Legends of the Old West - KIT CARSON Ep. 6 | “The Battle of Adobe Walls”

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

While the Navajo try to adjust to life at a new home, Kit Carson returns to the army for one more mission. He leads a column to the stronghold of the Kiowa and Comanche in Texas to try to stop their attacks on the Bosque Redondo reservation. Soldiers clash with warriors in the Battle of Adobe Walls, the final engagement of Kit Carson’s career. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Noiser+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the early spring of 1864, most of the 12,000 Navajo in the tribe surrendered to the U.S. Army. Navajo in the tribe, surrendered to the U.S. Army. Kit Carson and a detachment of soldiers had spent six months burning crops and killing livestock to destroy the Navajos' livelihood in an effort to force them to surrender, and it finally worked. Thousands streamed into an old army fort on the eastern edge of Arizona Territory. The army marched them roughly 400 miles through brutal conditions to the Bosque Redondo Reservation. It was an event that historians would liken to the infamous Trail of Tears that was experienced by tribes in the East when they were forcibly marched to the land that is now the state of Oklahoma. The Navajo called the ordeal the Long Walk. As far as they knew, the reservation was their new permanent home. They had been thrown in with a band of their ancient enemy, the Apache, and that obviously

caused problems. But the conflict with an old enemy was a relatively small problem in the grand scheme of things. Sickness was rampant, generated by bad water, poor food, and a host of other things. But even with the hardships and challenges, the Navajos successfully planted the types of crops they had harvested before. Corn, vegetables, and rice. If there was a reason for a glimmer of optimism, that was probably it. But then, one morning, a soldier was checking the corn crop when he noticed something that didn't look right.

As he looked closer, he saw little worms on the corn stalks. He pulled off an ear of corn, shucked it, and found the worms infesting the kernels. It was a cutworm, and it was a serious problem. Soldiers and the Navajo pulled out the worms and killed them to try to save the crop, but it was an impossible task. The worms destroyed the entire crop. 3,000 acres of corn were ruined. General James Carlton, who had created the reservation and put this whole plan of relocation in motion,

was frantic, as was presumably Kit Carson. Carlton was the military commander in the area, and the Bosque Redondo was his pet project. Kit had executed the plan to bring the Navajo and the Apache to the new space, and he was the superintendent of the reservation. They had brought all these people here, and they had to provide for them. Carlton ordered food, blankets, spinning wheels, fabric, seeds, huge flocks of sheep, and loads of other supplies. And, somewhat miraculously, officials in Washington delivered. Kit Carson saw the start of the corn crop disaster, but he had another mission. Because, on top of all the other problems at Bosque Redondo, there were the constant raids by the Comanche in Kiowa.

General Carlton needed to tackle multiple problems at once, and if a campaign was needed, there was only one man to lead it. Carlton ordered Kitt to lead an expedition into the Comanche homeland, and to some degree, Kitt welcomed the opportunity. degree, Kitt welcomed the opportunity. He felt a sense of responsibility toward the Navajo and the Apache on the reservation, but he was powerless against crop failures and disease. He couldn't do anything about those, but he could do something about the Comanche. Kitt also felt a sense of responsibility toward the torrents of white settlers who moved west on the Santa Fe Trail. Depending on how the Comanche wanted to define their area of control, the trail either ran right through the northern part of their territory or was right on the edge of it. Either way, it didn't really matter. It was close enough that

everyone on the trail was in danger. Kitt always said the two tribes he feared the most were the Blackfeet up in Montana and the Comanche in Texas. He had nearly died in an encounter with the Blackfeet during his mountain man days, and he'd had a few run-ins with the Comanche during his later years. He didn't know what was in store for him on this trip, but it ended up being the largest battle between soldiers and warriors in American history up to that point. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the story of one of the original legends of the American West, famed frontiersman and explorer, Kit Carson.

