Trial of Satanta and Big Tree

The trial of Satanta and Big Tree occurred in May 1871 in the town of Jacksboro in Jack County, Texas, United States.

The two Kiowa leaders, with Satank (Sitting Bear), a legendary third War Chief, were formally indicted on July 1, 1871, and tried shortly thereafter, for acts arising out of the Warren Wagon Train Raid.

The warriors of those three tribes, along with the Cheyenne, crossed the Red River and made bloody raids into the sparsely settled northwestern counties of Texas, down into Mexico.

General Sherman, general-in-chief of the United States Army, was on a three-week inspection tour of federal military posts on the Texas frontier.

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.

[2] Lawrie Tatum, the Quaker Indian Agent for the Kiowa, wrote a letter on May 30, 1871, in which he described the speech of Satanta's on the Warren Wagon Train Raid: Satanta made, what he wished understood to be a "Big Speech," in which he said addressing me "I have heard that you have stolen a large portion of our annuity goods and given them to the Texans; I have repeatedly asked you for arms & ammunition, which you have not furnished, and made many other requests which have not been granted, You do not listen to my talk.

[4]Nor was Tatum the only white man Satanta admitted his role in the raid to, for according to a letter written by General Sherman, dated May 28, 1871, originally published in the San Antonio Express, and reprinted in the New York Times on June 27, 1871, Satanta admitted to General Sherman in person, via an interpreter, that he led the party that attacked the Warren Wagon Train.

[5] Sherman then 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).

[6]Satank, a proud member of the elite Koitsenko warrior society, had no intention of allowing himself to be tried and humiliated by the white man's court.

The efforts of Ball and Woolfolk created even more of a stir than the case would have caused in any event, and even foreign reporters were present in Jacksboro, Texas.

The two chiefs were deprived of their final chance for dignity, according to their customs, tribal martyrdom, when Ulysses S. Grant, the president of the United States, decided that a wiser course than hanging would be the commutation of their sentence to life imprisonment.

The two chiefs (really being Ado-ete a minor war leader) were sent to the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, a fate far worse than death for a Native American, especially in those days.

[2] The Plains Tribes, Kiowas, Comanches, Kiowa-Apaches, and Cheyennes were finally at the time when they would recognize that they were condemned to internal exile on the lands "reserved" for their forcible relocation; or to assimilation in the general society; or to a worse fate: an indeterminate existence in some dismal urban ghetto.

Guipago and Kicking Bird promised they would, and so Texas authorities released Satanta and Big Tree on parole from the Huntsville penitentiary in late 1873.

[2][8] Hostilities continued nonetheless, and a year after their release Big Tree and Satanta were arrested for parole violation, participating in the attack on Adobe Walls and other acts occurring during the so-called Red River War.

After an investigation Big Tree's parole was reinstated, but Satanta was returned to Huntsville for his involvement in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls.

In his book, the History of Texas, Clarance Wharton reports of Satanta in prison: After he was returned to the penitentiary in 1874, he saw no hope of escape.

[3] While Satanta suffered in prison, Big Tree, returning to the reservation and accepting pacification, lived on in the sadness of a warrior in exile.