First Battle of Adobe Walls

Infobox Military Conflict
conflict=First Battle of Adobe Walls
colour_scheme=background:#ffcccc


caption=
partof=the Indian Wars
date=November 25, 1864
place=Hutchinson County, Texas
result=considered U.S. victory by the Army, and an Indian Victory by the Indians, who forced the Army to flee the field
combatant1=United States
combatant2=Kiowa
Comanche
commander1=Kit Carson
commander2=Dohäsan
Satanta
strength1=321 soldiers
75 Indian scouts
strength2=5,000
casualties1=6 killed
25 wounded
casualties2=between 60 and 150 killed and wounded

The First Battle of Adobe Walls, was one of the largest ever battles between U.S. soldiers and Indians. The Kiowa and Comanche tribes and their allies drove from the battlefield a U.S. Expeditionary Force that was reacting to attacks on white settlers moving into the Southwest. Trosser, John (2004). [http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasPanhandleTowns/Adobe-Walls-Texas.htm Adobe Walls Texas] , September 7 2007.]

Background

The battle of Adobe Walls occurred on November 26, 1864, in the vicinity of Adobe Walls, the ruins of William Bent's abandoned adobe trading post and saloon near the Canadian River in Hutchinson County, Texas. It was the largest engagement between whites and Indians on the Great Plains and came about when Gen. James H. Carleton, commander of the military district of New Mexico, decided to punish severely the Plains tribes of the Kiowa and Comanche, whom he deemed responsible for attacks on wagon trains on the Santa Fe Trail. The Indians saw the wagon trains as trespassers who killed buffalo and other game the Indians needed to survive. As the American Civil War drained available troops, attacks on the Great Plains worsened, leading in the later part of 1863 to cries from settlers for protection.

General Carleton wanted to put an end to the raids, or at least to send a sharp signal to the Indians that the Civil War had not left the United States unable to protect its people. He selected Col. Christopher (Kit) Carson to lead the expeditionary force as the most seasoned veteran Indian fighter at his disposal. Col. Carson took command of the First Cavalry, New Mexico Volunteers, with orders to proceed against the winter campgrounds of the Comanches and Kiowas, which were reported to be somewhere in the Palo Duro Canyons of the southern Panhandle area, on the south side of the Canadian River. The Carson expedition was the second invasion of the heart of the Comancheria, after the Antelope Hills Expedition.

Prelude to Battle

On November 10, 1864 Carson started from Fort Bascom with 335 cavalry, and seventy-five Ute and Jicarilla Apache scouts that Carson had recruited from Lucien Maxwell's ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico. On November 12, Carson’s force, accompanied by two mountain howitzers under the command of Lt. George H. Pettis, twenty-seven wagons, an ambulance, and with forty-five days' rations, proceeded down the Canadian River into the Texas Panhandle. Carson had decided to march first to Adobe Walls, which he was familiar with from his employment there by Bent over 20 years earlier. Comanches, The Destruction of a People. Oxford Press, 1949.]

Inclement weather, including an early snow storm, caused slow progress, and on November 25, 1864, the First Cavalry reached Mule Springs, in Moore County, approximately convert|30|mi|km west of Adobe Walls. Scouts reported the presence of a large Indian encampment at Adobe Walls, and Carson ordered his cavalry forward, followed by the wagons and howitzers.

The First Battle of Adobe Walls

Approximately two hours after daybreak on November 26, 1864, Carson's cavalry attacked a Kiowa village of 150 lodges. The Chief, Dohäsan, and his people fled, passing the alarm to allied Comanche villages nearby. Marching forward to Adobe Walls, Carson dug in there about 10 AM, using one corner of the ruins for a hospital. Carson discovered to his dismay that there were numerous villages in the area, including one very large Comanche village, with a total of between 3–5,000 Indian warriors. Carson saw thousands of warriors pouring forward to engage him in battle, a much greater force than he had expected.The Comanches: Lords of the Southern Plains. University of Oklahoma Press. 1952.]

Dohäsan, assisted by Satank (Stumbling Bear) and Satanta (Sitting Bear), led the Kiowas in the first attack. Fierce fighting developed as the Kiowa, Kiowa Apache, and Comanche warriors repeatedly attacked Carson's position. Reportedly, Satanta replied to Carson's bugler with his own bugle calls. Carson succeeded in repelling the attacks only through his clever use of supporting fire from the twin howitzers. After six to eight hours of fairly continuous fighting, Carson realized he was beginning to run low on shells for the howitzers, and ammunition in general, and ordered his forces to withdraw. [http://www.juntosociety.com/native/adobewalls.htm] The Indians tried to block his retreat by setting fire to the grass and brush down near the river. The wily Carson, however, set back-fires and retreated to higher ground, where the twin howitzers continued to hold off the Indians. When twilight came, Carson ordered a group of his scouts to burn the lodges of the first village, which also resulted in the death of the Kiowa-Apache chief, Iron Shirt, when he refused to leave his tepee.

Carson calls battle a victory

The United States Army declared the First Battle of Adobe Walls a victory. To give Carson credit, he had probably been outnumbered by 10–1, and only his clever use of back-fires and the howitzers prevented his force being overrun and massacred as Custer was later at the Little Big Horn. However, no amount of boasting from the Army could obscure the fact that the Kiowa and Comanche and their allies had forced the Army to retreat. As it was, Carson lost 6 dead and 25 wounded, while the Indians lost approximately 50–60 killed and as many as 100 wounded.

Epilogue

The First Battle at Adobe Walls would be the last time the Comanche and Kiowa forced American troops to flee the battlefield, and marked the beginning of the end of the plains tribes and their way of life. A decade later, the Second Battle of Adobe Walls was fought on June 27, 1874 between about 700 Comanche and a group of 28 hunters defending the settlement of Adobe Walls. After a four-day siege, the Indians withdrew. By this time, fewer than 2,000 Kiowa and Comanche warriors were left, compared with the 5000 available ten years earlier. The Second Battle is historically significant because it led to the Red River War of 1874-75, resulting in the final relocation of the Southern Plains Indians to reservations in what is now Oklahoma.The Comanche Barrier to South Plains Settlement: A Century and a Half of Savage Resistance to the Advancing White Frontier. Arthur H. Clarke Co. 1933.]

ee also

*Texas-Indian Wars
*Kit Carson

References

Bibliography

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