The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003 Page: 175

2002 Archeological Investigations at the Battle of Red River Site

al feeling among the hunters was that if they all went south together, the
Indians would be less likely to attack them. To accommodate the hide
men and ease the supply problem, one of the Kansas robe and meat
traders, A. C. "Charlie" Myers, agreed to pack up his entire business and
move south with the hunters, to open a supply store and market center
for their hides there in the Texas Panhandle. Myers established his trad-
ing post, Adobe Walls, on the Canadian River in present Hutchinson
County. He built a stockade, corral, and storehouse and was soon fol-
lowed by Charles Rath, who set up business in a sod house. Tom O'Keafe
established a blacksmith shop and James Hanrahan opened a saloon.'
The sudden swarm of white hunters onto the Panhandle buffalo range
could hardly have had any other effect than to infuriate the Indians, who
demonstrated their objections with swift clarity. Two hunters, Dave Dud-
ley and Tommy Wallace, apparently were caught asleep in a camp on
Chicken Creek. Their companion, Joe Plummer, away at the time of the
attack, returned to find his associates killed, scalped, and otherwise muti-
lated, and Dudley's corpse pinned to the ground by a wooden stake driv-
en through the abdomen. In the camp of Anderson Moore on the Salt
Fork of the Red River, an Englishman, John Jones, and a German known
as "Blue Billy" were killed. Both Plummer and Moore got away to bring
word of the tragedies back to Adobe Walls.10
By late spring of 1874, the situation with the Indians was on the verge
of exploding. Among the Indians there was talk of war and killing, and of
driving the white man from the land. During the spring of 1874, a leader
and prophet for the Indians emerged in the person of Isa-tai of the Qua-
hadi band of Comanches. Isa-tai claimed that he could bring the dead
back to life and that he was immune to the bullets of the white man. He
also claimed that he could vomit forth at will wagonloads of cartridges.
Isa-tai's medicine was viewed as being very strong, and he was doing his
best to incite a war against the whites. Because the majority of the Indians
now saw themselves as being in a desperate situation, with the only alter-
native to starvation being war, it took little persuasion by Isa-tai to con-
vince the Indian leaders that they must strike back at the whites. Thus, a
plan was formed that the Indians would attack and destroy the new set-
tlement of buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls."
In the early morning hours ofJune 27, 1874, some 2oo Indians, led by
Isa-tai and Quanah Parker, attacked the Adobe Walls post. The Indians
' Frederick W. Rathjen, The Texas Panhandle Frontzer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973),
157; T Lindsay Baker and Billy R. Harrison, Adobe Walls: The Hstory and Archeology of the x874 Trad-
zngPost (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), 16-22.
10 Olive K. Dixon, Life of "Billy"Dzxon (Dallas: Southwest Press, 1927), 189-191.
" Rupert N. Richardson, The Comanche Barrier to South Plazns Settlement (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur
H. Clark Co., 1933), Haley, The Buffalo War, 56.

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