The Old Santa Fe Trail: The Story of a Great Highway Part 12

The next morning at daylight, Satank called for some of his braves and with them rode out to Peac.o.c.k's ranch. Arriving there, he called out to Peac.o.c.k, who had not yet risen: "Peac.o.c.k, get up, the soldiers are coming!" It was a warning which the illicit trader quickly obeyed, and running out of the building with his field-gla.s.s in his hand, he started for his lookout, but while he was ascending the ladder with his back to Satank the latter shot him full of holes, saying, as he did so: "There, Peac.o.c.k, I guess you won't write any more letters."

His warriors then entered the building and killed every man in it, save one who had been gored by a buffalo bull the day before, and who was lying in a room all by himself. He was saved by the fact that the Indian has a holy dread of small-pox, and will never enter an apartment where sick men lie, fearing they may have the awful disease.

Satanta (White Bear) was the most efficient and dreaded chief of all who have ever been at the head of the Kiowa nation. Ever restlessly active in ordering or conducting merciless forays against an exposed frontier, he was the very incarnation of deviltry in his determined hatred of the whites, and his constant warfare against civilization.

He also possessed wonderful oratorical powers; he could hurl the most violent invectives at those whom he argued with, or he could be equally pathetic when necessary. He was justly called "The Orator of the Plains," rivalling the historical renown of Tec.u.mseh or Pontiac.

He was a short, bullet-headed Indian, full of courage and well versed in strategy. Ordinarily, when on his visits to the various military posts he wore a major-general's full uniform, a suit of that rank having been given to him in the summer of 1866 by General Hanc.o.c.k. He also owned an ambulance, a team of mules, and a set of harness, the last stolen, maybe, from some caravan he had raided on the Trail. In that ambulance, with a trained Indian driver, the wily chief travelled, wrapped in a savage dignity that was truly laughable. In his village, too, he a.s.sumed a great deal of style. He was very courteous to his white guests, if at the time his tribe were at all friendly with the government; nothing was too good for them. He always laid down a carpet on the floor of his lodge in the post of honour, on which they were to sit. He had large boards, twenty inches wide and three feet long, ornamented with bra.s.s tacks driven all around the edges, which he used for tables. He also had a French horn, which he blew vigorously when meals were ready.

His friends.h.i.+p was only dissembling. During all the time that General Sheridan was making his preparations for his intended winter campaign against the allied plains tribes, Satanta made frequent visits to the military posts, ostensibly to show the officers that he was heartily for peace, but really to inform himself of what was going on.

At that time I was stationed at Fort Harker, on the Smoky Hill. One evening, General Sheridan, who was my guest, was sitting on the verandah of my quarters, smoking and chatting with me and some other officers who had come to pay him their respects, when one of my men rode up and quietly informed me that Satanta had just driven his ambulance into the fort, and was getting ready to camp near the mule corral. On receiving this information, I turned to the general and suggested the propriety of either killing or capturing the inveterate demon. Personally I believed it would be right to get rid of such a character, and I had men under my command who would have been delighted to execute an order to that effect.

Sheridan smiled when I told him of Satanta's presence and the excellent chance to get rid of him. But he said: "That would never do; the sentimentalists in the Eastern States would raise such a howl that the whole country would be horrified!"

Of course, in these "piping times of peace" the reader, in the quiet of his own room, will think that my suggestion was brutal, and without any palliation; my excuse, however, may be found in General Was.h.i.+ngton's own motto: Exitus acta probat. If the suggestion had been acted upon, many an innocent man and woman would have escaped torture, and many a maiden a captivity worse than death.

As a specimen of Satanta's oratory, I offer the following, to show the hypocrisy of the subtle old villain, and his power over the minds of too sensitive auditors. Once Congress sent out to the central plains a commission from Was.h.i.+ngton to inquire into the causes of the continual warfare raging with the savages on the Kansas border; to learn what the grievances of the Indians were; and to find some remedy for the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children along the line of the Old Trail.

Satanta was sent for by the commission as the leading spirit of the formidable Kiowa nation. When he entered the building at Fort Dodge in which daily sessions were held, he was told by the president to speak his mind without any reservation; to withhold nothing, but to truthfully relate what his tribe had to complain of on the part of the whites.

