Adobe Walls

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Information board at the Adobe Walls (2014)

Adobe Walls , listed in the NRHP with the number 78002958, is the name of a trading post that was in the Texas Panhandle , the northern part of what is now the US state of Texas on the Canadian River . It has twice been the scene of armed conflicts between white settlers and Plains Indians .

History of the trading post before the battles

In 1843 the trading company Bent, St. Vrain and Company set up a trading post secured by a wooden palisade called Bent Creek. The post served to supply the buffalo hunters and to trade with the surrounding Indian tribes. In 1845 the trading post was expanded into a fort, which was about 590 square meters in size, had only one entrance and was surrounded by a four-meter high wall. Due to looting by the Indians, the trading post was abandoned in 1849. At the time of the first battle at Adobe Walls, the fort was deserted and only the walls remained.

First battle at Adobe Walls

The skirmish of November 25, 1864 is considered to be the largest between Indians and whites during the period of the Civil War . During this conflict, Colonel Kit Carson and his troops, reinforced by Ute and Jicarilla Indians, attacked a Kiowa Apache camp . However, these were able to push back their attackers and drive them back into the mountains behind Adobe Walls with a group of around 1000 warriors. Carson passed this battle as a victory, although only the use of two howitzers had prevented the Indians from being able to fully exploit their numerical superiority, which would undoubtedly have secured them victory in close combat. Despite the harshness of the fighting, the whites had only six deaths, the Indians around ten times as many.

Second battle at Adobe Walls

The second battle at Adobe Walls took place on June 27, 1874. In early 1874 a group of traders who had come from Kansas had set up a new trading post north of the ruins of Adobe Walls. To stop the indiscriminate shooting of buffalo by white buffalo hunters, a group of 700 to 1,000 Indians from the Comanche , Kiowa , Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes attacked 29 buffalo hunters holed up at the trading post. They were able to repel the attack because they had sufficient modern weapons. The whites had four deaths; the number of Indians killed is unknown because they took their dead with them from the battlefield. Only around 15 killed Indians were found because they had fallen too close to the post and could therefore no longer be recovered by their tribesmen.

Development of the place after 1874

The population density of the area remained very low. Buffalo hunters continued to come to the Bent Creek area in the years that followed, but buffalo populations declined. Turkey Truck Ranch was established near Bent Creek. In 1883, the former army scout Billy Dixon (1850-1913) built a log house at Adobe Walls, in which he set up a trading post. In the same year a post office was set up there, which Dixon ran for almost twenty years. When Hutchinson County was founded, Dixon was elected sheriff of the county. In 1902, Dixon and his family moved to the neighboring Plemons because of the schooling of his children. In 1921 the post office was moved to Plemons. The last inhabitants left the place. Today Adobe Walls is a ghost town. In 1923 the Panhandle Plains Historical Society owned the remains of the trading post and conducted archaeological research on the area in the 1970s.

See also: Timeline of the Indian Wars

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Extract from the National Register of Historic Places . Retrieved March 13, 2011
  2. ↑ Anderson, H. Allen: "ADOBE WALLS, FIRST BATTLE OF". In: Handbook of Texas Online [1] , ed. from the Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved February 15, 2014.
  3. ↑ "ADOBE WALLS, SECOND BATTLE OF". In: Handbook of Texas Online [2] , ed. from the Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved February 15, 2014.
  4. ↑ Anderson, H. Allen: "ADOBE WALLS, TX". In: Handbook of Texas Online [3] , ed. from the Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved February 15, 2014

literature

Morrison, RD & Cleo Morrison: "Marked Historical Sites of Hutchinson County, Texas". Borger, Tx, 2001, pp. 5-15

Web links

Coordinates: 35 ° 53 '2 "  N , 101 ° 9' 32"  W.