A signal instance of Indian bravery is noted by Pettis:
At one of the discharges the shell passed directly through the body of a horse on which was a Comanche riding at a full run, and went some 200 or 300 yards farther on before it exploded. The horse, on being struck, went head foremost to earth, throwing his rider, as it seemed, 20 feet into the air, with his hands and feet sprawling in all directions, and as he struck the earth, apparently senseless, two other Indians who were near by proceeded to him, one on each side, and throwing themselves over on the sides of their horses, seized each an arm and dragged him from the field between them, amid a shower of rifle balls from our skirmishers. This act of the Indians in removing their dead and helpless wounded from the field is always done, and more than a score of times were we eyewitnesses to this feat during the afternoon (Pettis).
SUMMER 1865
Pihó K`ádó, "Peninsula sun dance." It is so called because held in the peninsula or bend of the Washita on the south side, a short distance below the mouth of Walnut creek (Zódăltoñ P'a, "Vomiting-water river") within the present reservation. The Set-t'an calendar represents the medicine lodge in the bend, indicated by a curved line. In the Anko calendar the peninsula is more rudely indicated by a circle around the base of the medicine pole.
WINTER 1865—66
In this winter the Set-t'an calendar records the death of the noted war chief, Tä´n-kóñkya, "Black-warbonnet-top," on a southern tributary of the upper South Canadian. The war-bonnet is made conspicuous in the figure to call attention to his name.
Fig. 138—Winter 1865—66—Tän-kóñkya died; Dohásän died.
The Anko calendar notes the death of the celebrated chief Dohásän, "Little-bluff," the greatest and most noted chief in the history of the tribe, who died on the Cimarron in this winter. The event is indicated by the figure of a wagon, he being the only Kiowa who owned a wagon at that time. For more than thirty years from the massacre by the Osage in 1833, he had been the recognized head chief of the Kiowa. His death left no one of sufficiently commanding influence to unite the tribe under one leadership, and thenceforth the councils of the Kiowa were divided under such rival chieftains as Set-t'aiñte and Kicking-bird until the unsuccessful outbreak of 1874 finally reduced them to the position of a reservation tribe and practically put an end to the power of the chiefs.
This winter is notable also for the arrival of a large trading party from Kansas under the leadership of a man named John Smith. He traded also among the Cheyenne, whose language he spoke, and was called by them Póomûts, "Gray-blanket," or "Saddle-blanket," these articles forming a part of his trading stock; this name the Kiowa corrupted into Pohóme. The party visited all the various camps of the Cheyenne and Kiowa, trading blankets and other goods for buffalo hides. Smith died among the Cheyenne after having lived more than forty years in the Indian country, and was buried in the sand hills near the present agency at Darlington, Oklahoma. His name appears in the official reports as government interpreter for the Cheyenne, and he rendered valuable assistance at the Medicine Lodge treaty in 1867.