The old rascal grew very pathetic as he warmed up to his subject. He declared that he had no desire to kill the white settlers or emigrants crossing the plains, but that those who came and lived on the land of his tribe ruthlessly slaughtered the buffalo, allowing their carca.s.ses to rot on the prairie; killing them merely for the amus.e.m.e.nt it afforded them, while the Indian only killed when necessity demanded. He also stated that the white hunters set out fires, destroying the gra.s.s, and causing the tribe's horses to starve to death as well as the buffalo; that they cut down and otherwise destroyed the timber on the margins of the streams, making large fires of it, while the Indian was satisfied to cook his food with a few dry and dead limbs. "Only the other day," said he, "I picked up a little switch on the Trail, and it made my heart bleed to think that so small a green branch, ruthlessly torn out of the ground and thoughtlessly destroyed by some white man, would in time have grown into a stately tree for the use and benefit of my children and grandchildren."

After the pow-wow had ended, and Satanta had got a few drinks of red liquor into him, his real, savage nature a.s.serted itself, and he said to the interpreter at the settler's store: "Now didn't I give it to those white men who came from the Great Father? Didn't I do it in fine style?

Why, I drew tears from their eyes! The switch I saw on the Trail made my heart glad instead of sad; for I new there was a tenderfoot ahead of me, because an old plainsman or hunter would never have carried anything but a good quirt or a pair of spurs. So I said to my warriors, 'Come on, boys; we've got him!' and when we came in sight, after we had followed him closely on the dead run, he threw away his rifle and held tightly on to his hat for fear he should lose it!"

Another time when Satanta had remained at Fort Dodge for a very long period and had worn out his welcome, so that no one would give him anything to drink, he went to the quarters of his old friend, Bill Bennett, the overland stage agent, and begged him to give him some liquor. Bill was mixing a bottle of medicine to drench a sick mule. The moment he set the bottle down to do something else, Satanta seized it off the ground and drank most of the liquid before quitting. Of course, it made the old savage dreadfully sick as well as angry. He then started for a certain officer's quarters and again begged for something to cure him of the effects of the former dose; the officer refused, but Satanta persisted in his importunities; he would not leave without it. After a while, the officer went to a closet and took a swallow of the most nauseating medicine, placing the bottle back on its shelf. Satanta watched his chance, and, as soon as the officer left the room, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the bottle out of the closet and drank its contents without stopping to breathe. It was, of course, a worse dose than the horse-medicine. The next day, very early in the morning, he a.s.sembled a number of his warriors, crossed the Arkansas, and went south to his village. Before leaving, however, he burnt all of the government contractor's hay on the bank of the river opposite the post. He then continued on to Crooked Creek, where he murdered three wood-choppers, all of which, he said afterward, he did in revenge for the attempt to poison him at Fort Dodge.

At the Comanche agency, where several of the government agents were a.s.sembled to have a talk with chiefs of the various plains tribes, Satanta said in his address: "I would willingly take hold of that part of the white man's road which is represented by the breech-loading rifles; but I don't like the corn rations--they make my teeth hurt!"

Big Tree was another Kiowa chief. He was the ally and close friend of Satanta, and one of the most daring and active of his warriors. The sagacity and bravery of these two savages would have been a credit to that of the most famous warriors of the old French and Indian Wars. Both were at last taken, tried, and sent to the Texas penitentiary for life.

Satanta was eventually pardoned; but before he was made aware of the efforts that were being taken for his release, he attempted to escape, and, in jumping from a window, fell and broke his neck. His pardon arrived the next morning. Big Tree, through the work of the sentimentalists of Was.h.i.+ngton, was set free and sent to the Kiowa Reservation--near Fort Sill in the Indian Territory.

The next most audacious and terrible scourge of the plains was "Ta-ne-on-koe" (Kicking Bird). He was a great warrior of the Kiowas, and was the chief actor in some of the bloodiest raids on the Kansas frontier in the history of its troublous times.

