Zachariah Taylor Woodall

Wounded, he held his courier party together through fighting

Zachariah Taylor Woodall was born in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1849. He entered the United States Army after the Civil War and served with the 6th Cavalry on the southern plains. By 1874 he was a sergeant in Company I, engaged in the Red River War against southern Plains peoples resisting the loss of their homelands and independence.

On 12 September, Woodall commanded a small dispatch party consisting of four soldiers and the civilian scouts Billy Dixon and Amos Chapman. They were carrying instructions between army forces and a supply train when a much larger Indigenous force intercepted them near the Washita River in Texas. Their horses were lost and the men were left exposed on the prairie.

The party fought for hours and then made a defensive position in a shallow buffalo wallow. Woodall was severely wounded but continued directing the men. Their survival depended on holding together, conserving their fire and protecting the other casualties until help could reach them. One soldier, George Smith, was fatally wounded. The survivors were eventually brought back to Fort Supply.

Woodall received the Medal of Honor for the action, subsequently known as the Buffalo Wallow fight. Woodall’s award was issued in November 1874 and specifically recognized his leadership while severely wounded and heavily outnumbered.

He remained a career soldier for another quarter-century and reached the rank of ordnance sergeant. His later service took him to Cuba during the American occupation following the war with Spain. He died at the Cabaña fortress in Havana on 12 September 1899, twenty-five years after the action for which he had been decorated. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.