The massacre of an entire village of the Kiowa prompted the dragoon expedition of Colonel Henry Dodge to Western Oklahoma in the summer of 1834.

In the summer of 1851 Dohäsan led a war party of the various Kiowa bands, and allied Comanches against the Pawnees near the head of Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas, killing most of them.

[3] His name again rises in Army records in 1857 when he successfully led his warriors out of an ambush by Mexican soldiers at Hueco Tanks near El Paso Norte in Texas.

[3] The American Government was anxious to keep the Kiowa friendly as the Civil War beckoned, and in late 1859, as a goodwill gesture, Major John Sedgwick's troops gave Dohäsan an old army ambulance wagon along with the usual presents.

When he was unable to master the art of driving a team, Dohäsan had a couple of Kiowa boys ride the harnessed horses as he sat in the driver's seat.

[3] In 1861, when federal authorities threatened to withhold annuity goods and send troops against the Kiowas if they did not cease their raiding, Dohäsan angrily and contemptuously called the "white chief" a fool with the "heart of a woman.

It came about because Gen. James H. Carleton, commander of the military district of New Mexico, decided to punish Comanche and Kiowa attacks on Santa Fe wagon trains.

[6] Col. Christopher (Kit) Carson, was given command of the First Cavalry, New Mexico Volunteers, and told to proceed and campaign against the winter campgrounds of the Comanches and Kiowas.

On November 12, 1864, Carson’s force, supplied with two mountain howitzers under the command of Lt. George H. Pettis, twenty-seven wagons, an ambulance, and forty-five days' rations, proceeded down the Canadian River into the Texas Panhandle.

Inclement weather, including an early snow storm, caused slow progress, and on November 25, 1864, the First Cavalry reached Mule Springs, in Moore County, approximately 30 miles (48 km) west of Adobe Walls.

Scouts reported the presence of a large Indian encampment at Adobe Walls, and Carson ordered his cavalry forward, to be followed by the wagons and howitzers.

After six to eight hours of fairly continuous fighting, Carson realized he was beginning to run low on shells for the howitzers, and ammunition in general, and ordered his forces to withdraw.

When twilight came, Carson ordered a group of his scouts to burn the lodges of the first village, which also resulted in the death of the Kiowa-Apache chief, Iron Shirt, when he refused to leave his tepee.

[9] Despite the fact that Carson was forced to retreat in the face of much more opposition than he had expected, the United States Army declared the First Battle of Adobe Walls a victory.

[6] In October 1865 Dohäsan signed the Little Arkansas Treaty, but he vigorously protested confinement to a reservation, declaring that the Kiowas owned all the land from the North Platte River to the upper Texas Panhandle and needed room to roam about.

[3] As noted earlier, though the chief position in the Kata or Arikara band of the Kiowa Indians was hereditary, it was not necessarily given from father to son, and in this case, it was not.

[12] In 1892 the young Dohäsan gave his annual family calendar history, begun by his uncle, the last great principal chief of the Kiowa, to Capt.