One of his captures was that of a Miss Morgan and Mrs. White. They were finally rescued from the savages by General Custer, under the following circ.u.mstances: Custer, who was advancing with his column of invincible cavalrymen--the famous Seventh United States--in search of the two unfortunate women, had arrived near the head waters of one of the tributaries of the Was.h.i.+ta, and, with only his guide and interpreter, was far in advance of the column, when, on reaching the summit of an isolated bluff, they suddenly saw a village of the Kiowas, which turned out to be that of Kicking Bird, whose handsome lodge was easily distinguishable from the rest. Without waiting for his command, the general and his guide rode boldly to the lodge of the great chief, and both dismounted, holding c.o.c.ked revolvers in their hands; Custer presented his at Kicking Bird's head. In the meantime, Custer's column of troopers, whom the Kiowas had good reason to remember for their bravery in many a hard-fought battle, came in full view of the astonished village. This threw the startled savages into the utmost consternation, but the warriors were held in check by signs from Kicking Bird. As the cavalry drew nearer, General Custer demanded the immediate release of the white women. Their presence in the village was at first denied by the lying chief, and not until he had been led to the limb of a huge cottonwood tree near the lodge, with a rope around his neck, did he acknowledge that he held the women and consent to give them up.

This well-known warrior, with a foreknowledge not usually found in the savage mind, seeing the beginning of the end of Indian sovereignty on the plains, voluntarily came in and surrendered himself to the authorities, and stayed on the reservation near Fort Sill.

In June, 1867, a year before the breaking out of the great Indian war on the central plains, the whole tribe of Kiowas, led by him, a.s.sembled at Fort Larned. He was the cynosure of all eyes, as he was without question one of the n.o.blest-looking savages ever seen on the plains. On that occasion he wore the full uniform of a major-general of the United States army. He was as correctly moulded as a statue when on horseback, and when mounted on his magnificent charger the morning he rode out with General Hanc.o.c.k to visit the immense Indian camp a few miles above the fort on p.a.w.nee Fork, it would have been a difficult task to have determined which was the finer-looking man.

After Kicking Bird had abandoned his wicked career, he was regarded by every army officer with whom he had a personal acquaintance as a remarkably good Indian; for he really made the most strenuous efforts to initiate his tribe into the idea that it was best for it to follow the white man's road. He argued with them that the time was very near when there would no longer be any region where the Indians could live as they had been doing, depending on the buffalo and other game for the sustenance of their families; they must adapt themselves to the methods of their conquerors.

In July, 1869, he became greatly offended with the government for its enforced removal of his tribe from its natural and hereditary hunting-grounds into the reservation allotted to it. At that time many of his warriors, together with the Comanches, made a raid on the defenceless settlements of the northern border of Texas, in which the savages were disastrously defeated, losing a large number of their most beloved warriors. On the return of the unsuccessful expedition, a great council was held, consisting of all the chiefs and head men of the two tribes which had suffered so terribly in the awful fight, to consider the best means of avenging the loss of so many braves and friends.

Kicking Bird was summoned before that council and condemned as a coward; they called him a squaw, because he had refused to go with the warriors of the combined tribes on the raid into Texas.

He told a friend of mine some time afterward that he had intended never again to go against the whites; but the emergency of the case, and his severe condemnation by the council, demanded that he should do something to re-establish himself in the good graces of his tribe. He then made one of the most destructive raids into Texas that ever occurred in the history of its border warfare, which successfully restored him to the respect of his warriors.

In that raid Kicking Bird carried off vast herds of horses and a large number of scalps. Although his tribe fairly wors.h.i.+pped him, he was not at all satisfied with himself. He could look into the future as well as any one, and from that time on to his tragic death he laboured most zealously and earnestly in connection with the Indian agents to bring his people to live on the reservation which the government had established for them in the Territory.

At the inauguration of the so-called "Quaker Policy" by President Grant, that sect was largely intrusted with the management of Indian affairs, particularly in the selection of agents for the various tribes. A Mr.

Tatham was appointed agent for the Kiowas in 1869. He at once gained the confidence of Kicking Bird, who became very valuable to him as an a.s.sistant in controlling the savages. It was through that chief's influence that Thomas Batty, another Quaker, was allowed to take up his residence with the tribe, the first white man ever accorded that privilege. Batty was permitted to erect three tents, which were staked together, converting them into an ample schoolhouse. In that crude, temporary structure he taught the Kiowa youth the rudiments of an education. This very successful innovation shows how earnest the former dreaded savage was in his efforts to promote the welfare of his people, by trying to induce them to "take the white man's road."

Batty succeeded admirably for a year in his office of teacher, the chief all the time n.o.bly withstanding the taunts and jeers of his warriors and their threats of taking his life, for daring to allow a white man within the sacred precincts of their village--a thing unparalleled in the annals of the tribe.

