Читать книгу The Calendar History of Kiowa Indians (Illustrated Edition) - James Mooney - Страница 52

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As usual, the Indians had deferred hostilities until the grass was high enough in the spring to enable their ponies to travel. In April a government physician, who had been sent among these tribes to vaccinate them as a protection from the smallpox which had recently decimated them, as already noted, found them all apparently friendly. From him we have an interesting description of the appearance and home life of the famous chief Set-t'aiñte. He writes from Fort Larned:

I have been two weeks among the Kiowas, about 40 miles up the Arkansas river. I was four days in Satana's [Set-t'aiñte] or White Bear's village, who is, I believe, their principal chief. He is a fine-looking Indian, very energetic, and as sharp as a brier. He and all his people treated, me with much friendship. I ate my meals regularly three times a day with him in his lodge. He puts on a good deal of style, spreads a carpet for his guests to sit on, and has painted fireboards 20 inches wide and 3 feet long, ornamented with bright brass tacks driven all around the edges, which they use for tables. He has a brass French horn, which he blew vigorously when the meals were ready. I slept with Yellow Buffalo, who was one of the chiefs that visited Washington with Major Colley. They have quite a number of cows and calves and a good many oxen and some mules and American horses that they say they stole from Texas. A body of Kiowas and Comanches and some Cheyennes intend to make another raid into Texas in about five or six weeks.

It will be remembered that Texas was at this time in armed rebellion against the general government, a fact which confirmed the Indians in their belief that Texans and Americans were two distinct and hostile nations. With correct prophecy the doctor surmises that a successful result in the contemplated raid will encourage them to try their hand farther north. By this time he had vaccinated nearly all the Indians of the upper Arkansas (Report, 12). Fort Larned, in western Kansas, was then the distributing point for the goods furnished by the government to the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache.

Photo by Soule, about 1870.

Fig. 45—Set-t'aiñte (Satanta) or White-bear.