Overview

On a late November morning in 1864, Col. Kit Carson and his U.S. troops, under orders from the commander of the New Mexico Military Department, attacked Kiowa Chief Doh?san’s winter village in the Texas Panhandle. Warriors retaliated with stiff resistance as their women and children escaped. Fighting proceeded down the Canadian River to the abandoned trading post of Adobe Walls as hundreds more Kiowas and Comanches joined the battle. Nearing sunset, Carson’s troops burned Doh?san’s village, and although remarkably few lives were lost in the battle itself, the enduring consequences were hardly insignificant. Well-known as an explorer, guide, and frontiersman, Carson’s involvement at the First Battle of Adobe Walls has been overlooked. Beginning his research in the 1990s, Alvin Lynn set out to fill that void when he located and walked the 200-mile-long wagon road from Fort Bascom to Adobe Walls and collected 1,800 metal artifacts from 15 historic camps, including the burned Kiowa village. Among the recovered artifacts were fired friction primers verifying the placement of howitzers at the battle site. With nearly eighty battle site and artifact photographs taken by renowned photographer Wyman Meinzer, Kit Carson and the First Battle of Adobe Walls documents Carson’s military expedition from Fort Bascom to Adobe Walls and Lynn’s own journey more than a century later to discover what really happened.

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9780896728615

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I've simply been in the right place at the right time (and lived long enough) to have had success as an archaeologist. I'd gladly have traded most of my acknowledgments in order to enjoy the range of talents shown here by Alvin Lynn. In my personal experience I've never read such a combination of detailed history and geography. He managed to put me there as a witness, and I'm grateful.--Jay Blaine, consultant, La Salle archaeological projects

Author Information

Alvin R. Lynn grew up on a farm along the Pease River in rural Motley County, Texas, USA. He is a retired social studies and science teacher and coach. With a lifelong passion for archaeology and history, he now serves as a steward for the Texas Historical Commission. He and his wife Nadyne live in Amarillo, Texas, USA.

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