Qualla: First Battle of Adobe Walls

First Battle of Adobe Walls: Introduction

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kiowa chief Satanta had a bugle, and he knew how to use it. During the battle on November 25, 1864, near the ruins of William Bent's abandoned adobe trading post on the Canadian River, Satanta answered Kit Carson's bugler call for call, sending contradictory signals to confuse the soldiers. It was a small, brilliant detail in a fight that nearly became a catastrophe for the U.S. Army. Carson had marched into the Texas Panhandle expecting to punish a few raiding bands. Instead, he found himself surrounded by an estimated 1,200 to 3,000 Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache warriors -- and only his two mountain howitzers and a lifetime of frontier cunning kept his command from being overrun.

First Battle of Adobe Walls: Orders from the District of New Mexico

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

General James Henry Carleton, commander of the military District of New Mexico, ordered the campaign to punish the Kiowa and Comanche for attacks on wagon trains along the Santa Fe Trail. The tribes saw these wagon trains as trespassers who killed the buffalo they depended on for...

First Battle of Adobe Walls: A Village of 176 Lodges

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two hours after daybreak on November 25, Carson's cavalry found and attacked a Kiowa village of 176 lodges. Chief Dohasan and his people fled, spreading the alarm to allied Comanche villages nearby. Guipago rallied warriors to protect the retreating women and children. Carson adv...

First Battle of Adobe Walls: Howitzers Against Horsemanship

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Kiowa, Comanche, and Plains Apache warriors attacked repeatedly, mounted and painted, throwing themselves over the sides of their horses at full gallop to fire from beneath the animals' necks. Dohasan, Satank, Guipago, and Satanta led the Kiowa charges. Carson's howitzers wer...

First Battle of Adobe Walls: The Last Retreat

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Carson rested his command on November 26, the warriors visible on a hilltop two miles distant. Some of his officers wanted to renew the fight, but Carson, consulting only with his Ute and Jicarilla scouts, ordered the march back to New Mexico. It was the wise choice. He had lost ...