Billy Dixon

Scout, Buffalo Hunter, Indian Fighter

Congressional Medal of Honor Winner

Dixon, William (Billy), scout, buffalo hunter (Sept. 25, 1850-Mar. 9, 1913) 
B. in Ohio County, the present West Virginia, 

He was orphaned at age 12 and went to live with an Uncle in Ray County, 
Missouri, ran away from uncle's home at age 14 carrying only the clothes he 
was wearing and a sack containing one extra shirt and a photograph of his 
mother.  

He was hired by wagon freighters in Kansas as a teamster, he spent most of 
the time until 1869 at this occupation, working between such points as 
Fort Kearny, Nebraska, Fort Collins, and Julesburg, Colorado and Camp 
Supply, Indian Territory.  He was a government mule skinner.

On October 18, 1867, he was at the camp on Medicine Lodge Creek when some 
1500 Plains Indian warriors appeared dramatically at the peace conference, 
riding over a hill in all their finery and charging to within 200 yards of 
the camp.

Dixon became a fine rifle shot and sometimes guided parties of eastern 
excursionists on buffalo-hunting expeditions.  In November, 1869 he went 
into buffalo hunting fulltime northwest of Fort Hays, one of the first 
professional hide hunters.   He soon had his own outfit.
On one occasion he recalled he had taken "120 hides without moving (my) 
rest sticks."  The work was profitable and Dixon invested his earnings in a 
road house a dozen miles south of Hays City, Kansas, but a partner, 
Billy Reynolds, skipped with the accumulated cash and Dixon returned to 
buffalo hunting.  He was one of the first hunters to work south of the 
Canadian in Comanche country and by 1874 was in the Texas Panhandle. 
On another occasion Billie Dixon killed 82 buffalo at one "stand" of about 
two or three acres of land. 

Spring of 1874 found him in Dodge City along with a number of other hunters.  
By then the buffalo had been thinned out in many areas by constant hunting, 
and the treaty land south of the Arkansas River began to look more and more 
tempting.

Despite the Indians' growing hostility, about fifty hunters, skinners, and 
merchants decided to establish a camp deep within the treaty territory 
somewhere along the Canadian River.  The site finally chosen was about one 
mile northeast of Brent's old trading post.  Abandoned in 1844, the ruins 
had come to be known as Adobe Walls.  There Kit Carson and his troops 
narrowly escaped defeat when they attacked a Kiowa-Comanche encampment in 
1864 and were forced to beat a hasty retreat.

After constructing two trading stores, a blacksmith shop, and a saloon, the 
hunters scattered to search for the buffalo herd.  By late June, the 
scattered Indian attacks had increased in intensity and several hunters had 
been killed.  As a result many of the men gathered at Adobe Walls for mutual 
protection.

	Second Battle of Adobe Walls

A force of between 700 and 1,000 warriors was assembled, and the attack was 
launched at dawn on June 27, 1874.  There were  twenty-eight men and one 
woman at Adobe Walls on that morning.  On this morning the men in Hanrahan's 
saloon were awakened by a mysterious report at 2:00 a.m.  After bracing the 
ridge pole of the building, the men decided to stay up and get an early 
start on their travels.  That occurance no doubt saved the hunters' lives.

Just before the attack, Billy Dixon emerged from the saloon carrying his 
rifle.  When he looked up he noticed a strange body of unidentified objects 
moving along the edge of the timber some distance from the camp.  As he 
watched, the objects suddenly fanned out and broke into a headlong charge.  
Even when he recognized the hostiles, Dixon didn't expect an attack on the 
buildings.  He ran to tie his horse to a wagon.  When he returned to fire a 
shot or two at the raiders, he expected them to be running off the other 
horses.  But to his amazement, he found that they were charging directly 
toward the buildings.  Dixon fired one shot and ran for his life back into 
Hanrahan's saloon.  

As for the Indians, their intended victims were men who made their living 
by means of their shooting skill, who were sheltered in buildings, and who 
had a plentiful supply of ammunition.  Most of the hunters were equipped 
with the Sharps buffalo rifles which could easily outrange the Indian arms. 
The effects of its big .50 caliber bullets on a human body were devastating.

During much of the day, the two youngest hunters in the group, Billy Dixon 
and Bat Masterson, fought together.  Masterson, who would later gain 
considerable fame as a lawman, considered Dixon "an extraordinarily fine 
shot with a buffalo gun."

They lost four killed compared with an unknown but probably greater Indian 
loss, Dixon scored one of the remarkable shots of Plains legend late in this
engagement, picking off an Indian at a distance later measured at 
1,538 yards, just under seven-eights of a mile; and with allowances for 
luck, it was a memorable feat. 

In August General Nelson Miles arrived in Dodge City and hired Dixon as a 
scout for his expedition sent out to put down the uprising into the Staked
Plains in the summer of 1877, where his knowledge of the country was 
instrumental in discovering water for the command at a critical time.

In September Dixon, scout Amos Chapman and four enlisted men were directed 
to take dispatches from Miles's headquarters on McClellan Creek, Texas, to 
Camp Supply.  With them went Sergeant Woodhull and Privates Rath, Harrington,
and Smith, all from the Sixth Calvary.  On the second day they were met by 
a large band of hostile Indians.  A soldier, Private Smith, who was holding 
the horses,  was wounded mortally and four others, Sergeant Woodhall, 
Private Harrington, and Scout Amos Chapman were seriously wounded; and 
Private Rath and Scout Billy Dixon received comparatively minor wounds.  
The tiny group managed to gain the limited protection of a shallow buffalo 
wallow and in this famous engagement successfully held off the enemy.
 

All of the men were recommended for the Medal of Honor by General Miles 
and all received the award.

Dixon's dictated autobiography, published as a biography by his widow, 
gives somewhat more heroic credit to the scout than do other accounts of 
this fight but in any event his actions were wholly creditable as were those
of the other five.  All six were awarded Medals of Honor, although Dixon and 
Chapman, being civilians, subsequently were obliged to return them.  

Dixon was present at the November 8, 1874, rescue of two of the German 
(Germaine) sisters from the Cheyennes on McClellan Creek. 

He said he was with the party which selected the site of Fort Elliott, Texas,
established February 3, 1875, near the present town of Mobeetie (SweetWater)
and was attached to that post as guide.  

In 1883 Dixon quitted the army payroll and, since the buffalo were gone from 
the South Plains, ranched, homesteaded, built a residence at the site of 
Adobe Walls and even became postmaster when a post office was established 
there.  He married Olive King in 1894 and was elected first sheriff of 
Hutchinson County, Texas, but resigned in disgust at political activity 
affecting the position.  

He resettled in 1902 at Plemons, a small community in central Hutchinson 
County so his children could go to school, but shortly moved once more, 
this time to Cimarron County, Oklahoma where again he homesteaded.  He died 
at Texline, Texas, on the New Mexico border just south of Cimarron County, 
Oklahoma.


Taken From:-
Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, A-F by Dan L. Thrapp - 1988

Some Panhandle History - Amarillo Southwest Plainsman, October 23, 1926

Old West, Spring 1987-Billy Dixon, Congressional Metal of Honor - Indian Wars.

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