buckskin shirt, red war
paint, and a buffalo-hide
shield. Satanta acquired
this last item from Black
Horse, a famed warrior
who was impressed by
his younger charge. The
headstrong Satanta car-
ried it into battle during
scores of encounters
against neighboring tribes-
men and white settlers,
and he regarded it as a
good-luck charm. Such
was Satanta’s renown
that in 1866, at the rela-
tively young age of 46, he
gained an appointment as
the junior war chief of his
band.
At this time, Native
American life along the
Southern Plains was
being compromised by
the encroachment of
white civilization, whose
ranches and wagon trails
destroyed buffalo grazing grounds. These ac-
tivities, in turn, severely disrupted the ability
of regional tribesmen to feed and clothe
themselves. Angered by the destructive in-
truders, Indians lashed out at settlers along
the Santa Fe Trail in a futile attempt to pre-
serve their way of life. In April 1867, the U.S.
government wished to settle its differences
amicably with the various Plains Indians, and
a large council was called at Fort Dodge
Kansas. Presiding over these talks was Gen.
Winfield Scott Hancock, the noted Civil War
leader. However, he was visibly impressed by
a speech given by Satanta, who represented
the militant war faction of the Kiowas. Having
correctly gauged the quality of his opposition,
Hancock awarded him the full dress uniform
of a major general. Satanta, no stranger to
showy attire, took the distinction in stride and
with a little sense of humor. A few weeks later
he raided the corral at Fort Dodge to steal
army horses, arrayed in
his new general’s outfit,
and he saluted pursuers
with a tip of his plumed
hat.
In the fall of 1867 the
Treaty of Medicine Creek
Lodge was signed, where-
by the Kiowas, Coman-
ches, and Arapahos agreed
to give up their tradi-
tional hunting grounds in
exchange for life on a gov-
ernment reservation. Sa-
tanta, mistrusting whites,
harangued them in his
usual forceful style, de-
claring, “I love the land
and the buffalo and will
not part with it.... A long
time ago this land be-
longed to our fathers, but
when I go up the river, I
see camps of soldiers on
its banks. These soldiers
cut down my timber, they
kill my buffalo, and when
I see that my heart feels like bursting, I feel
sorry.” Nevertheless, Gen. William Tecumseh
Sherman insisted that the Native Americans
must accommodate progress or face harrow-
ing consequences, and the majority agreed.
Henceforth, the Kiowas and Comanches re-
settled on new lands in what is now Okla-
homa, but they retained the right to hunt and
forage on traditional ground. Satanta only
sullenly complied, and it was not until late in
the year that he and a few of his band will-
ingly surrendered to Gen. Philip H. Sheridan.
However, Sheridan promptly arrested the en-
tire group and held them in close confine-
ment until the rest of his band drifted in and
was relocated.
Unfortunately, many Kiowa warriors could
never adjust their freewheeling, nomadic
ways for a sedentary life of farming. Parties of
restless young men frequently slipped away
from the reservation to raid and hunt in theirSATANTA
Satanta
National Archives