This is Episode 6, The Battle of Adobe Walls. The Comanche certainly qualified as legends of the Old West. Their domain was Illiano Estacado, the Staked Plains, the hot, dry lands in the northwest of Texas. At one time, they claimed half of Texas, half of New Mexico, and half of Kansas and Oklahoma as their territory. But like all the tribes in the West, the lands they claimed as their own were reduced year after year by the westward expansion of the American nation. Most tribes resisted what many considered an invasion, but few resisted as fiercely as the Comanche. Most people who were crazy enough to venture into their homeland never came back. But that was what Kit Carson and his detachment prepared to do on a crisp November morning in 1864. Kit's column left on November 10th,

and while the potentially life-and-death mission was obviously the sole focus of the men in the detachment, it was just one tiny piece of the American puzzle in late 1864. Two days earlier, the nation had voted in the presidential election. Abraham Lincoln would win a second term by one of the widest margins in history. Lincoln would win a second term by one of the widest margins in history. Five days after Kitt's column began its march, another, much larger column began a march that would enter the history books. In Georgia, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman began his famous, or infamous, march to the sea. And while Sherman started his own scorched earth campaign from Atlanta to Savannah,

Kitt's men crossed into Texas. Kitt led 400 soldiers with two mountain howitzers and 75 Ute scouts out of Fort Bascom and into the Comanche homeland that was usually called the Comancheria. General Carlton had instructed Kit to spare the women and children, and Kit could use his own judgment about how to handle the warriors, which basically meant kill them. This was a punitive expedition. It was not a mission to try to round up Comanche prisoners and bring them back to Bosque Redondo. Just the thought of trying to herd the Comanchanche onto a reservation would have caused people to think Carlton was insane. Kitt's force followed the Canadian River into the Texas

Panhandle. Each night as they camped, the Utes, the traditional enemies of the Comanche, painted themselves and performed their war dances around the campfire. Their enthusiasm made the soldiers nervous and edgy, but Kit knew they needed to maintain their traditions to keep them ready for what was to come. Two weeks into their trek, the Ute Scouts returned to report that large camps of Comanche and Kiowa were nearby on the south bank of the Canadian River. As Carson had suspected, they were in their winter camps. Carson ordered a nighttime march, and the soldiers crept closer. Carson sent one of his officers ahead with a cavalry force to attack a small village a little after dawn. It was a Kiowa village, and the fighting was brutal.

The warriors held out long enough for the women and children to escape, and then they abandoned their campsite too. The troops burned the village after finding evidence that white captives had been there. The escaping warriors alerted the rest of the camps, and the battle was on. Several hundred Comanche and Kiowa warriors bore down on the small advance unit, and the men knew they were in serious trouble. They made a mad dash for an old abandoned trading post known as Adobe Walls. Adobe Walls was a ruin, but in the vastness of the staked plains, it was the only refuge available, and it saved their lives. They hid behind the crumbling walls and waited for the main column. Kit Carson arrived with the rest of the men and now they

were back to full strength at nearly 500 fighters. But their enemy's numbers were growing by the minute. The soldiers set up the two small cannon and blasted the lines of Comanche and Kiowa. The warriors would not have worried about attacking the soldiers in a semi-fortified position, but the cannons changed the equation. After a time, the warriors rode away to regroup out of range of the weapons. It was now late morning on November 25th, and Carson's force had time to eat and rest. He predicted the warriors wouldn't attack again. He believed the size of his column plus the cannons would be enough to convince them to stay away. And he soon found out he was wrong. And organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify.

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By midday, the warriors came back and massed on the horizon. Estimates of the size of the force ranged from 1,000 to 3,000 warriors, but whatever it was, it was probably the largest Native American force that had assembled to fight the U.S. Army up to that time. This was two years before Red Cloud's War and the Fetterman fight that shocked the country, and it was 12 years before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Carson and his troops were severely outnumbered. They had nowhere to go and only the flimsy defenses of adobe walls to protect them. The Comanche and Kiowa launched their attack. Wave after wave of warriors rode toward the makeshift fort and fired

arrows and an assortment of old rifles. Their horses were battle-trained, and the Comanche could fire while riding at a full gallop. Sometimes they slid down the sides of the horses and used the animals as shields, a trick very few white men could accomplish. Carson kept his calm, constantly urging his men to relax and shoot straight. But the howitzers were the weapons that kept the soldiers from being overrun. The shells tore up masses of warriors, but the howitzers were the weapons that kept the soldiers from being overrun. The shells tore up masses of warriors, but the Comanche quickly learned to attack in small groups to avoid the explosions. There were moments of macabre humor throughout the fight. A Kiowa warrior found an army bugle and learned to play the army calls on it. When Carson's bugler sounded in advance, the Kiowa bugler played retreat and vice versa.

