Big Tree (Kiowa leader)

[1] On May 18, 1871, the Warren wagon train, traveling down the Jacksboro-Belknap road heading towards Salt Creek Crossing, met a large group of riders ahead.

Hidden in a thicket of scrub in the Salt Creek Prairie, the Kiowa had observed, without attacking, the transit of General William Tecumseh Sherman's inspection retinue.

The previous night, Mamanti ("He Walks-Above" or "Sky Walker"), the powerful shaman rival of Tene-angopte ("Kicking Bird" or "Striking Eagle")'s friend Napawat ("No Mocassins"), had prophesied that this small party would be followed by a larger one with more plunder for the taking, and the warriors let the soldiers go.

Satanta was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, as was Big Tree; but Edmund Davis, the Governor of Texas, under enormous pressure from leaders of the so-called Quaker Peace Policy, decided to overrule the court, and the punishment for both was commuted to life imprisonment.

Thanks to the stubborn behavior of Guipago, who forced the U.S. government to agree by seriously threatening a new bloody war, Satanta and Big Tree were freed after two years of imprisonment at the Huntsville State Penitentiary in Texas.