Adobe Wells, TX, June 1874

14 Aug 08

Second Battle of Adobe Wells, Texas Panhandle, 27 June 1874 (Saturday)

By the 1870s, commercial buffalo hunters were invading Oklahoma and Texas as once-massive buffalo herds in Kansas and Colorado thinned out. Buffalo robes continued in high demand in Europe, still in the grip of the "Mini-Ice-Age."

Area Indians, mostly Comanche, looked upon the arrival of buffalo hunters in Texas as the beginning of the end of their free-roaming existence. There had heretofore been scant accommodation between Comanches and stubborn Texas settlers, and, after countless violent encounters, there was no chance that any species of "peaceful co-existence" was possible. Armed conflict was inevitable, unavoidable, and relentless until one side or the other was defeated decisively. Sometimes, that is just the way it is!

In 1864, Colonel Kit Carson had led a small contingent into the area and had fought an inconclusive battle with Comanches at an abandoned trading post near present-day Borger, TX, called Adobe Wells. That was the "First Battle of Adobe Wells." Adobe Wells had been an on-again/off-again commercial settlement since 1845, and Comanche Indian attacks had been more or less continuous ever since. As a result, the outpost had been abandoned and resettled numerous times.

Since then, a charismatic Comanche warrior (actually a half-breed), named Quana Parker ("Parker" was his White mother's maiden name, she having been captured by Comanche as a child) emerged at a powerful chief. Like Little Turtle, Pontiac, and Tecumseh before him, Parker possessed eminent diplomatic acumen, a rare talent among Indians. He had decided to forcefully oppose further incursions of his territory, but in an organized way. His persuasive powers, along with those of his spiritual councilor Isa-tai, insured thatvarious sub-tribes were all behind him.

By the 1870s, Adobe Wells was serving as an intermittent rendevous point, and supply base, for itinerant buffalo hunters and their entourages. In the summer of 1874, persistent rumors of yet another Indian attack had caused most Adobe Wells' residents to flee. On Saturday, 27 June 1874, there were only twenty-eight occupants, nearly all of them heavily-armed, hard-bitten, individual hunters, including a young Bartholomew ("Bat") Masterson and crack-shot, Billy Dixon.

Parker descended upon Adobe Wells at dawn on Saturday with several hundred mounted warriors. Their sincere intent was to wipe out the post and massacre everyone in it. The siege lasted four days, but the heavily-armed buffalo hunters, with plenty of ammunition, held out the entire first day, inflicting hefty casualties on the Indian force with their Sharps Buffalo Rifles (50-70, 50-90, 44-77). Because of their exceptional accuracy, the hunters were able to establish an expansive "stand-off" zone that Indians were unable to successfully penetrate. Thus prevented from getting close enough to inflict damage, the Comanche were slowly defeated in detail. By the end of the second day, due to critical loss of warriors and horses, the assault was substantially crippled. By the forth day, with reinforcements arriving at the post, a dejected and despondent Parker abandoned the siege.

The contingent of beleaguered hunters suffered four fatalities, one the result of an AD! Indian fatalities probably totaled fewer than one-hundred, but many more irreplaceable horses were also killed.

The Battle is most famous for a single, long-range shot made by a young buffalo hunter, named Billy Dixon. Using his Sharps Rifle, probably fifty-caliber, Dixon fired the shot at a group of Indians on horseback on a distant hill. The Indians, naively confident they were out of range, were stationary. The single bullet literally fell from the sky and struck one of the warriors, knocking him off his horse, probably fatally injuring him. His comrades were dumbfounded and horrified! They dragged his body off and withdrew. The range was in excess of one-thousand meters, and even Dixon himself later admitted it was a "lucky shot." However, added to the rest of the deadly-accurate fire unrelentingly emanating from the post, this event broke the spirit ofthe attackers.

Three years later, Parker surrendered what remained of his Tribe to the US Army. The continuing threat to settlers that he represented, ended forever. However, Parker himself, adopting well to his new circumstances, became a financially successful "reservation Indian" and, like Sitting Bull of the Little Big Horn, a successful politician He died in of natural causes in 1911.

Bat Masterson would go on to gain notoriety in Kansas as a lawman, and later, in New York, as a newspaper sports-writer!

Several months after the Second Battle of Adobe Wells, an ever-heroic Billy Dixon, along with five others, held off yet another Indian attack, this oneat the famous "Buffalo-Wallow," for which he was awarded theCongressional Medal of Honor.

Billy returned to Adobe Wells years later, by then a bustling town, and settled down, becoming Postmaster and eventually Sheriff. He died in Oklahoma in 1913.

The foregoing heroic deeds, along with many others from the era, are mostly forgotten today. It was a wild time indeed, and the dauntless heroes of that age remind us all today (at least some of us) of our wondrous warrior heritage, and of the unpredictable course of world history!

Lessons: Accurate rifle fire is absolutely indispensable, irreplaceable! There is no substitute for it, and, without it, wars cannot be won. In order to win decisively, enemy soldiers must be gunned-down, one at a time, by courageous and superlatively competent marksmen, who are up front, using real rifles. Accomplished and supremely confident individual riflemen thus represent the cornerstone of all victorious armies, and always will!

As a civilization, we de-emphasize their importance, and the importance of the Art of the Rifle, at our peril!

/John