An interesting example of what an amateur can do, illustrating advantages and disadvantages. On November 10, 164, Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson, 300 New Mexico Volunteers, 100 Ute and Apache allies, and two mountain howitzers set off from Fort Bascom to fight the Kiowa and Comanche. They arrived at the Indian campsites along the Canadian River on November 24, and came very close to having their posteriors handed to them by Chief Dohäsan and his warriors, who outnumbered them by about three to one. The only thing that saved Carson’s command from becoming an earlier iteration of Custer’s was the two mountain howitzers; the Kiowa hadn’t seen shell, grape and canister before and were taken aback. Carson admitted he was outmatched and withdrew. Because William Bent had built and abandoned a trading post near the battle site some years earlier and its ruins were still present, it became known as the Battle of Adobe Walls; in 1874 a second battle against Comanche and Kiowa took place about a mile to the south, at a different trading post; these became, then, the First and Second Battle of Adobe Walls.


Author Alvin Lynn is an amateur historian, who had assisted on some archaeological digs. He embarked on a multiyear project to trace Carson’s route and establish where he had camped. All the land is on private property; Lynn made friends with all the ranchers, all of whom were hospitable and accommodating. He hired small aircraft to do aerial surveys, traced the road if possible (there’s one relatively short section he could never find), and went over potential campsites with a metal detector. The result is pretty impressive; an abundantly illustrated coffee-table book; this is something no State or local archaeological or historical survey would have had the persistence to accomplish.


Lynn was successfully in pinning down all of Carson’s campsites and backed up his claim with artifacts from the appropriate time – fired or dropped bullets, empty cartridges, bits and pieces of iron wagon parts, broken horseshoes, buttons, pocket knives, and so on. Interestingly, good campsites tend to get reused; artifacts show up from later time periods as well (and, in a couple cases, earlier ones – Lynn found a few Alibates Flint projectile points).


Background material includes a life of Carson and a general discussion of the situation in New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle in the 1860s. Lynn explains how a mountain howitzer is loaded and fired and discusses small arms of the period – appropriately enough, since a lot of his finds were bullets and cartridges. About a third of the book is illustrations of the finds. As mentioned, they are mostly bullets and cartridges; you could make a pretty thorough history of firearms of the American west from them. One thing I noted was a lot of unfired .50-56 Spencer cartridges; I wonder if in the heat of battle soldiers were busy pumping the lever action without cocking the hammer and not noticing they were just ejecting cartridges? I was also surprised to find that many Spencers in use in an out-of-the-way place and time like the Texas panhandle in 1864.


There are drawbacks; for each day of Carson’s journey, Lynn provides a map showing the location of finds. The catch is none of these maps are anchored to geography; back when I was taking cartography it was hammered in that every map has a North arrow, a scale, and coordinates or some other way to relate it to larger geography. Well, Lynn’s maps have the North arrows and the scales, but no coordinates. (I wonder if he was trying to prevent looters? He comments that all the finds – which were donated to the State of Texas - have GPS coordinates). Another drawback of the maps is they have contours – but no indication of contour intervals, unless it’s buried in text somewhere and I missed it. All of Lynn’s finds – except the surface ones, like the Alibates points – were made with metal detectors, and Lynn comments he may have had to dig several feet to find the object the detector with signaling on. Digging like that would, of course, destroy any archaeological stratigraphy. I’m of two minds; if it wasn’t for Lynn and people like him willing to take and interest and spend a substantial amount of time and resources, a lot of historical information would eventually be lost, but at the same time Lynn’s methods destroyed other historical information.


With the above cautions, this is interesting and enjoyable; Lynn’s writing is straightforward and well organized. Profusely illustrated and with a copious bibliography; Lynn obvious spent a lot of time in libraries before and during the project. ( )