The Nome daily nugget., 1934-12-24
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON

A IXTY years ago this month there occurred a fight, the story of which
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 has become of the classics of
 the Western frontier That was the
 Battle of Adobe Walls which began
 on the early morning of June 27, IA1 1874. when a war party of several
 hundred Comanche, Klowa, Chey-
 enne Arapahoe and Kiowa Apache
 Indians attacked buffalo hunters camp. occupied by 2S men and one woman, located on the south fork of the Canadian river in what is now Hutchinson county in the Texas Panhandle >%
 Characteristic of its ranking as frontier clas sic is the number of men who at one time or another have been called survivors of the Adobe Walls fight. Seemingly every d-timer who was ever buffalo hunter on the South western plains in the '70s has been accorded the distinction of "He fought at Adobe Walls" by amateur historians and imaginative newspaper reporters, and this despite the fact that there has been in existence for many years an authen- tic list of the actual participants which might easily disprove the claim advanced in favor of spurious defenders of that outpost of the from tier
 Under the terms of the Medicine Lodge treaty of 1867, the federal government fixed the Arkan- sas river as the northern boundary of the Indian country for the tribes of the Southwestern plains and guaranteed that white hunters should not cross that stream. But they did, In 1872 the mushroom town of Dodge City, Kan., sprang into existence and became the out fitting point and center of activity of the hide hunters who, with their big Sharps buffalo guns, were constantly invading the red mans country. By the spring of 1874 the slaughter had been so great that the buffalo had been virtually wiped out near Dodge City. So A. c. Myers, who was in the general merchandise business in Dodge, organized an expedition to establish trading post farther south where the hunters could get their supplies and to which they would bring their buffalo hides which Myers would freight back to the Kansas 'hide capital" Form ing a partnership with Fred Leonard and accom- panied by party of 20-odd frontiersmen, Myers set out for the forbidden Indian country
 Among the members of the party were Jim Hanrahan, an old buffalo hunter who was going along to open saloon at the new trading post Thomas O'Keefe, a blacksmith; and two young buffalo hunters destined for future fame-Billy Dixon and Bat Masterson. After a journey of 150 miles the expedition reached a spot the south fork of the Canadian where stood the ruins of an old trading post, known as Adobe Walls, which had been built by William Bent and Ceran St Vrain, some time before 1840. mile or so farther on, in broad valley where there was a pretty stream called East Adobe Walls creek, Myers and his companions unloaded  their wagons and set about establishing the sec ond Adobe Walls which was to become even more famous than the first.
 Myers and Leonard built a picket house, 20 by 60 feet in size; Hanrahan put up a sod house, 25 by 60, and O'Keefe opened his blacksmith shop in a picket structure, 15 feet square. My CTS and Leonard also built stockade corral by setting big cottonwood logs on end in the ground. short time later, Rath and Wright, leading of Citv dnridnd to establish a branch store at Adobe Walls and built sod house, 16 by 20 feet, leaving James Langton in charge of the new business there. To Adobe Walls also came William Olds and his wife to open a restaurant.
 For several years the Indians had been watch Ing with increasing alarm the wasteful slaugh- ter of the buffalo by the white hunters. So when in the spring of 1874 Comanche medi- cine man named Isatai announced that he had ! new medicine which would enable them 70