Pen and Ink Witchcraft

by Calloway, Colin G.

  FIGURE 6.9 The southern Plains, 1867–69. (Adapted from Francis Paul Prucha, Atlas of American Indian Affairs [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990], 101)

  There was more to raiding Texas than stealing mules. Kiowas, Comanches, and Plains Apaches kept the peace they had made in Kansas but quickly resumed—or simply continued—their raids into Texas, carrying off captive children as well as livestock. They drew a distinction between the two places, between Americans with whom they signed a treaty and Tejanos whom they had been fighting for years. They asserted “their right to roam at will in Texas, they having been driven from their hunting grounds in that State by superior force, and never having relinquished there rights thereto.”94 For a time it seemed that the US government drew a similar distinction; after all, it, too, had been fighting the former Confederate state until quite recently. The Peace Commission had been primarily concerned with affairs in Kansas and the government did not immediately regard raids south of the Red River as constituting a breach of the treaty. But Leavenworth, his “patience with them and their promises” exhausted, recommended that the Kiowa and Comanche annuities be stopped, and if the guilty parties were not delivered up for punishment, the military should “make short and sharp work of them, until they can see, hear, and feel the strong arm of the government.” Leavenworth had become jittery, was constantly calling for troops, and soon left his post. But Commissioner of Indian Affairs Nathaniel Taylor agreed with him, and he questioned whether the treaty he had negotiated at Medicine Lodge should be ratified since the Kiowas and Comanches had clearly broken their treaty obligations.95 The Kwahadi Comanches who carried out many of the raids had not attended Medicine Lodge or agreed to the treaty. United States authorities criminalized the Kiowa and Comanche raids and brought in the military to force them back onto the reservations.96

  Tensions increased in Kansas as well. The Cheyennes and Arapahos were dissatisfied with their barren reservation and claimed they never fully understood the boundaries prescribed in the Medicine Lodge treaty.97 Even so, the Arapaho chiefs Little Raven, Spotted Wolf, and Powder Face “came in” and expressed their desire to live in peace, as did Black Kettle’s Cheyennes. But chiefs such as Roman Nose and Medicine Arrows who had not attended the Medicine Lodge treaty felt no obligation to honor its terms, fueling accusations that all Indians were treaty breakers. Cheyennes and Arapahos did not stop raiding the Kaw or Kansa Indians and the Osages; whiskey traders caused trouble in the Indian camps; and angry young warriors committed raids and killings.98

  General Sherman intended to settle the Indians on the reservations “one way or the other.” He took a hard line and was determined to punish not only the individuals who conducted raids but also the groups from which they came. “All of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes are now at war,” he declared in September 1868. “Admitting that some of them have not done acts of murder, rape, &c, still they have not restrained those who have, nor have they on demand given up the criminals as they agreed to do. The treaty made at Medicine Lodge is therefore clearly broken by them.” Because it would be difficult for troops “to discriminate between the well-disposed and the warlike,” the peaceful bands must go to the reservation in Indian Territory and stay there. The Cheyennes and Arapahos “should receive nothing and now that they are at open war I propose to give them enough of it to satisfy them to their hearts’ content,” wrote Sherman. “The vital part of their tribes are committing murders and robberies from Kansas to Colorado and it is an excess of generosity on our part to be feeding and supplying the old, young and feeble, whilst their young men are at war.” After the peaceful bands had been given a reasonable time to withdraw, all Indians who remained outside the reservation would be declared outlaws. Indians who wanted to hunt buffalo off the reservation could be regulated by issuing permits but, Sherman wrote, “the treaty having been clearly violated by the Indians themselves, this hunting right is entirely lost to them if we so declare it.”99 Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas Murphy took an equally hard line: in previous wars the Cheyennes and Arapahos had just cause for previous hostilities, but they had none now—every promise made to them at Medicine Lodge had been strictly carried out. “This time, I recommend that they be left to the tender mercies of our army until they shall be forced to sue for peace”—and that would be a peace they would keep for all time.100

  Just one year after it had signed the treaty, the Peace Commission resolved:

  That the recent outrages and depredations committed by the Indians of the plains justify the government in abrogating those clauses of the treaties made in October 1867, at “Medicine Lodge Creek,” which secure to them the right to roam and hunt outside their reservations: That all said Indians should be required to remove at once to said reservations and remain within them, except that after peace shall have been restored, hunting parties may be permitted to cross their boundaries with written authority from their Agent or Superintendent.

