Recalling the second battle of Adobe Walls

Ozona—The second Battle of Adobe Walls took place about a decade after the first. By June 27 of 1874, the Southern Plains and the panhandle of Texas had become a focal point for conflict, leading to escalated confrontations until a battle with a combined force of some five hundred nomadic Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache warriors in the Texas Panhandle ruins.

Many historians have ventured the hypothesis that the battle took place during the Red River War, a campaign to force Native American tribes back onto their reservations. Rather, the Red River War occurred because of the second battle of Adobe Walls. It was the U S Army’s call to arms, as it were, to pursue the militant Native Americans, take the fight to their lodges and winter grounds, and destroy their supplies and horses; in an all-out effort to finally remove them to the agreed-upon territories in Oklahoma.

After the "enormous slaughter" of the buffalo in the north during 1872 and 1873, the hunters moved south and west "into the good buffalo country, somewhere on the Canadian . . . in hostile Indian country,” recalls Billy Dixon in Life and Adventures of "Billy" Dixon (1914).

“Adobe Walls was the ruins of a trading post by the same name in the Texas Panhandle, just north of the Canadian River. In June of 1874, a group of twenty-eight buffalo hunters, led by Billy Dixon, a crack-shot buffalo hunter and leader of the group; and Bat Masterson, also a buffalo hunter who later became an illustrious lawman, and played a key role in the battle. The hunters took shelter inside the ruins and held off the Native American attackers for the better part of the day. The Indians finally withdrew after suffering significant casualties.” (Dixon – 1914)

The complex grew almost overnight and included a store and corral, a sod saloon, a blacksmith shop, and a sod store used to purchase buffalo hides, to serve the population of two to three hundred buffalo hunters in the area.

“By late June, two hunters had been killed by natives 25 miles downriver, on Chicken Creek, and two more were killed in a camp on a tributary of the Salt Fork Red River north of present-day Clarendon."

The story of the Indian depredations spread to all the hunting camps, and a large crowd had gathered in from the surrounding country" at the "Walls."

W.C. Holden, wrote in “Indians, Spaniards, and Anglos,” in A History of Lubbock, “The remaining free-ranging Southern Plains bands (Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho) perceived the post and the buffalo hunting as a major threat to their existence. The 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty reserved the area between the Arkansas River and Canadian River as Indian hunting grounds. Yet, since 1873, several buffalo hunting parties operated in the area, in violation of the treaty, prompting Indian outrage. (Holden – 1962)

About 2 a.m. on June 27, a ridgepole holding up the roof of the saloon suddenly broke and made a loud cracking sound, which sounded like rifle shot. According to some sources, the saloon owner woke the camp by firing his gun and told everyone that the sound had come from the ridgepole. The reason was that he knew about the Indian attack in advance but did not want anyone to know… afraid that men would leave the camp.

The men in the saloon and several others from the town immediately set about repairing the damage. However, because of this, most of the residents were already awake when a combined force of Comanche, Cheyenne and Kiowa warriors attacked, determined to annihilate the inhabitants of Adobe Walls.

“There was never a more splendidly barbaric sight. In after years, I was glad that I had seen it. Hundreds of warriors, the flower of the fighting men of the southwestern Plains tribes, mounted upon their finest horses, armed with guns and lances, and carrying heavy shields of thick buffalo hide, were coming like the wind.

Overall was splashed the rich colors of red, vermillion, and ochre, on the bodies of the men, on the bodies of the running horses. Scalps dangled from bridles, gorgeous war-bonnets fluttered their plumes, bright feathers dangled from the tails and manes of the horses, and the bronzed, half naked bodies of the riders glittered with ornaments of silver and brass. Behind this headlong charging host stretched the Plains, on whose horizon the rising sun was lifting its morning fires. The warriors seemed to emerge from this glowing background.” (Dixon – 1914)

Estimated to be about five hundred warriors, they were led by Isatai'i and the Comanche chief Quanah Parker. Their initial attack was almost the last because the Indians were close enough to pound on the doors and windows of the buildings with their rifle butts. They were in such close quarters that the hunters' long-range rifles were ineffective. They fought with pistols, Henrys, and Winchester lever-action rifles. After the first attack was resisted, the hunters were able to keep the Indians at bay with their large-caliber, long-range Sharps rifles.

“Nine men were located in Hanrahan's saloon—including Bat Masterson and Billy Dixon—11 in Meyer's & Leonard's Store, and seven in Rath & Wright's Store.”

The hunters suffered four fatalities, three on the first day: the two Shadler brothers asleep in a wagon were killed in the initial onslaught, and Billy Tyler was shot through the lungs as he entered the doorway of a building while retreating from the stockade.  On the fifth day William Olds accidentally shot himself in the head while descending a ladder at Rath's store.  A search following the initial battle turned up the bodies of fifteen Indians killed so close to the buildings that their bodies could not be retrieved by their fellow warriors.

By noon, the Indians had ceased charging and had stationed themselves in groups in various places, maintaining a steady fire on the buildings; by 2 p.m. the Indians rode out of range at the foot of the hills, and by 4 p.m. the battle was over, and the hunters started venturing out from the buildings to gather relics and bury the dead.