For a while, the troopers were as confused as hell, but they figured it out as the battle wore on into the late afternoon. As the sun began to set, the army still held its position and hadn't suffered a single fatality. But Carson knew they couldn't hold out forever. Sooner or later, the soldiers would run out of food, water, and ammunition, especially for the cannons. The only option was to move. Kitt ordered his men to begin a retreat along the Canadian River back toward New Mexico. They placed the howitzers in the middle of the long column to protect them as the Comanche attacked relentlessly. Kitt often thought

he'd made a mistake, but they were committed now and they kept going. The Comanche lit the grass bluffs on fire beside the river, and the smoke and the blaze nearly overwhelmed the soldiers, but again they kept going. Around nightfall, the Comanche and Kiowa began to relent. In their eyes, they had won a great battle. They had lost lots of warriors, and the original Kiowa village had been burned, but they had clearly repelled a U.S. Army force from their land. They rode back to their villages and built victory fires. Meanwhile, Kit Carson marched his

troops day and night, fearful that the Comanche would launch another attack. He caught glimpses of riders shadowing them from a distance, but there were no more assaults. When the column finally stopped to make camp four days later, men and horses were ready to fall over from exhaustion. The army casualties were remarkably low, only three dead and twenty wounded, and a good deal of the low numbers was due to Kit Carson's leadership. There was no panic, no outbursts of the sort that got men killed in a heroic charge. Kit had been in lots of fights, and he knew how to survive. When the column returned, General Carlton could claim victory. And it was one of those rare occasions when both sides could claim victory. The Comanche and Kiowa could rightfully claim they had repelled an army

column from their homeland. And the army could rightfully claim that it had gone into the Comancheria, inflicted heavy casualties, and survived. Six weeks after the Battle of Adobe Walls, Kit proposed to give it another try. He estimated they would need a thousand men and four bigger cannons. He also wanted to go back and fortify Adobe Walls as a command post. He knew that winter was the time to mount another attack, while the Comanche and Kiowa were in their winter camps. By summer, they would be all over the southern plains hunting buffalo and preying on wagon trains. General Carlton disagreed, mainly because he didn't have the resources to do it.

He had also met with a man he called the Comanche Head Chief, who said they wanted peace. Carlton was one of many officials, past and future, who didn't understand Native American societies. When the Comanche later said they would surrender, he meant his specific group, not the entire tribe. No one man could speak for the entire people. So, Kit Carson spent the next few months at home in Taos, getting a well-deserved rest and time with his wife and six children. But by late spring 1865, the southern Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche were active again, killing traders and travelers along the Santa Fe Trail. The army sent out patrols, but the attacks continued. The Plains tribes were in no mood for peace, and General Carlton had to act.

Carlton sent Colonel Kit Carson once again. This time, Kit took three companies of soldiers and the same two howitzers that had saved him at Adobe Walls. Kit's orders were to make the Indians, quote, behave themselves. The government wanted peace, but if the Indians wouldn't agree, Carson was authorized to do whatever it took to protect the citizens. degree, Carson was authorized to do whatever it took to protect the citizens. Kit chose a place to establish a fort, called Camp Nichols, east of New Mexico and a mile north of the Santa Fe Trail. It was situated on high ground. The troops built an enclosure from local stone for a stockade and two towers for the cannons. It was a crude fort, but it was better than nothing. It would not, however, withstand a concentrated Comanche assault any better than adobe walls. But before

Kit could go any further with his mission, he was called back to Santa Fe. A special government committee had convened to investigate the Native American situation in the West. It was headed by Senator James Doolittle from Wisconsin, and the committee was anxious to hear from Kit Carson. A contingent met with Kit and William Bent of Bent's Fort and asked about the problems in the West. Both men had plenty to say. They felt a major issue was the reckless aggression of the white newcomers against the tribes.

