The engagement is described in detail by Lieutenant George H. Pettis, who had charge of the two howitzers during the fight. The expedition, which consisted of three hundred and thirty-five volunteer soldiers and seventy-two Ute and Jicarilla Apache Indians, was under command of Colonel Christopher ("Kit") Carson, the noted scout and Indian fighter, then holding a commission in the First New Mexico infantry. Starting from Fort Bascom, New Mexico, they proceeded down the Canadian, the intention being to disable the Indians by taking them by surprise in their winter camp, as Custer did on the Washita four years later. The first village, a Kiowa camp consisting of one hundred and seventy-six tipis, was discovered on the Canadian at the entrance of a small stream since known as Kit Carson creek, in what is now Hutchinson county, Texas, a short distance above Adobe Walls. The attack was made at daybreak of November 25, 1864. After some resistance the Kiowa retreated a few miles down the river, where there were other camps of the allied Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche. Reenforced from these, they returned and made such a desperate attack upon the invaders that Carson was glad to retire after burning the upper village, although the other camps against which the expedition was directed were in plain sight below. The battle lasted all day, the Indians disputing every foot of his advance and following up his retreat so closely that only the howitzers saved the troops from utter destruction. In the early part of the engagement the soldiers corralled their horses in an old abandoned adobe building which Pettis calls the Adobe Walls, but which was probably the ruins of the trading post built by Bent twenty years before (see winter 1843-44). The Adobe Walls, where Quanah led his celebrated fight, were not built until 1873 or 1874 and were some distance down the river. Several white captives, women and children, were in the hands of the Indians at the time of the attack, but none of these was rescued. The Kiowa also saved all their horses, although most of their winter provision and several hundred dressed buffalo skins in the first village, together with the tipis, were destroyed by the troops.