Kit Carson and the First Battle of Adobe Walls: A Tale of Two Journeys (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest) - Hardcover

Lynn, Alvin R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0896728617 ISBN 13: 9780896728615

Publisher: Texas Tech University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Following Kit Carson from Bascom to the Walls, one hundred years later

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.

About this title

About the Author

Alvin Lynn grew up on a farm along the Pease River in rural Motley County, Texas. 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.

Review

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

Kit Carson and the First Battle of Adobe Walls is Alvin R. Lynn’s account of the fifteen years he spent meticulously tracking Carson’s 200-mile expedition, uncovering more than 1,800 artifacts and correcting many historical errors. Lynn’s archaeological achievement is breathtaking: among his many discoveries was the Kiowa village Carson attacked, whose relics had rested undisturbed for 150 years.
--S.C. Gwynne, True West magazine

Edition details

• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0896728617
• ISBN 13: 9780896728615
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352