Adobe Walls
Source: The Handbook of Texas Online
ADOBE
WALLS, TEXAS
FIRST
BATTLE OF ADOBE WALLS
SECOND
BATTLE OF ADOBE WALLS
ADOBE
WALLS, TEXAS
Adobe Walls was the name given several trading posts and
later a ranching community located seventeen miles
northeast of Stinnett and just north of the Canadian
River in what is now northeastern Hutchinson County. The
first trading post in the area seems to have been
established in early 1843 by representatives of the
trading firm of Bent, St. Vrain and Company, which hoped
to trade with the Comanches and Kiowas.
These Indians
avoided Bent's Fort, the company's main headquarters on
the upper Arkansas River near La Junta, Colorado, because
enemies, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, lived in the area.
The new satellite post was situated on a stream that
became known as Bent's (now Bent) Creek. Company traders
worked originally from tepees and later from log
structures. Probably no real fort was built on the site
before 1846. Sometime after September 1845 William Bent
and Ceran St. Vrain, chief partners in the firm, arrived
with Mexican adobe makers to replace the log
establishment with Fort Adobe, a structure eighty feet
square, with nine-foot walls and only one entrance.
Occupation of Fort Adobe was sporadic, and by 1848 Indian
hostility had resulted in its closure. That fall a
momentary peace was effected, and Bent sought to reopen
the post by sending Christopher (Kit) Carson, Lucien
Maxwell, and five other employees to the Canadian.
Resistance from the Jicarilla Apaches, however, forced
Carson's group to cache the trade goods and buffalo robes
they had acquired and return to Bent's Fort.
Soon after,
several Comanches persuaded Bent to make another try at
resuming trade at Fort Adobe. A thirteen-man party, led
by R. W. (Dick) Wootton, encountered restive Comanches at
the fort and finally conducted trade through a window cut
in the wall. In the spring of 1849, in a last concerted
effort to revive the post, Bent accompanied several
ox-drawn wagons to the Canadian. After part of his stock
was killed by Indians, he blew up the fort's interior
with gunpowder and abandoned the Panhandle trade to the
Comancheros.
The adobe ruins thus became a familiar landmark to both
Indians and Comancheros and to any white man who dared to
venture into the heart of Comanchería. In November 1864
Carson, now a colonel of volunteers, used the walls of
Fort Adobe to rest his 300 men and their horses after
sacking a Kiowa village during a campaign against the
tribes of the southern Plains. The group withstood
several Indian attacks at the fort before withdrawing
(see ADOBE
WALLS, FIRST BATTLE OF).
In March 1874 merchants from Dodge City, Kansas,
following the buffalo hunters south into the Texas
Panhandle, established a large complex, called the Myers
and Leonard Store, about a mile north of the Fort Adobe
ruins. This business, which included a corral and
restaurant, was joined in April 1874 by a second store
operated by Charles Rath and Company. Shortly afterward
James N. Hanrahan and Rath opened a saloon, and Tom
O'Keefe started a blacksmith shop. By the end of spring,
200 to 300 buffalo hunters roamed the area, and trade at
Adobe Walls boomed. After an Indian uprising called the
second battle of Adobe Walls (June 1874) both merchants
and hunters abandoned the site.
In the early 1880s James M. Coburn established his Turkey
Track Ranch headquarters near the old battle site and
persuaded William (Billy) Dixon, a scout and survivor of
the 1874 battle, to homestead several sections nearby.
Dixon built his house at the ruins of Fort Adobe. In
August 1887 a post office was established at the Dixon
homestead, where Dixon and S. G. Carter also operated a
ranch-supply store. Dixon served as postmaster until
1901, when he was elected the county's first sheriff. He
resigned shortly afterward and about 1902 moved to
Plemons.
A school was
also established; after the first building burned in
1920, school was conducted on the second floor of Dixon's
old home until a new structure could be built. Although
the Dodge City Times advertised Adobe Walls as "a
fine settlement with some twenty families," there
never was a real community in the area except for the
ranchers and their employees and families. The post
office remained in operation until October 1921. From
1940 until 1970 Adobe Walls was listed in the Texas
Almanac as having a population of fifteen. In 1987 a few
scattered ranch dwellings marked the area.
