Adobe Walls

ADOBE WALLS, SECOND BATTLE OF . The second battle of Adobe Walls occurred on June 27, 1874, when a buffalo hunters' camp, built in the spring of that year in what is now Hutchinson County, about a mile from the adobe ruins known as Adobe Walls was attacked by a party of about 700 Plains Indians, mostly Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas, under the leadership of Quanah Parker and Isa-tai. qqv Most of the hunters at the camp were awake repairing a broken ridgepole when the Indians charged at dawn. The defenders, twenty-eight men and one woman, gathered in (Jim) Hanrahan's Saloon, (Charlie) Myers and Leonard's Store, and (Charles) Rath and Wright's Store and repelled the initial charge with a loss of only two men. One more man was lost in later charges, which continued until about noon, and a fourth man was accidentally killed by the discharge of his own gun. The Indians, who had been urged into the fight by a medicine man, Isa-tai, conducted a desultory siege for about four or five days but made no other attacks. On the second day a group of fifteen or twenty of the Cheyennes appeared on a high mesa overlooking the post. Their appearance led to the famous gunshot of William (Billy) Dixon , when Dixon, inside the stockade, shot an Indian off his horse seven-eighths of a mile away. Hunters in the vicinity were notified of the attack on Adobe Walls, and by the end of the fifth day there were more than 100 men at Adobe Walls. A rescue party arrived after the Indians had given up the fight and retired. The significance of this fight is that it led to the Red River War of 187475, which resulted in the final relocation of the Southern Plains Indians to reservations in what is now Oklahoma. A monument was erected in 1924 on the site of Adobe Walls by the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society .