the color of his skin. Flipper was the first African American to graduate from West Point, having endured four years of ostracization to earn that distinction in 1877. Four other black cadets found the "silent treatment" at West Point too much to endure and either dropped out of the academy or committed suicide.
Flipper's military career came to an abrupt halt when William Rufus Shafter was assigned to Fort Davis as commanding officer. One of Shafter's first acts was to remove Flipper as the post's quartermaster, with plans to remove him from his commissary position as soon as a replacement could be sent to Fort Davis.
When money went missing from Flipper's quarters the next year, he tried to hide the fact. Shafter found out and court-martialed him. Flipper was acquitted of embezzlement charges but he was given a dishonorable discharge for "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman."
Flipper escaped jail time and maintained his credential and worked in El Paso as a civil engineer for several years, then worked as a surveyor for several American land companies in Mexico. His work in that country put him in a good position to learn of and about the Lost Tayopa Mine, a legendary lost silver mine in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico -- the original "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
Folklorist and historian J. Frank Dobie wrote about Tayopa in his book "Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver." He described it as "the longest sought-for, the most exclusively hunted, and the most widely talked-of mine in North America." Dobie came across Flipper's research on the mine when he was researching his book.
"Of all the men who have set out on the trail of Tayopa, no one has searched for its record so assiduously as Henry O. Flipper He was a master of the Spanish language and a student of Spanish American history and laws," Dobie wrote as prelude to Flipper's account of the mine.
Flipper went to work for Senator Albert B. Fall, supplying information on conditions in revolutionary Mexico, to a subcommittee on Mexican internal affairs. Rumors that he was in cahoots with Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa forced him to publicly deny the accusations in a letter to a Washington newspaper.
When Senator Fall was appointed Secretary of the Interior, he took Flipper with him and made him assistant to the secretary of the interior. After leaving government work, Flipper worked for a petroleum company owned by William F. Buckley in Venezuela. Flipper, a master linguist, translated Venezuela's "Law on Hydrocarbons and other Combustible Minerals" for Buckley. He stayed in Venezuela until 1930 and retired the next year, living out his life at the home of his brother in Atlanta. He died there in 1940, at the age of 86.
Fortunately for history, Flipper left behind a considerable amount of writing about his life and times. His book "The Colored Cadet at West Point" was published in 1878, the same year he was assigned to Fort Sill. He published historical articles in a forerunner to the New Mexico Historical Review and is believed to have published a pamphlet titled "Did a Negro Discover Arizona and New Mexico?" His memoirs "Negro Frontiersman: The Western Memoirs of Henry O. Flipper" was published posthumously in 1963.
A lifelong effort to clear his name and military record did not bear fruit during his lifetime. However, in 1976, the Army changed the record to give Flipper an honorable discharge. This happened on the same day that a bust of Flipper was unveiled at West Point. The Henry O. Flipper Award is given annually to the West Point cadet who best exemplifies "the highest qualities of leadership, self-discipline and perseverance in the face of unusual difficulties while a cadet."