At last trouble came; the dissatisfied members of the tribe, the ambitious and restless young men, eager for renown, made another unsuccessful raid into Texas. The result was that they lost nearly the whole of the band, among which was the favourite son of Lone Wolf, a noted chief.[34] After the death of his son, he declared that he must and would have the scalp of a white man in revenge for the untimely taking off of the young warrior. Of course, the most available white man at this juncture was Batty, the Quaker teacher, and he was chosen by Lone Wolf as the victim of savage revenge. Here the n.o.ble instincts of Kicking Bird developed themselves. He very plainly told Lone Wolf, who was constantly threatening and thirsting for blood, that he could not kill Batty until he first killed him and all his band. But Lone Wolf had fully determined to have the hair of the innocent Quaker; so Kicking Bird, to avert any collision between the two bands of Indians, kidnapped Batty and ran him off to the agency, arriving at Fort Sill about an hour before Lone Wolf's band of avengers overtook them, and thus the Quaker teacher was saved.

One day, long after these occurrences, a friend of mine was in the sutler's store at Fort Sill. In there was a stranger talking to Mr. Fox, the agent of the Indians. Soon Kicking Bird entered the establishment, and the stranger asked Mr. Fox who that fine-looking Indian was. He was told, and then he begged the agent to say to him that he would like to have a talk with him; for he it was who led that famous raid into Texas.

"I never saw better generals.h.i.+p in the field in all my experience. He had three horses killed under him. I was the surgeon of the rangers and was, of course, in the fight."[35]

When Kicking Bird was told that the Texas doctor desired to talk with him, he replied with great dignity that he did not want to revive those troublous times. "Tell him, though," said Kicking Bird, "that was my last raid against the whites; that I am a changed man."

The President of the United States sent for Kicking Bird to come to Was.h.i.+ngton, and to bring with him such other influential Indians as he thought might aid in inducing the Kiowas to cease their continual raiding on the border of Texas.

In due time Kicking Bird left for the capital, taking with him Lone Wolf, Big Bow, and Sun Boy of the Kiowas, together with several of the head men of the Comanches. When the deputation of savages arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton, it was received at the presidential mansion by the chief magistrate himself. So much more attention was given to Kicking Bird than to the others, that they became very jealous, particularly when the President announced to them the appointment of Kicking Bird as the head chief of the tribe.[36] But Lone Wolf would never recognize his authority, constantly urging the young men to raid the settlements. Lone Wolf was a genuine savage, without one redeeming trait, and his hatred of the white race was unparalleled in its intensity. He was never known to smile. No other Indian can show such a record of horrible ma.s.sacres as he is responsible for. His orders were rigidly obeyed, for he brooked no disobedience on the part of his warriors.

In the summer of 1876, a party of English gentlemen left Fort Harker for a buffalo hunt. They soon exhausted all their rations and started a four-mule team back to the post for more. Some of Lone Wolf's band of cut-throats came across the unfortunate teamster, killed him, and ran off the team. After the occurrence, Kicking Bird came into the agency at Fort Sill and told Mr. Haworth, the agent, that he had given his word to the Great Father at Was.h.i.+ngton he would do all he could to bring in those Indians who had been raiding by order of Lone Wolf, particularly the two who had killed the Englishmen's driver.

He succeeded in bringing in twelve Indians in all, among them the murderers of the driver. They, with Lone Wolf and Satank, were sent to the Dry Tortugas for life. The morning they started on their journey Satank talked very feelingly to Kicking Bird, with tears in his eyes.

He said that they might look for his bones along the road, for he would never go to Florida. The savages were loaded into government wagons.

Satank was inside of one with a soldier on each side of him, their legs hanging outside. Somehow the crafty villain managed to slip the handcuffs off his wrists, at the same instant seizing the rifle of one of his guards, and then shoved the two men out with his feet. He tried to work the lever of the rifle, but could not move it, and one of the soldiers, coming around the wagon to where he was still trying to get the gun so as he could use it, shot him down, and then threw his body on the Trail. Thus Satank made good his vow that he would never be taken to Florida. He met his death only a mile from the post.

After the departure of the condemned savages, the feeling in the tribe against Kicking Bird increased to an alarming extent. Several times the most incensed warriors tried to kill him by shooting at him from an ambush. After he became fully aware that his life was in danger, he never left his lodge without his carbine. He was as brave as a lion, fearing none of the members of Lone Wolf's band; but he often said it was only a question of a short time when he would be gotten rid of; he did not allow the matter, however, to worry him in the least, saying that he was conscious he had done his duty by his tribe and the Great Father.

