Dohosan ( Little Bluff)
( Tribe : Kiowa )
( Painting by GEORGE CATLIN )
c.1805-1866. Noted for his courage and defiance in the face of threats
from the U.S. government, Dohosan is considered by many to be the greatest
of a hereditary line of chiefs of the Kiowas. In 1833, he became principal
chief of all Kiowas after the Osages decimated a band of Kiowas and took
their Sun Dance gods. As a result, his predecessor, Dohate or "Bluff", was
deposed. Although he signed several treaties (notably the Fort Atkinson Treaty
of July 27, 1852, and the Little Arkansas River Treaty of October 18, 1865),
Dohosan had little regard for the white man and his agreements. He believed
that Indians should fight to retain their lands and rights as free people.
However, he identified with and respected the Mexicans, who thought and fought
much as he died. When Kid Carson started with more than 300 soldiers a winter
campaign against the restive nation of the Kiowas on November 24, 1864, Kid
Carson attacked a camp of Kiowas at Adobe Walls at the Canadien River. Dohosan,
who was only a visitor in this camp, succeded in repulse this attack with
great bravery. When Dohosan died in 1866 at the hands of a Dakota man, his
name was bestowed upon his son, also a distinguished warrior.
The above information is contained in the book, "A Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma" by Muriel H. Wright, published by University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.
1830-1878. Born on the Northern Plains, Satanta ("White Bear Person") was the son of Red Tepee, who was the keeper of the Tai-me, the Kiowa medicine bundles. During his boyhood, he was known as Guaton-bain or "Big Ribs". He was a young man when a prominent warrior, Black Horse, presented him with a war shiled that he used while raiding in Texas and Mexico. During the early days of the Civil War, he conducted many raids along the Santa Fe Trail. He would later become a principal chief in the Kiowa Wars of the 1860s-1870s and was known as "The Orator of the Plains." When Little Mountain died in 1866, Satanta became the leader of the war faction of the Kiowas. His rival was KICKING BIRD of the peace faction. As a result of his rivalry, Lone Wolf became the compromise choice for the position of principal chief. Meanwhile, Satanta and his warriors continued raiding in Texas. Famed for his eloquence, Satanta spoke at the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 where the Kiowas ceded their lands in the valleys of the Canadian and Arkansas Rivers and agreed to settle on a reservation within Indian Territory. However, some of the Kiowas were slow to move onto their lands in Indian Territory. When Satanta came under a flag of truce to tell the U.S. Army that he had not been with Black Kettle at the Battle of the Washita, General Philip H. Sheridan held him and several other leaders as hostages until their bands had relocated to Indian Terretory. In May 1871, Satanta was in a war party that attacked the Warren wagon train with SATANK, BIG TREE and MAMANTI. Later, Big Tree, Satank, and Satanta were seized for trial after bragging openly about their exploits. Satank tried to escape on the road to Texas; he was fatally shot. Big Tree and Satanta went to trial and were sentenced to death. Indian rights groups objected to the harsh penalties, however. The Bureau of Indian Affairs even contended that they should be released because their actions were associated with war and not murder. In 1873, they were paroled on a pledge of good behavior for themselves and the entire Kiowa tribe. However, Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Arapaho war parties renewed their raids on white settlers under the Comanche leader Quanah Parker. These actions started the Red River War of 1874-1875. Satanta tried to prove to army officials that he was not a party to the raids. In September 1874, Big Tree appeared to THE Cheyenne Agency at Darlington to state that Satanta wished to surrender peacefully. True to his word, Satanta surrendered the next month. Although it appears that he had not violated the terms of his parole, Satanta was taken into custody and then imprisoned at Huntsville, Texas. On October 11, 1878, sick, tired, and despairing that he would ever be released, Satanta jumped off the upper floor of the prison hospital and committed suicide. The proud and dignified warrior was buried in Texas. His grandson, James Auchiah, received permission in 1963 to bring Satanta's remains to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, so that he could be interred with other Kiowa chiefs.
(?-1892). White Horse (Tsen-tainte), a Kiowa chief during the second half of the nineteenth century, was noted among the tribe for his daring. Even in his teens he showed remarkable adeptness as an apprentice warrior. Due to his unusual strength, he became an outstanding horseman, able to snatch up a child while at a gallop. In the summer of 1867 White Horse joined a large party of Comanches and Kiowas on a revenge raid against the Navajos, who were then living in exile on the reservation near Fort Sumner, New Mexico. On the Canadian River near the Texas-New Mexico line, White Horse and some of his followers killed and scalped a Navajo warrior. Shortly afterward, the war party attacked a Navajo village on the Pecos River. Although White Horse participated in the council at Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas, he soon cast his lot with the war faction and gained considerable notoriety during the early 1870s for his raids on Texas settlements. He and his followers made a raid on Fort Sill on June 12, 1870, following the annual tribal Sun Dance, and stole seventy-three mules from the post quartermaster. On June 22 they attacked a party of cattle drovers on the trail a few miles south of the fort. White Horse killed and scalped two men before a detachment of troops came to the Texans' relief. Whites considered him the "most dangerous man" among the Kiowas. Shortly thereafter, White Horse led his band into Texas, killed Gottlieb Koozer, and took his wife and six children captive. Subsequently, on August 7 the Quaker Indian agent, Lawrie Tatum, reprimanded the guilty party and withheld the weekly rations until all captives and stolen stock were returned; the Koozers were ransomed for $100 each, and raids in the vicinity of Fort Sill were curtailed, but White Horse defiantly continued his attacks south of the Red River. On September 30 he ambushed a stagecoach en route to Fort Concho near Mount Margaret (also known as the Mound) and killed Martin Wurmser, a trooper who was serving as an escort. White Horse also participated in the Warren Wagontrain Raid on May 18, 1871, and helped carry the fatally wounded brave, Hau-tau, to safety during the fight; afterward he escaped arrest. While the imprisonment of chiefs Satanta and Big Tree momentarily curbed his raiding, he and Big Bow engineered another attack on a wagon train in what is now Crockett County on April 20, 1872, which resulted in the death of seventeen Mexican teamsters. On the way back from that foray, White Horse was wounded in the arm during a skirmish with Capt. N. Cooney's Ninth Cavalry troops. On May 19 White Horse's younger brother, Kim-pai-te, was killed in a fight with L. H. Luckett's surveying crew near Round Timbers, twenty-five miles south of Fort Belknap. That event prompted White Horse to organize a revenge raid, and on June 9, with the help of Big Bow, he attacked the homestead of Abel Lee on the Clear Fork of the Brazos, about sixteen miles from Fort Griffin. Lee and his fourteen-year-old daughter Frances were fatally shot, his wife scalped and murdered, and the remaining three children carried into captivity. Soldiers trailed them, but the Kiowas escaped back to the reservation and held a scalp dance that went on for several nights. The Lee children remained captives for a few months before they were ransomed. After the 1872 councils and the release of Satanta and Big Tree from prison on parole, White Horse was peaceful for a time but remained with the war faction. He accompanied the intertribal war party to the second battle of Adobe Walls in June 1874 and was encamped in Palo Duro Canyon when Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie's troops attacked on September 27. As a result, White Horse and his followers surrendered at Fort Sill on April 19, 1875. Because of the atrocities he had committed, he was among those singled out by Kicking Bird for incarceration at St. Augustine, Florida. In 1878 he was returned with the others to the reservation near Fort Sill, where he spent his remaining years peacefully with his family. White Horse died of a stomach ailment in 1892 and was buried on the reservation.
Lone Wolf ( Guipago )
Kiowa Chief . c.1820-1879