It wasn't necessarily the settlers, it was the men of low character, the gold hunters, and the outlaws, who didn't understand or didn't care about the sometimes delicate relationships with local tribes. Carson and Bent tried to explain the situation with simple logic. White settlers flooded in, ranches and farms proliferated, hunting grounds shrank, and the tribes lost their food sources of elk, deer, and buffalo. Therefore, they raided farms and ranches

and stole any livestock that could feed their people. But that was only half the equation. The other half was rage, which was equally logical. Land the tribes had lived on for hundreds of years was being invaded. It was being fenced off and torn up for roads and fields. And it was being crisscrossed with iron rails on which great black smoke belching monstrosities screamed across the landscape. Kit Carson and William Bent said there was only one solution, reservations. It was the only way the settlers could be safe from the tribes

and the tribes could be safe from the inevitable American expansion. Even though Carson and Bent knew Bosque Redondo was a failure, they still believed reservations were the only solution. was a failure, they still believed reservations were the only solution. They advocated for re-education, however painful they knew it would be. To survive, the tribes must give up their free-roaming lifestyles and adapt to schools, churches, and farms. A few months later, in the fall of 1865, Carson and Bent attended a meeting in Kansas with government officials, military officers, and commissioners. This time, tribal representatives were there as well. More than 3,000 camped along the Arkansas River.

They were from the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and many others. They were from the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and many others. The tribes spoke their minds honestly and ended up saying many of the same things in different ways that Kit Carson and William Bent said. The tribes raised the specter of the Sand Creek Massacre that had happened a year earlier. Carson and Bent pleaded for understanding and told the assembled masses that this group of commissioners was different. Carson and Bent also wanted the War Department to handle everything with the tribes, rather than the corrupt Indian Affairs Department. That idea didn't go anywhere, though the Army would be the tool for the next 30 years that was used to force the tribes onto the reservations. The committee's final report did little to win support among the American public for the plight of the tribes in the West.

Kit Carson was promoted to Brevet Brigadier General and commanded Fort Union north of Santa Fe and then Fort Garland in Colorado. The Ute were once again harassing homesteaders, mostly stealing livestock. It wasn't a surprise to Carson, who knew full well that the Ute were once again harassing homesteaders, mostly stealing livestock. It wasn't a surprise to Carson, who knew full well that the Ute needed food. Thus began a year of trying to keep the peace between the Ute and white settlers. Fort Garland was seriously undermanned, and Carson's diplomacy and negotiating skills were sorely needed. If the Ute decided to attack, it would have gone very badly for the soldiers. But Carson instituted an open house policy for the Ute to come and go and talk about their issues.

He also supplied them with food and other necessities, knowing it could go a long way to relieving the raids on livestock. When General William Tecumseh Sherman visited that fall of 1866, he was impressed with Kitt's attitude and methods. Carson declined to accept the easy way out, but instead always asked questions and wanted to hear if there was a better way to satisfy needs and complaints. He rarely showed emotion or raised his voice. Carson did express to General Sherman that he was very concerned about the possibility of a war with the Ute. He felt establishing a reservation for them,

separate from the White settlements, was imperative if future trouble was to be avoided. When people were starving, treaties and agreements were forgotten. Kit walked a tightrope every day to keep war from breaking out, and he continued to work with the Ute even after he finally resigned from the Army. He was 57 years old, his health was failing, and he knew he wasn't able to lead a military command that could be called into action at any time. He asked to be appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Colorado, and he moved his family to the tiny settlement of Boggsville in the southeast corner of the state. Boggsville doesn't exist anymore,

