BATTLE OF ADOBE WALLS

From the book "Hands Up" as told by Fred E. Sutton, and written down by A. B. MacDonald.

(Copyrighted 1926. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, Indiana.)

One of the fiercest battles ever fought between whites and Indians occurred between whites and Indians when I was a lad, living in Dodge. In all the history of Indian warfare only one other fight equaled it in the stark courage and fortitude of the handful of whites that were in it. That other was the battle of the Arickaree. The two combats were alike in many ways. In each a few white men were surrounded by hundreds of Indians; in each the siege continued for days, with hunger and burning thirst added to the suffering of wounded and the horror of those hundreds of naked savages ever circling round and round. But there was this difference; the whites in the Arickaree battle were soldiers, with a great Indian fighting general in command, and the combat is duly chronicled in the histories of Indian Wars, while the whites in the battle of Adobe Walls were buffalo hunters, and written history has almost passed it by.

"Dobe Walls" as we called it, was a prairie camp of three small buildings made of dobe bricks of sun baked earth, on the Canadian River due south from Dodge City. Nineteen buffalo hunters from Dodge City were quartered there that June, cleaning up one of the last of the big buffalo herds. They shot and skinned buffaloes all day and went into camp at night. There was no suspicion that Indians were near until, one morning at daylight, Billy Ogg went out for water and discovered an army of Indians on horseback charging down upon the little cluster of 'dobe' buildings.

There were seven hundred Indians, all braves and veterans of many battles, and armed with rifles, six shooters and bows and arrows. In the camp were twenty-eight white men, but nine were none combatants, cooks, and camp workers. Only the buffalo hunters, nineteen of them, were armed fighting men. They had a buffalo gun and two six shooters apiece, and they had plenty of cartridges. Some were asleep when Billy Ogg ran in, shouting that Indians were upon them. The weather was hot and doors had stood wide open through the night. The men had no time to close them before the Indians were upon them. Two camp hands asleep under a wagon outside, were killed and scalped in the first onrush of Indians. The nineteen buffalo hunters stood in doorways and leaned out of windows and met the charge with such a volley from buffalo guns and six shooters that the seven hundred Indians were beaten off. They retreated, reformed, and charged again.

Through one whole hot June day that incredible siege went on; seven hundred Indians against nineteen white men, and in every minute throughout that long day the Indians charged and circled the camp and poured lead and arrows against the earthen walls. They backed horses up against the barred doors and pushed them in. They got upon the earthen roof and dug holes through it. They rained so many bullets and arrows against the walls that in places the impact of the missiles wore holes through the bricks of sun baked earth.

There were enough deeds of heroism in that beleagured camp that day to fill a book.

The camp ran out of water the afternoon of the siege. The pump was out in the open, one hundred feet away. Daddy Keeler, a veteran buffalo hunter, volunteered to get water. "I'm sixty, and I ain't got much longer to live, nohow," he laughed, as he picked up the water bucket.

He walked coolly to the pump, his dog following him. The dog was killed in the first volley the Indians sent after him. Daddy hung his bucket on the pump spout and worked the handle up and down. A bullet swept his hat off. Bullets spat all around him. He filled his bucket, picked up his hat, and the first thing he said as he regained the house was: "I wish the dog hadn't follered me."

Bat Masterson ran from one building to another to get a fresh supply of cartridges. An Indian, hidden in a clump of weeds, arose and shot three times at him. Bat leaped upon the Indian, while bullets sang past him and cut his clothing, but he stayed long enough to send the Indian to the Happy Hunting-Ground. Then he got the cartridges and returned with them.

Bat Masterson told me that without the thirty-eight six shooters in that battle the whites would have lost it. The most deadly fighting was done at close range, hand to hand and face to face. The windows were square openings in the earthen walls without glass or any covering. Indians on foot charged those windows in crowds, seeking to shoot in and slaughter the defenders. Sometimes there were three or four Indians at once with their rifle barrels at the windows, with others behind them ready to step up when one fell. The whites could not have beaten those assaults with rifles alone, but two men at a window, with a six shooter in each hand, and men behind to reload them as fast as they were emptied, made it impossible for an Indian to get a hand inside.

The most desperate fighting was done on the first day, but the siege went on for one whole week, and then, a buffalo hunter who had escaped and ridden to Dodge City, returned with a relief party which drove the Indians off. Four of the besieged had been killed, including the two under the wagon. The bodies of eighty Indians were strewn on the prairie around the camp. And so ended the seven day battle of nineteen buffalo hunters against seven hundred Indians.