Sitting Bear

The general, realizing that he had escaped death by fate, ordered Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie and the 4th Cavalry to pursue the war party and bring back those responsible for the attack.

Leaders Satank and Satanta had come back to the reservation, and had they kept quiet, no one would have ever found out officially who had committed the Warren Wagon Train raid.

He ordered the arrest of Satank, Satanta, and Big Tree, and personally carried it out on the agent's porch, in spite of Guipago's intervention (the head chief came in well equipped with loaded rifle and guns, fit to fight for his friend's liberty, but had to surrender in front of the massive presence of military troops).

[4] General Sherman ordered the trial of Satanta and Big Tree, along with Satank, making them the first Native American leaders to be tried for raids in a US court.

Satank had no intention of allowing himself to be humiliated by being tried by the white man's court, and told the Tonkawa scouts before the three were to be transported to Fort Richardson that they should tell his family they would be able to find his body along the trail.

Satank refused to get in the wagon, and after the soldiers threw him in, he hid his head under his red blanket, (worn as a sign of his membership in the Koitsenko).

The soldiers apparently believed the old chief was hiding his face because of humiliation, but in reality, he was gnawing his wrists to the bone so that he could get out of the chains they had put on him.

He began singing his death song, and when his hands were free, stabbed and wounded one of his guards - a corporal[6] - in the leg[7] with a knife he had secreted in his clothes, and managed to wrestle the man's rifle from him.