During the 1920s several local and state projects were
launched to mark the battle site at Adobe Walls and make
it more accessible. In 1923 the Panhandle-Plains
Historical Society acquired a six-acre tract that
contained the remains of the 1874 trading post. The
society conducted major archeological excavations at this
site in the 1970s. In 1978 the complex was added to the
National Register of Historic Places and recognized as a
Texas state archeological landmark.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Lindsay Baker and Billy R. Harrison,
Adobe Walls: The History and Archaeology of the 1874
Trading Post (College Station: Texas A&M University
Press, 1986). T. Lindsay Baker, Ghost Towns of Texas
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). George Bird
Grinnell, "Bent's Old Fort and Its Builders,"
Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society,
1919-1922 15 (1923). Arthur Hecht, comp., Postal History
in the Texas Panhandle (Canyon, Texas: Panhandle-Plains
Historical Society, 1960). Hutchinson County Historical
Commission, History of Hutchinson County, Texas (Dallas:
Taylor, 1980). David Lavender, Bent's Fort (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday, 1954). Mildred P. Mayhall, The
Kiowas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962; 2d
ed. 1971). John L. McCarty, Adobe Walls Bride (San
Antonio: Naylor, 1955). Frederick W. Rathjen, The Texas
Panhandle Frontier (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1973).
H. Allen Anderson
FIRST
BATTLE OF ADOBE WALLS
The first battle of Adobe Walls occurred on November 26,
1864, in the vicinity of Adobe Walls, the remains of
William Bent's abandoned adobe fort near the Canadian
River in what is now Hutchinson County. The battle was
one of the largest engagements between whites and Indians
on the Great Plains. It resulted from the determination
of Gen. James H. Carleton, commander of the military
units in New Mexico, to halt Comanche and Kiowa attacks
on Santa Fe wagontrains; the Indians saw the wagoners as
trespassers who killed their game.
Col. Christopher (Kit) Carson, commanding the First
Cavalry, New Mexico Volunteers, was ordered to lead an
expedition against the winter campgrounds of the
Comanches and Kiowas, believed to be somewhere on the
south side of the Canadian. On November 10 he arrived at
Fort Bascom with fourteen officers, 321 enlisted men, and
seventy-five Ute and Jicarilla Apache scouts and fighters
he had recruited from Lucien Maxwell's ranch near
Cimarron, New Mexico.
Two days later the column, supplied with two mountain howitzers under the command of Lt. George H. Pettis, twenty-seven wagons, an ambulance, and forty-five days' rations, marched down the Canadian into the Panhandle of Texas. Carson's destination was Adobe Walls, where he had been employed by Bent nearly twenty years earlier. After a delay caused by snowstorms the column set up camp for the night of November 25 at Mule Springs, in what is now Moore County, thirty miles west of Adobe Walls.
Two of Carson's
scouts reported the presence of a large group of Indians,
who had recently moved into and around Adobe Walls with
many horses and cattle. Carson immediately ordered all
cavalry units and the two howitzers to move forward,
leaving the infantry under Lt. Col. Francisco P. Abreau
to follow later with the supply train. After covering
fifteen miles Carson halted to await the dawn. No loud
talking or fires were permitted, and a late-night frost
added to the men's discomfort.
At about 8:30 A.M. Carson's cavalry attacked Dohäsan's
Kiowa village of 150 lodges, routing the old chief and
most of the other inhabitants, who spread the alarm to
several Comanche groups. Pushing on to Adobe Walls,
Carson forted up about 10 A.M., using one corner of the
ruins for a hospital. One of the several Indian
encampments in the vicinity, a Comanche village of 500
lodges, was within a mile of Adobe Walls. The Indians
numbered between 3,000 and 7,000, far greater opposition
than Carson had anticipated. Sporadic attacks and
counterattacks continued during the day, but the Indians
were disconcerted by the howitzers, which had been
strategically positioned atop a small rise. Dohäsan led
many charges, ably assisted by Stumbling Bear and
Satanta; indeed, Satanta was said to have sounded bugle
calls back to Carson's bugler.
