Adobe Walls And The Escalation

The immediate trigger for the Red River War of 1874 was the battle at Adobe Walls, an abandoned trading post site on the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle, on June 27, 1874.

A group of around twenty-eight commercial hide hunters had established a trading post at the site — which sat on territory the Medicine Lodge Treaty had designated as Comanche and Kiowa hunting grounds.

The presence of commercial hunters deep in treaty territory was itself a provocation, and by late June 1874, a large force of Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne warriors had gathered with the intention of destroying the post.