  Resolved further, that military force should be used to compel the removal into said reservations of all such Indians as may refuse to go …101

  Major General Philip Sheridan, the new commander of the Department of the Missouri, dispatched troops into Indian country. Roman Nose died at the Battle of Beecher’s Island in September 1868. In November Sheridan launched a campaign on the Washita River, where Black Kettle’s Cheyennes, Little Raven’s Arapahos, and Kicking Bird’s band of Kiowas were in their winter encampments. Black Kettle had survived the massacre at Sand Creek but this time there was no escape. George Custer, back in action after his suspension, divided his command and hit Black Kettle’s village from four sides at dawn. Captain Louis Hamilton, who had been with the cavalry escort at Medicine Lodge, was shot off his horse as he charged through the village. Black Kettle and his wife both died in the ensuing melee. George Bent and Magpie were not in the camp—they had gone to visit Bent’s relatives near Fort Lyon, a move Bent said saved them from sharing the same fate. As warriors from the other camps along the valley hastened to join the fight, Custer pulled back. He left behind a detachment of seventeen men led by Major Joel Elliott who had gone in pursuit of fleeing women and children. Elliott and his men were cut off, killed, and mutilated by Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. Some of them may have recognized Elliott from Medicine Lodge.102 According to Edward Godfrey, Stumbling Bear had become friends with Elliott during his constant visits to the soldiers’ camp at Medicine Lodge. When Godfrey saw Stumbling Bear a couple of months after the Washita, the Kiowa had cut his hair “and gave me to understand that he was in mourning for the loss of his good friend Major Elliott.”103

  Although Black Kettle was a Cheyenne, Silver Horn’s Kiowa calendar marked his death that winter—depicted by a death owl perched on the handle of a black bucket or kettle: not only were there Kiowas in the village on the Washita but the killing of a chief who had worked so hard for peace at Medicine Lodge was an ominous event for all the tribes.104 The year 1868 was a bad one for the Kiowas. A Kiowa war party carrying one of the tribe’s three taímes—the small figurine or doll that was central to the sun dance—was badly defeated in a battle with the Utes and the sacred medicine bag was lost. Edward Wynkoop said the loss of the medicine made the Kiowas “more subdued and humbled than he has ever known them to be.” Thomas Murphy suggested that the government buy the medicine from the Utes and then keep it—it would do more “than a regiment of soldiers” to keep the Kiowas in line and stop their raids into Texas.105 In December, during a parley, George Custer had Satanta and Lone Wolf seized and put in leg irons as hostages until the rest of the Kiowas came to the agency. “They are among the worst Indians we have to deal with,” Sheridan told Custer, “and have been guilty of untold murders and outrages, at the same time they were being fed and clothed by the Government. These two chiefs, Lone Wolf and Satanta, have forfeited their lives over and over again.”106 Slowly, the Kiowas came in and Lone Wolf and Satanta were eventually released—against Sheridan’s better judgment; he would much rath
er have hanged them. As far as Sheridan was concerned, the only way for Indians to live in peace was to succumb to the reservation regime. “I do not care one cent,” he told Custer to inform Cheyenne and Arapaho delegates who asked for peace, “whether they come in or stay out. If they stay out I will make war on them Winter and Summer as long as I live or until they are wiped out.”107

  Tall Bull, the Dog Soldier chief who had reluctantly signed the treaty, died fighting the cavalry and Major Frank North’s Pawnee scouts at the Battle of Summit Springs in July 1869. That defeat ended the Cheyennes’ occupation of the country between the Platte and Arkansas rivers. Bull Bear, who had driven the pen through the paper when he signed the treaty at Medicine Lodge, was with Roman Nose when he died and he continued the fight for several years longer but it was the Dog Soldiers’ last stand. After the Cheyennes were forced onto the reservation, Bull Bear sent his son to school and endeavored to follow the new path.108