With supplies and ammunition running low by late
afternoon, Carson ordered his troops to withdraw to
protect his rear and keep the way open to his supply
train. Seeing this, the Indians tried to block his
retreat by torching the tall bottomland grass near the
river, but Carson set his own fires and withdrew to
higher ground, where the battery continued to hold off
the attacking warriors. At dusk Carson ordered a force to
burn the Kiowa and Kiowa-Apache lodges, which the
soldiers had attacked that morning. The Kiowa-Apache
chief, Iron Shirt, was killed when he refused to leave
his tepee.
Concerned with protecting the supply wagons and Abreau's
infantry column moving up from Mule Springs, Carson
decided to retreat. The reunited forces encamped for the
night, and on the morning of November 27 Carson ordered a
general withdrawal from the area. In all, Carson's troops
and Indian scouts lost three killed and twenty-five
wounded, three of whom later died. Indian casualties were
estimated at 100 to 150. In addition 176 lodges, along
with numerous buffalo robes and winter provisions, as
well as Dohäsan's army ambulance wagon, had been
destroyed. One Comanche scalp was reported taken by a
young Mexican volunteer in Carson's expedition, which
disbanded after returning to Fort Bascom without further
incident.
General Carleton lauded Carson's retreat in the face of
overwhelming odds as an outstanding military
accomplishment; though the former mountain man was unable
to strike a killing blow, he is generally credited with a
decisive victory. Carson afterward contended that if
Adobe Walls was to be reoccupied, at least 1,000 fully
equipped troops would be required. The first eyewitness
account of the battle other than Carson's military
correspondence was published in 1877 by George Pettis,
who had served as the expedition's artillery officer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Morgan Estergreen, Kit Carson: A
Portrait in Courage (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1962). C. Boone McClure, ed., "The Battle of
Adobe Walls, 1864," Panhandle-Plains Historical
Review 21 (1948). George Henry Pettis, Kit Carson's Fight
with the Comanche and Kiowa Indians at the Adobe Walls
(Providence: Rider, 1878; rpt., Santa Fe, 1908).
H. Allen Anderson
SECOND
BATTLE OF ADOBE WALLS
The second battle of Adobe Walls occurred on June 27,
1874, when a buffalo hunters' camp, built in the spring
of that year in what is now Hutchinson County, about a
mile from the adobe ruins known as Adobe Walls was
attacked by a party of about 700 Plains Indians, mostly
Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas, under the leadership of
Quanah Parker and Isa-tai.q Most of the hunters at the
camp were awake repairing a broken ridgepole when the
Indians charged at dawn.
The defenders, twenty-eight men and one woman, gathered in (Jim) Hanrahan's Saloon, (Charlie) Myers and Leonard's Store, and (Charles) Rath and Wright's Store and repelled the initial charge with a loss of only two men. One more man was lost in later charges, which continued until about noon, and a fourth man was accidentally killed by the discharge of his own gun. The Indians, who had been urged into the fight by a medicine man, Isa-tai, conducted a desultory siege for about four or five days but made no other attacks. On the second day a group of fifteen or twenty of the Cheyennes appeared on a high mesa overlooking the post.
Their appearance
led to the famous gunshot of William (Billy) Dixon, when
Dixon, inside the stockade, shot an Indian off his horse
seven-eighths of a mile away. Hunters in the vicinity
were notified of the attack on Adobe Walls, and by the
end of the fifth day there were more than 100 men at
Adobe Walls. A rescue party arrived after the Indians had
given up the fight and retired. The significance of this
fight is that it led to the Red River War of 1874-75,
which resulted in the final relocation of the Southern
Plains Indians to reservations in what is now Oklahoma. A
monument was erected in 1924 on the site of Adobe Walls
by the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Lindsay Baker and Billy R. Harrison,
Adobe Walls: The History and Archaeology of the 1874
Trading Post (College Station: Texas A&M University
Press, 1986). Olive K. Dixon, Life of "Billy"
Dixon (1914; rev. ed., Dallas: Turner, 1927; facsimile,
Austin: State House, 1987). Evetts Haley, Jr.,
"Adobe Walls," Junior Historian, January 1948.
Mildred P. Mayhall, Indian Wars of Texas (Waco: Texian
Press, 1965). Rupert N. Richardson, "The Comanche
Indians at the Adobe Walls Fight," Panhandle-Plains
Historical Review 4 (1931). G. Derek West, "The
Battle of Adobe Walls," Panhandle-Plains Historical
Review 36 (1963).