In a bend of Cash Creek, about half a mile below the mill, about half a dozen of the Kiowas had their lodges, that of their chief being among them. At ten o'clock one Monday in June, 1876, Mr. Haworth, the agent, came in haste to the shops, called the master mechanic, Mr. Wykes, out, told him to jump into the carriage quickly; that Kicking Bird was dead.

When they arrived at the home of the great chief, sure enough he was dead, and some of the women were engaged in folding his body in robes.

Other squaws were cutting themselves in a terrible manner, as is their custom when a relative dies, and were also breaking everything breakable about the lodge. Kicking Bird had always been scrupulously clean and neat in the care of his home; it was adorned with the most beautifully dressed buffalo robes and the finest furs, while the floor was covered with matting.

It seems that Kicking Bird, after visiting Mr. Wykes that morning, went immediately to his lodge, and sat down to eat something, but just as he had finished a cup of coffee, he fell over, dead. He had in his service a Mexican woman, and she had been bribed to poison him.

An expensive coffin was made at the agency for his remains, fas.h.i.+oned out of the finest black walnut to be found in the country where that timber grows to such a luxuriant extent. It was eight feet long and four feet deep, but even then it did not hold one-half of his effects, which were, according to the savage custom, interred with his body.

The cries and lamentations of the warriors and women of his band were heartrending; such a manifestation of grief was never before witnessed at the agency. A handsome fence was erected around his grave, in the cemetery at Fort Sill, and the government ordered a beautiful marble monument to be raised over it; but I do not know whether it was ever done.

Kicking Bird was only forty years old at the time of his sudden taking off, and was very wealthy for an Indian. He knew the uses of money and was a careful saver of it. A great roll of greenbacks was placed in his coffin, and that fact having leaked out, it was rumoured that his grave was robbed; but the story may not have been true.

One of the greatest terrors of the Old Santa Fe Trail was the half-breed Indian desperado Charles Bent. His mother was a Cheyenne squaw, and his father the famous trader, Colonel Bent. He was born at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and at a very early age placed in one of the best schools that St. Louis afforded. His venerable sire, with only a limited education himself, was determined that his boy should profit by the culture and refinement of civilization, so he was not allowed to return to his mountain home at Bent's Fort, and the savage conditions under which he was born, until he had attained his majority. He then spoke no language but English. His mother died while he was absent at school, and his father continued to live at the old fort, where Charles, after he had reached the age of twenty-one, joined him.

Some Was.h.i.+ngton sentimentalist, philosophizing on the Indian character, his knowledge being based on Cooper's novels probably, has said: "Civilization has very marked effects upon an Indian. If he once learns to speak English, he will soon forget all his native cunning and pride of race." Let us see how this theory worked with Charley Bent.

As soon as the educated half-breed set his foot on his native heath he readily found enough ambitious young bucks of his own age who were willing to look on him as their leader. They loved him, too, if such a thing were possible, as Fra Diavolo was loved by his wild followers.

His band was known as the "Dog-Soldiers"; a sort of a semi-military organization, consisting of the most daring, blood-thirsty young men of the tribe; and sometimes "squaw-men," that is, renegade white men married to squaws, attached themselves to his command of cut-throats.

At the head of this collection of the worst savages, hardly ever numbering over a hundred, Charles Bent robbed ranches, attacked wagon-trains, overland coaches, and army caravans. He stole and murdered indiscriminately. The history of his b.l.o.o.d.y work will never be wholly revealed, for dead men have no tongues.

He would visit all alone, in the guise of plainsman, hunter, or cattleman, the emigrant trains crossing the continent, always, however, those which had only small escorts or none at all. Feigning hunger, while his needs were being kindly furnished, he would glance around him to learn what kind of an outfit it was; its value, its destination, and how well guarded. Then he would take his leave with many thanks, rejoin his band, and with it dash down on the train and kill every human being unfortunate enough not to have escaped before he arrived.

He was indefatigable in his efforts to kill off the whole corps of army scouts. He would pa.s.s himself off as a fellow-scout, as a deserter from some military post, or as an Indian trader, for he was a wonderful actor, and would have achieved histrionic honours had he chosen the stage as a profession.