leg. At Fort Clark he led a punitive raid against the Indians operating out of Mexico. Mackenzie fought in the Red River War, routing a combined Indian force at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon far to the north from his headquarters at Fort Concho in San Angelo, Texas. In 1876, he defeated the Cheyenne in the Dull Knife Fight, which helped bring about the end of the Black Hills War. This led to his appointment as commander of the District of New Mexico in 1881. In 1882, he was appointed brigadier general and assigned to the Department of Texas (October 30, 1883). He bought a Texas ranch and was engaged to be married; however, he began to demonstrate odd behavior which was attributed to a fall from a wagon at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in which he injured his head. Showing signs of mental instability, he was retired from the Army on March 24, 1884, for "general paresis of the insane". Mackenzie died at his sister's home in New Brighton, Staten Island, New York, and is buried in West Point National Cemetery. The New York Times, which had once followed and reported upon his career so closely over the years, printed only a short notice at his death. However, the Army and Navy Journal carried a lengthy article on his career and personal life, which began, "The sorrow with which the Army will learn of the death of the once brilliant Ranald Slidell MacKenzie derives an additional pang from the recollection of the cloud which overshadowed his later years and consigned him to a living death." Biography In 1964, the Texas historian Ernest Wallace published Ranald S. Mackenzie and the Texas Frontier, a definitive study of the officer. Wallace also wrote the historical article "Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie's Expedition Across the South Plains" in Volume 38 of the West Texas Historical Association Year Book. Memorials Fort Mackenzie (Military post: 1899–1918, VA Hospital 1922–Present) located at Sheridan, Wyoming was named for General Mackenzie. Opened in 1899, after 1913 the fort was largely unused, and in 1918 it was abandoned by the military, but it was transferred to the Bureau of Health and opened as a mental health hospital starting in 1922 for veterans of World War I. It has continued as a VA hospital for mentally ill patients to the present. Fort Mackenzie High School is an alternative education high school