Walls

In 1843 William Bent built an eighty-by-eighty adobe Trading Post on the north Texas Plains. He also established a cattle ranch along what is now known as Bent’s Creek. Trade flourished briefly, but violence soon followed. After a brutal winter in 1848 left most of his herd slaughtered, a furious Bent burned the settlement to the ground. The ruins became known as Adobe Walls.In the summer of 1864, Kit Carson led a force of 370 well-armed troops to punish the local tribes for depredations against settlers. Facing overwhelming odds, Carson retreated under cover of darkness to New Mexico Territory while fending off a superior force of Plains Comanche and Apache, suffering minimal loss of life.In 1867, the Medicine Lodge Treaty granted the Comanche, Arapahoe, and Western Apache exclusive hunting rights to the region. But as the great buffalo herds vanished, hunters pushed deeper into treaty lands, and the tribes united once more.When James Hanrahan attempted to rebuild Adobe Walls as a trading post, saloon, and hotel along a major cattle trail near the Canadian River, buffalo hunters were drawn to the site. The response came swiftly. Under the leadership of Chief Quanah Parker and guided by the Comanche prophet White Eagle—who claimed the white man’s bullets could not harm them—the tribes prepared for war.The Second Battle of Adobe Walls needed only one spark. It came in the summer of 1874. Read more