Kit Carson’s battle of Adobe Walls

Adobe Walls was the site of two pivotal battles in the Red River Wars that occurred in the Texas Panhandle. The first battle took place between the U. S. Army and the Lipan Apache, Kiowa, Comanche, and Plains Apache tribes after their attacks on wagon trains and white settlers. The battle took place on Nov. 25, 1864, and while resulting in light casualties on either side, was one of the largest encounters fought on the Great Plains.

Adobe Walls was the ruins of William Bent's abandoned trading post and saloon, situated north of the Canadian River in Hutchinson County, seventeen miles northeast of present-day Stinnett. General James Henry Carleton, commander of the military District of New Mexico, was pursuing Kiowa and Comanche war parties responsible for attacks on wagon trains on the old Santa Fe Trail. The Indians perceived the wagon trains of settlers as trespassers who irresponsibly killed buffalo and other game that they needed to survive. When the Civil War heavily drained the area of able men, attacks in the plains worsened.

Carleton selected Colonel Kit Carson to lead the force, since he was the most seasoned veteran Indian fighter at his disposal in the 1st Regiment New Mexico Volunteer Cavalry and well known by all the Indians of the Llano Estacado. With orders in hand, Carson proceeded toward the winter campgrounds of the Comanche, Apache, and Kiowa somewhere in the Palo Duro Canyon. Carson led the second offensive into the heart of the Comancheria since the Antelope Hills expedition.

An early snowstorm hampered Carson’s progress and on Nov. 24 they arrived at Mule Springs in Moore County, about thirty miles west of Adobe Walls, where scouts reported finding the trail of a sizeable Indian village. Leaving his infantry behind to guard the supply train, Carson ordered a night march of cavalry and artillery to the Canadian River, where he deployed one company of cavalry north of the river and he led the remainder on the south side.

Shortly after daybreak on the 25th, Carson found and attacked a Kiowa village of 176 lodges. The chief fled the attack to carry the alarm to nearby villages, while warriors remained to protect fleeing women and children. Marching forward about four miles from the village, Carson dug in at Adobe Walls about mid-morning, having discovered there were numerous villages in the area and large numbers of Indians pouring forward to engage him in battle. A greater force than he had anticipated, he estimated that twelve to fourteen hundred (later revised) Comanche and Kiowa had attacked his force of about 330 soldiers and Indian scouts.

Carson deployed the cavalry around their two howitzers while the Indian scouts engaged some two hundred Comanche and Kiowa warriors. He later recalled, "mounted and covered with paint and feathers, charging backwards and forwards their bodies thrown over the sides of their horses, at a full run, and shooting occasionally under their horses."

Fierce fighting ensued as the Kiowa, Plains Apache, and Comanche warriors repeatedly attacked their impromptu fort. They were successful in repelling the attacks through his strategic planning and supporting fire from the twin howitzers. The first shells from the howitzers repelled the Comanche and Kiowa initially, but they soon returned in greater numbers and resumed the attack.

By afternoon, it was estimated the Army had confronted more than a thousand Indians. After a day of almost continuous fighting, Carson was running low on howitzer shells and ammunition in general and ordered his troops to retreat to the Kiowa village at the rear. He was also concerned about the seventy-five men he left guarding the supply train. The fighting continued at the Kiowa village, holding off the Indians while half his command and Indian scouts burned the lodges, which resulted in the death of a Kiowa Apache chief who refused to leave his tipi. Carson’s exhausted soldiers continued their retreat and found their supply train intact that evening.

Carson and his troops rested in camp on the 26th while the enemy was visible on a hilltop a couple of miles distant. The Indian scouts fought the Comanche and Kiowa while the soldiers saw little confrontation that day. Even though some of his officers wanted to renew the battle the next morning, Carson ordered the expedition back to New Mexico.

The Army declared the First Battle of Adobe Walls a victory while the Kiowa, to the contrary, recorded on a buffalo hide, that the period was "muddy travel winter, the time when the Kiowas repelled Kit Carson." The battle left the Comanche and Kiowa unchallenged in their control of the Texas Panhandle until the Battle of the North Fork of the Red River eight years later.

Most experts believe Carson's decision to retreat was wise, saved lives, and that he deserves credit for a good defense. Being outnumbered, he avoided being overrun, defeated, or killed as was General Custer some nine years later at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. He left seven dead and twenty-nine wounded and estimated that the Comanche and Kiowa incurred fifty to sixty deaths and a hundred wounded.

The First Battle at Adobe Walls was the last time the Comanche and Kiowa repelled American troops and marked the ‘beginning of the end’ of the plains Indian’s way of life. The Second Battle of Adobe Walls would be fought almost a decade later, on June 27, 1874, when some five hundred Comanche warriors led by Quanah Parker engaged a group of twenty-eight buffalo hunters defending the settlement of Adobe Walls. After the four-day siege, the Comanche withdrew to their fate in the Palo Duro Canyon.