but it was near the present-day towns of Los Animas and Fort Lyon. There, Kit met with a surgeon to try to finally learn why he was having chest pains for so many years. The surgeon diagnosed Carson with an aneurysm and said Carson would have to be very careful since there was little the surgeon could do but prescribe painkillers. Then, as always seemed to happen, if Kit thought he was finally going to settle down into something like a quiet life, he received a summons from Washington. As the superintendent for Indian Affairs in Colorado, he was instructed to bring Ute chiefs to the Capitol to work out a peace treaty. Kit took three Ute chiefs to Washington, which probably marked their first time on a train. They met with President Andrew Johnson and signed a treaty that gave the Ute tribe a large portion

of the western slope of Colorado, more than 15 million acres. Undoubtedly, Kitt Carson played a large part in the negotiation, and for the Ute, it was a good bargain, considering the alternative of fighting a hopeless war against the U.S. Army. While they lost some of their traditional hunting ground, they gained large concessions from the government in terms of the size of the reservation and guarantees of equipment and supplies. On the way back, Carson and the Ute chiefs went to New York City, and Carson visited

a specialist about his aneurysm. The specialist confirmed the surgeon's diagnosis and gave Carson a dire warning. He must avoid excitement and anxiety, and most horrifying of all, no drinking. The old warrior must have laughed. His entire life had been nothing but excitement and or anxiety. And separating a man from his whiskey in the Old West, well, that was damn near criminal. But Kidd accepted the advice and boarded the train with the Ute Chiefs to Cheyenne, Wyoming. They took a stagecoach down to Denver, and he was so exhausted he stayed for

three days before continuing home. His wife Josefa met him with a carriage in the neighboring town of La Junta, which is still there, and that was a hell of a feat because she was very much nine months pregnant. Two days after they got home, she gave birth to their seventh child, Josephine, Two days after they got home, she gave birth to their seventh child, Josephine. And from there, the sad end happened rapidly. The surgeon who had diagnosed Kit and helped with the delivery was dismayed at Kit's condition. Then, two weeks later, Josefa died of what was called childbed fever. Kit was overwhelmed with grief.

Josefa's sister hurried to the house to help care for the children, and Kit's health spiraled rapidly. The surgeon moved Kit to his clinic at Fort Lyon to keep watch over him. Less than a month later, Kit's aneurysm burst, and he died on May 23, 1868. He was buried with full military honors beside Josefa in the Bogsville Cemetery. Just a few days later, General Sherman and members of the Peace Commission arrived at Bosque Redondo to meet with the Navajo. On June 1st, 1868, representatives of both sides signed a new treaty. The Navajo would return to their traditional homeland, 25,000 square miles,

to what would be a reservation, but one of the exact type that Kit Carson had preached. On June 18th, escorted by Army troops for protection on their journey, the Navajo began another long walk. This time it was joyous, and the Navajo sang all the way home. One year later, the bodies of Kit Carson and his wife Josefa were exhumed and moved to their longtime home in the growing city of Taos, New Mexico. They were buried in a cemetery that now bears his name, Kit Carson Memorial Cemetery, in downtown Taos, right around the corner from the Kit Carson Home and Museum on Kit Carson Road. There were few people who

experienced the dawn of the western expansion of the United States like Kit Carson did. He traveled an almost impossible amount of territory in an age long before cars and paved roads and airplanes and hotels. The small, soft-spoken man left an impression. Buffalo Bill Cody named his only son, Kit Carson Cody. Kit will always have controversial chapters in his past, but he had a self-awareness that was lacking in many around him. He said, I do not know whether I'd done right or wrong, but I'd done what I thought was best. Thanks for listening to the story of Kit Carson here on Legends of the Old West.

Next time, we're going to have a little fun. It's a series about conmen of the Old West. Next time, we're going to have a little fun. It's a series about conmen of the Old West, swindlers, snake oil salesmen, and perpetrators of the greatest hoaxes of the era. We'll see you next time. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Kathleen Morris. Original music by

Rob Valliere. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details, and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And all of our episodes are on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast. Thanks for listening.