  General Grant’s inauguration as president in 1869 brought a new “Peace Policy” toward the Indian tribes of the West, at least those who accepted the reservation system. Indians were under the control and jurisdiction of their agents when they were “on their proper reservations”; Indians outside the reservation were under military jurisdiction and were considered hostile.109 A Quaker named Lawrie Tatum took over as agent for the Kiowas and Comanches at the new agency near Fort Sill. He told the Indians that they would be protected as long as they remained on the reservation but punished if they left without permission. It was “peace on the Reservations,” said Tatum, and “it was war off of them.”110 In August Grant established the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation by executive order, changing its location. The new reservation lay between the Cimarron River and the ninety-eighth meridian in the east and the one hundredth meridian (the Texas state line) in the west, bounded by the Cherokee Outlet on the north and the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation on the south. Another executive order in 1872 assigned the southwestern part of the area to the Caddos, Delawares, Wichitas, and other Indians. George Bent accepted a position as government interpreter at the Cheyenne-Arapaho agency.

  In March 1870, the secretary of the interior informed the president that Indians from the Canadian border to the Mexican frontier were complaining “of what they declare to be a lack of faith on our part, in carrying out the stipulations of treaties heretofore made with them, and redeeming the promises which, as they allege, induced them to consent to the peaceable construction of railroads to the Pacific coast.” The situation was acute among the tribes who signed the Medicine Lodge treaties, and only “the greatest exertions” by civil and military officers had prevented war. Determined that if an Indian war was inevitable the government should not be responsible for it, Grant urged Congress to make the necessary appropriations in order to carry out the treaties made by the Peace Commission.111

  Tatum’s “peace on the reservations, war off of them” became an accurate description of the situation by the end of the decade as Kiowa and Comanche men, frustrated at their confinement and dependence on government rations that were shoddy, inadequate, and irregular, left the reservations, stole horses and livestock, took captives and scalps, and then returned as winter approached and the raiding season ended.112 In the spring of 1870 Satank’s eldest son was killed during a raid into Texas. The grief-stricken old man carefully wrapped his son’s bones in a blanket, placed the bundle on a separate pony, and carried it with him wherever he went. “Satank, who had pledged eternal friendship with the whites at Medicine Lodge, now burned with hatred for them.”113

  The public was outraged at a policy that seemed to feed and supply Indians who then went out and killed whites, and the army was determined to put a stop to the raids. Public indignation peaked after the infamous Warren Wagon Train Massacre in Texas in May 1871 when Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache warriors killed and mutilated seven teamsters, one of whom was tied to a wagon tongue and burned. Satanta, who boasted he had led the raid, Satank, and Big Tree were arrested when they returned to the reservation. Kicking Bird tried to prevent it: “You and I are going to die right here,” he told General Sherman. But Sherman had no doubts about what should become of Satanta: “I think it is time to end his career,” he wrote Sheridan. “He has been raiding in Texas to regain his influence as a great warrior.” Sherman also announced that “Old Satank ought to have been shot long ago.” Satanta’s impudence in boasting of his murders showed that the Kiowas needed “pretty much the lesson you gave Black Kettle and Little Raven.” As for Lone Wolf, he “ought to have been hung when you had him in hand.” Sherman thought Kicking Bird was “about the only Kiowa that seems to understand their situation.”114 Kicking Bird understood more than Sherman knew. He remained committed to peace but he worried that his people could not take to the “new road for all the Indians in this country,” and he feared the consequences. “The white man is strong,” he said in a letter to the commissioner of Indian affairs, “but he cannot destroy us all in one year, it will take him two or three, maybe four years and then the world will turn to water or burn up. It cannot live when all the Indians are dead.”115

  The chiefs were to be sent back to Texas, for trial and hanging if found guilty. Satank was determined to die rather than go to Texas. When he was loaded into a wagon to transport him to Fort Richardson, he called to a Caddo scout who rode alongside the wagon, asking him to tell the Kiowas that Satank was dead. He then began to sing his death song:

  “O sun, you remain forever, but we Kâitse´ñko must die.

