Fig. 74—Summer 1837—Cheyenne massacred.
At the time of the fight the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache were camped upon a small tributary of Scott creek (Pohón-ä P'a, "Walnut creek"), an upper branch of the North fork of Red river, southward from the present Port Elliott in the panhandle of Texas. It was in early summer, and they were preparing for the sun dance; a young man was out alone straightening arrows when he saw two men creeping up, with grass over their faces. Thinking they were Kiowa deer hunters, he advanced to meet them, when they fired and wounded him and his horse; he fled back to camp and gave the alarm, and Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache rushed out in pursuit. They soon came up with a small party of the enemy, who proved to be Cheyenne. The Kiowa and their allies killed three of them there, and following the fugitives killed several others; continuing along the trail down the north side of the creek to a short distance below its junction with Sweetwater, they came upon the main camp of the Cheyenne, who dug holes in the sand and made a good defense, but were at last all killed except one, who strangled himself with a rope to avoid capture. The bodies of the dead Cheyenne, 48 in number, were scalped, stripped, and laid along the ground in a row by the victors. Six Kiowa were killed, including the grandfather of the present Lone-wolf. T'ébodal, the oldest man now in the tribe, was engaged in this encounter.
Fig. 75—Battle pictures (from the Dakota calendars).
Set-t´an states that one Cheyenne wearing a war bonnet was killed as he came out of a tipi (see [figure 71]). Other informants do not remember this, but say that the Kiowa captured a fine medicine lance in a feathered case, and also a pabón or Dog-soldier staff, of the kind carried by those who were pledged to die at their post. The stream where the battle took place is since, called Sä´k`ota Ä´otón-de P'a, "Creek where the Cheyennes were massacred." The summer of the occurrence is sometimes called Á'k`ádá Pai, "Wailing sun-dance summer," because, although the Kiowa wailed for their dead, the sun dance was not on that account abandoned.
WINTER 1837—38
A´daltem Etkúegán-de Sai, "Winter that they dragged the head." The figure above the winter mark shows a horseman carrying a bloody scalp upon a lance and dragging a bloody head at the end of a reata.
Fig. 76 — Winter 1837—38—Head dragged.
Three Comanche, two men and a woman, were camped alone one night in a tipi on the Clear fork of the Brazos (Ä´sese P'a, "Wooden-arrowpoint river"), in Texas, when one of them noticed somebody raise the door-flap and then quickly drop it again; he told the others, and as silently and swiftly as possible they ran out, and jumping over a steep bank of the creek hid themselves just a moment before their enemies returned and fired into the vacated tipi. The Comanche returned the fire from their hiding place and then made their escape to a Kiowa camp near by. In the morning the Kiowa returned to the spot, together with the Comanche, and found a dead Arapaho lying where he had been shot; they scalped and beheaded him, and brought the head into camp dragging at the end of a reata. The old German captive, Bóiñ-edal, then a little boy and who had been with the Indians about two years, witnessed this barbarous spectacle and still remembers the thrill of horror which it sent through him.