Second Battle of Adobe Walls

Second Battle of Adobe Walls
Part of the Red River War
Adobe Walls battlefield looking southeast from Billy Dixon's grave.
Date June 27, 1874 Location Adobe Walls, Texas 35°53′37.2588″N 101°9′43.36″W / 35.893683000°N 101.1620444°W / 35.893683000; -101.1620444 (Adobe Walls Battlefield)Coordinates: 35°53′37.2588″N 101°9′43.36″W / 35.893683000°N 101.1620444°W / 35.893683000; -101.1620444 (Adobe Walls Battlefield) Result U.S. victory
Belligerents
United States	Comanche
Commanders and leaders
N/A	Isa-tai (Kwahdi Comanche) Quanah Parker (Kwahdi Comanche) Kobay-oburra (Kwahadi Comanche) Pearua-akupakup (Nokoni Comanche) Mow-way (Kotsoteka Comanche) Tabananika (Yamparika Comanche) Isa-rosa (Yamparika Comanche) Hitetetsi aka Tuwikaa-tiesuat (Yamparika Comanche) Guipago (Kiowa) Satanta (Kiowa) Tsen-tainte (Kiowa) Zepko-ete (Kiowa) Little Robe (Cheyenne) White Shield (Cheyenne)
Strength
29 hunters and tradesmen	~700 warriors
Casualties and losses
4 killed, unknown wounded	16 killed, unknown wounded
Adobe Walls Battlefield Location within Texas

The Second Battle of Adobe Walls was fought on June 27, 1874, between Comanche forces and a group of twenty-eight U.S. bison hunters defending the settlement of Adobe Walls, in what is now Hutchinson County, Texas. "Adobe Walls was scarcely more than a lone island in the vast sea of the Great Plains, a solitary refuge uncharted and practically unknown."

Adobe Walls was the name of a trading post in the Texas Panhandle, just north of the Canadian River. In 1845, an adobe fort was built there to house the post, but it was blown up by the traders three years later after repeated Indian attacks. In 1864, the ruins were the site of one of the largest battles ever to take place on the Great Plains. Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson led 335 soldiers from New Mexico and 72 Ute and Jicarilla Apache scouts against a force of more than one thousand Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache. The Indian army forced Carson to retreat, though he was acclaimed as a hero for successfully striking a blow against the Indians and for leading his men out of the trap with minimal casualties. This is known as the First Battle of Adobe Walls.

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". In June 1874 (ten years after the first battle), a group of enterprising businessmen had set up two stores near the ruins of the old trading post in an effort to rekindle the town of Adobe Walls. The complex quickly grew to include a store and corral (Leonard & Meyers), a sod saloon owned by James Hanrahan, a blacksmith shop (Tom O'Keefe), and a sod store used to purchase buffalo hides (Rath & Wright, operated by Langton), all of which served the population of 200-300 buffalo hunters in the area. By late June, "two hunters had been killed by Indians twenty-five miles down river, on Chicken Creek" and two more hunters killed in a camp on "a tributary of the Salt Fork of Red River" north of present-day Clarendon. "The story of the Indian depredations had spread to all the hunting camps, and a large crowd had gathered in from the surrounding country" at the "Walls".