  O earth, you remain forever, but we Kâitse´ñko must die.”

  Slipping his handcuffs, he grabbed one of the guards’ rifles and died in a hail of bullets, as he had intended.116

  Satanta and Big Tree went on trial for the murder of the seven teamsters. The jury found them guilty and the judge sentenced them to hang. Agent Tatum persuaded Governor Edmund Davis of Texas to commute the sentence to life imprisonment (he thought it would be easier to control the Kiowas with Satanta in jail than with Satanta dead) and the two Kiowas were shipped to the state penitentiary in Huntsville.117 Meanwhile, a delegation of Kiowa and Comanche chiefs was taken to Washington where they met with the commissioner of Indian affairs, received large silver medals, and saw the sights. The delegates included several Medicine Lodge signatories: Ten Bears, Lone Wolf, Stumbling Bear, and Woman’s Heart. The trip took its toll on Ten Bears. By the time he returned to Fort Sill the old man was sick. The agent gave him a bed in his office and Ten Bears died there—in Colonel W. S. Nye’s view “a pathetic figure, alone in the midst of an alien people, in an age he did not understand.”118 Shortly after Lone Wolf’s trip to Washington, his son was killed by cavalry in December 1873.119

  Kiowas continued to raid, however. Christopher C. Augur, now a brigadier general and commander of the Department of Texas orchestrating expeditions against the tribes, believed the Kiowas were “the meanest and cruelest Indians of the plains.” He recommended to Sheridan that the whole tribe “be taken possession of and disarmed, and taken entirely out of the Indian Country, and distributed among Military posts at the North—not breaking up families, and that the Kiowas as a tribe be no longer recognized.”120

  Satanta and Big Tree worked on a chain gang laying railroad tracks (although they were taken out of prison to travel to St. Louis and meet the delegation of chiefs en route to Washington). The delegation carried on to Washington, and Satanta and Big Tree returned to Huntsville. In a controversial move that outraged the citizens of Texas as well as General Sherman, Governor Davis granted the chiefs a parole on condition that they made sure that Kiowa raids ceased. However, when the Red River War broke out in 1874, Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches attacked the buffalo hunters invading their hunting grounds.

  The Treaty of Medicine Lodge had established an informal boundary between white settlers (and railroad construction crews) north of the Arkansas River and Indian hunters south of the river, but it did not expressly forbid white hunters from the southern buff
alo ranges, only from the Indian reservations. Bison hunters consequently paid little regard to the treaty. The treaty agreements, in Andrew Isenberg’s words, “were ephemeral because the United States’ recognition of autonomous Indian hunting territories was due to expire with the bison.” Increasing human and environmental pressures had been pushing bison numbers downward for years and the Indians as well as the treaty commissioners understood that the herds were diminishing. Now, roads and railroads brought immigrants and hunters by the hundreds to the Indians’ hunting grounds and in 1871 a Pennsylvania tannery found that buffalo hides could be used to manufacture machine belts. Thousands of hides were loaded onto trains and shipped east, feeding a growing tanning industry that produced the leather belts that drove the machinery of industrializing America. Buffalo hunters embarked on a systematic slaughter of the southern herds that in just a few short years brought the species to the brink of extinction. Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, who was stationed at Fort Dodge at the time, witnessed the slaughter firsthand. In 1871, he wrote, there was “apparently no limit to the numbers of buffalo.” In 1872, he went out on many hunting expeditions, including one in the fall with three trigger-happy British gentlemen who “in their excitement bagged more buffalo than would have supplied a brigade.” In the fall of 1873 he went with some of the same gentlemen over the same ground. “Where there were myriads of buffalo the year before, there were now myriads of carcasses. The air was foul with sickening stench, and the vast plain, which only a short twelvemonth before teemed with animal life, was a dead, solitary, putrid desert.” The next fall, there seemed to be more buffalo hunters than buffalo. All this slaughter, Dodge acknowledged, was “in contravention of solemn treaties made with the Indians.”121