Summary and Analysis Chapter 11: The War to Save the Buffalo
New Characters
Satanta/White Bear: Kiowa chief who led struggle against the Army and was
repeatedly jailed. He killed himself in Texas.
Kicking Bird: Kiowa chief who led expedition against the Army.
Lone Wolf: Kiowa chief who led delegation to Washington, D.C., and won release of Satanta and Big Tree.
Summary
In December 1868, after the Battle of Washita in which Black Kettle’s village
was destroyed by Custer’s troops, General Sheridan orders the Cheyennes,
Arapahos, Kiowas, and Comanches to surrender at Fort Cobb. The Kiowas do not
surrender, and Custer arrests the Kiowa chiefs, violating a truce in order to
do so. Two thousand Kiowas and 2500 Comanches are put on the reservation at
Fort Cobb. Then, at a sun dance on the Red River in summer 1870, the Comanches,
Southern Cheyennes, and Kiowas consider the possibility of fighting the whites.
In mid-May 1871, the Kiowas and Comanches decide to attack Texas, and they kill
seven teamsters leading a train of ten freight wagons. Satanta takes
responsibility for this raid, and he and other chiefs are arrested for it. As a
result, Satanta and Big Tree are sentenced to life in prison in July 1871. But
Lone Wolf’s diplomacy wins the release of the two chiefs on the grounds that
they are needed to make treaty negotiations for the Kiowas. Lone Wolf and the
chiefs decide in St. Louis that Lone Wolf would request their release upon
arriving in Washington, D.C., for talks. In Washington, D.C, the Kiowas and
Comanches are told to assemble at Fort Sill by December 15, 1873. Lone Wolf,
though, wins a promise for another release of Satanta and Big Tree, and they
are transferred to Fort Sill, then released on parole. The Kiowas and Comanches
decide in the spring of 1874 to attack the whites to preserve the buffalo
hordes. An attack on white hunters at Adobe Walls fails, and the Indians flee
to Palo Duro and thus defy Indian Bureau orders to stay on their reservations.
The Army sends out troops to conduct reprisal attacks, and they slaughter 1000
horses at Palo Duro and continue to kill many Indians throughout the fall and
winter. After Lone Wolf and 252 Kiowas surrender at Fort Sill on February 25,
1875, 26 Kiowa warriors are exiled to Florida.
Analysis
In the Kiowas, Brown offers another example of the warrior ethic that drove
many Indian tribes. Upon seeing the herds of buffalo become depleted, the tribe
disputed “following the white man’s way” and his allegedly effeminate, agrarian
lifestyle but decided that hunting buffalo was essential to Kiowa existence. It
may have been the warrior ethic that inspired Satanta to take responsibility
for the May 17 raid on the freight wagons. Satana is described as a bold,
rough, vigorous chief, which may have prompted the Army to keep imprisoning
him; he was too great a threat to leave alone. It was Lone Wolf’s deft
diplomacy that won Satanta and Big Tree their freedom to lead the Kiowas, and
it seems that the Kiowas relied on more than just brute strength to resist the
U.S. It is ironic, then, to read of the failure of Quanah’s medicine to protect
the tribe’s warriors from white bullets. The Kiowas’ faith in their traditional
resources of physical strength and courage, magical medicine, and their Palo
Duro stronghold were simply not enough to effectively defend themselves against
the whites.
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Summary and Analysis Chapter 10: The Ordeal of Captain Jack
Summary and Analysis Chapter 12: The War for the Black Hills