Adobe Walls

In the spring of 1874 a handful of men and one woman set out for the Texas Panhandle to seek their fortunes in the great buffalo hunt. Moving south to follow the herds, they intended to establish a trading post to serve the hunter, or "hide men." At a place called Adobe Walls they dug blocks from the sod and built their center of operations.
After only a few months, angry members of several Plains Indian tribes, whose physical and cultural survival depended on the great bison herd that was rapidly shrinking, attacked the post. Initially defeated, the attacking Indians retreated. But the defenders also retreated, leaving the deserted post to be burned by Indians intent on erasing all traces of the white man's presence. Nonetheless, tracings did remain, and in the ashes and dirt were buried minute details of the hide men's lives and the battle that so suddenly changed them.
The authors of this book, a historian and an archaeologist, have dug into the sod and into far-flung archives to sift reality from the long-romanticized story of Adobe Walls, its residents, and the Indians who so fiercely resented their presence. The full story of Adobe Walls now tells us much about the life and work of hide men, about the dying of the Plains Indian culture, and about the march of white commerce across the frontier.

Billy R. Harrison was curator of archaeology at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas.