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Wars In The Southwest

Kiowa And Comanche

Some Indian tribes fought a single campaign; many fought frequent wars; but for the Kiowa and Comanche, warfare was continuous. These two tribes, although not related and speaking different languages, became allies before the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Kiowa gained a reputation for having killed more white men in proportion to their numbers than any other tribe.

Typical of Kiowa leadership was Satanta, who came to prominence shortly after the Civil War. On October 18, 1865, agent J. H. Leavenworth, son of the general for whom Fort Leavenworth was named, negotiated a treaty by which the Kiowa and Comanche agreed to go on a reservation and cease all depredations. In August, 1866, Satanta led a raid into Texas, killing James Box and two children and capturing Mrs. Box and three children. Satanta took his captives to Fort Larned, Kansas, where he boldly demanded ransom for them from Leavenworth, with whom he had signed the treaty. Denounced by Leavenworth for his bad faith, Satanta took his captives sixty-five miles farther west to Fort Dodge, where he got his ransom. In 1867 Satanta signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty; in 1868 he took the lead in a new outbreak. This time he was captured by Sheridan and Custer, along with Lone Wolf, Kiowa war chief who also had signed the Medicine Lodge treaty; Sheridan proposed to hang them for their many crimes, but was talked out of it, and released them on their promises of better behavior.

Satanta's next encounter was with the general of the army. When Grant became President in 1869, Sherman succeeded to the rank we now call "four-star general" - Grant had worn four stars, but Sherman prescribed insignia consisting of two silver stars with the arms of the United States in gold between them.

With his new rank Sherman made an inspection trip in Texas. One of its objectives was to investigate complaints that Indians from reservations in Indian Territory had heen raiding into Texas. On May 18, 1869, Sherman rode from Fort Griffin (north of Albany) to Fort Richardson (Jacksboro) with a small escort. Not far behind came a government-contract wagon train carrying corn. That night a wounded teamster limped into Fort Richardson with a report that the train had been attacked and burned by Indians, and seven teamsters killed. Only five escaped.

General Mackenzie pursued the raiders, while Sherman rode on to Fort Sill, Indian Territory. Four days later a band of Kiowa came in for rations. Satanta and another Indian named Satank were with them. Agent Lawrie Tatum questioned diem about the wagon train, and Satanta loudly boasted that he had led the raid, naming also Satank and Big Tree.

Learning about this, Sherman invited the chiefs to a conference on the front porch of the quarters of the post commander, Brevet Major General Benjamin H. Grierson, colonel of the 10th Cavalry. When Satanta again boasted of the killings, Sherman told him he was under arrest for murder. Satanta reached for his revolver, but saw he was covered by armed soldiers, who had been concealed in the house.

Mackenzie handcuffed and chained the three prisoners and put them in a wagon. Satank sang his death song and grappled with a guard for a carbine. He was killed before he could use it. Satanta and Big Tree were indicted, tried and convicted of murder in Texas courts. They were sentenced to be hanged, but the governor commuted their sentences to life imprisonment, and was persuaded to parole them in 1873.

Battle of Adobe Walls

Satanta was released in ample time to take part in the Battle of Adobe Walls on June 27, 1874. This fight brought to prominence Quanah Parker of the Kwahari Comanche, whose mother was Cynthia Ann Parker, captured as a child by Comanche in an 1836 Texas raid - she barely remembered her name when recaptured and taken back to her Texas home in 1860. Quanah's father had been a chief, and Quanah became a great leader of the Comanche.

Adobe Walls was the ruin of a Bent trading post, abandoned in 1844 and the scene of Kit Carson's 1864 victory over Kiowa and Comanche, aided by a few Apache and Arapaho. While the Navajo were keeping Carson's volunteers occupied, Kiowa and Comanche had stepped up raiding along the Santa Fe Trail. An attack on a wagon train at Pawnee Rock, Kansas, where five men were killed and five small boys carried off captive, particularly incensed General Carleton, who ordered Carson to pursue and punish the raiders. Carson with 335 New Mexico and California volunteers and seventy-five Ute and Apache allies struck a Kiowa village and drove its warriors four miles to the vicinity of Adobe Walls, which the troops were using as a hospital and corral for their horses during dismounted action. There were several Indian villages in the vicinity, one of them large. As the fight continued Carson estimated one to three thousand Indians took part. The fire of his two twelve-pound mountain howitzers kept the Indians at a distance, but in the face of great odds he ordered a retreat, destroying on his way the Kiowa village he had originally captured with its 176 lodges in which were stored food and clothing for the winter and ammunition.

By 1874, Adobe Walls had weathered into further ruin, but its walls were still four or five feet high and gave protection to a trading post of log cabins and sod huts built by buffalo hunters who were rapidly killing off the last of the southern herd. Twenty-eight men and one woman were there on the night the post was surrounded by 700 Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne and Arapaho.

The Comanche had been holding a Sun Dance - a ceremony introduced to them by a prophet, Isa-tai, who urged them to destroy all white men and promised to give them, by his magical powers, immunity from white man's bullets. Quanah Parker carried the war pipe and Isa-tai's message to the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Kiowa, but it was his own people, the Comanche, who suggested he destroy the white buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls before leading the war party against distant Texas settlements.

Two hunters were killed in the dawn attack, but the buffalo guns broke up repeated Indian charges. One of the buffalo guns was fired by Bat (William Barclay) Masterson, later a famous peace officer in Dodge City. With a Sharps .50, Billy Dixon, scout and guide, shot an Indian off his horse at a distance which one of those present said afterward measured at 1,538 yards. That was the last shot of the fight.

Comanche and Kiowa Raids Continue

Because the raiding bands of Comanche and Kiowa were accustomed to drawing rations regularly at the reservation and taking refuge there between murderous forays, Brevet Major General John W. Davidson, colonel of the 10th Cavalry commanding Fort Sill, gave orders on July 26, 1874, that all friendly Indians were to remain in fixed camps at the Wichita agency (Anadarko, Oklahoma) and answer periodic roll calls. The agent protested this interference with his attempts to civilize the Comanche and Kiowa, but the army's case was soon proved. Quanah Parker's Comanche did not come in but on August 22 Red Food's band, which had been in the Adobe Walls fight, and Lone Wolf's Kiowa, who had been raiding in Texas, appeared to draw rations. When Davidson demanded the disarming of Red Food's band, fighting broke out. Friendly Indians fled, and some joined the hostiles, but not all; September roll calls showed 479 Comanche, 585 Kiowa and 305 Kiowa-Apache still at Fort Sill - nearly half the estimated populations of these three tribes. Even these warlike peoples did not make warfare a tribal decision. Those who wanted fighting joined Quanah Parker.

Sheridan planned another containing movement with converging columns similar to that of 1868. Davidson moved west from Fort Sill; Mackenzie north from Fort Concho; between them came Brevet Brigadier General George P. Buell, lieutenant colonel of the 11th Infantry, from Fort Griffin. General Miles marched south from Camp Supply, and Brevet Colonel William R. Price, major of the 8th Cavalry, rode east from Fort Union, New Mexico. From August through December, 1874, these columns fought more than thirty skirmishes with hostile bands. The most decisive was Mackenzie's capture and destruction of a Kiowa village after a tortuous climb down the sides of Palo Duro Canyon on September 27.

Miles struck the Indians on Mulberry, or Salt, Creek on August 30, and the 6th Cavalry charged, driving the hostiles twenty miles. Brevet Major Adna R. Chaflee was captain of the leading company, and it was on this occasion he joked with his men, promising, "If any man is killed I will make him a corporal." Chaffee was brevetted lieutenant colonel for this fight.

Billy Dixon, the marksman of Adobe Walls, Amos Chapman, another able scout, and four troopers of the 6th Cavalry under Sergeant Z. T. Woodhull stood off Indians for two days, September 11 and 12, in the Buffalo Wallow Fight. One was killed, all the rest wounded, before Colonel Price rescued them.

Lieutenant Baldwin, with Companies D, 5th Infantry, and D, 6th Cavalry was escorting twenty-three empty, six-mule wagons toward the Washita River supply camp on November 8 when his scouts discovered the village of Gray Beard's band of 300 Cheyenne on Mulberry Creek. Baldwin brought his wagons in double column to the front and center of his line, put a mountain howitzer ahead of them and charged with everything he had - horse, foot and wheel. The village was surprised, the Cheyenne fled, and two captive children, Julia and Adelaide German, were rescued. Baldwin put his infantry in the wagons and continued the pursuit for twelve miles. For this exploit he was awarded a second Medal of Honor - he won his first while captain of the 19th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War. Two older German sisters were surrendered by Stone Calf of the Cheyenne to General Miles. Their father, mother, brother and elder sister had been killed in an attack on their wagon in Kansas.

Comanche hostilities did not last much longer. Satanta surrendered in October, 1874, and was returned to prison for violating his parole. He committed suicide there on October 11, 1878. Quanah Parker surrendered at Fort Sill on June 2, 1875. Thereafter he kept the peace and became a powerful leader of the Comanche in their new way of life.

Jay Monaghan. Indian Wars in the Southwest. The Book of the American West. Simon & Schuster New York, NY 1969.

Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars : 1492-1890 Focusing on the longest running conflict in American history, this illustrated encyclopedia reveals the common threads that weave through four centuries of clashes, from Columbus's voyage to the Wounded Knee Massacre.

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