The evidence against the two Chiefs was debated by the jury and both were sentenced to death. This sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.
Now, a few statements from the court record as to what the District Attorney had to say point to some of the misunderstandings of the times when it came to the Indian problems on the western frontiers.
The following excerpts from his plea before the court show clearly, not only the feelings of the frontiersmen towards the uncontrolled Indians, but also the contempt in which they, both frontiersmen and Indians, held the people who by appeasement, crookedness and ignorance tried to manage the Indian affairs of the nation from a far away city:
“Satanta, the veteran council chief of the Kiowas—the orator—the diplomat—the counselor of his tribe—the pulse of his race; Big Tree, the young war chief, who leads in the thickest of the fight, and follows no one in the chase—the mighty warrior, with the speed of the deer and the eye of the eagle, are before this bar in the charge of the law! So they would be described by Indian admirers, who live in more secured and favored lands, remote from the frontier—where ‘distance lends enchantment’ to the imagination—where the story of Pocohantas and the speech of Logan, the Mingo, are read, and the dread sound of the warwhoop is not heard. We who see them today, disrobed of all their fancied graces exposed in the light of reality, behold them through far different lenses. We recognize in Satanta the arch fiend of treachery and blood, the cunning Cataline—the promoter of strife—the breaker of treaties signed by his own hand—the inciter of his fellows to rapine and murder, as well as the most canting and double-tongued hypocrite where detected and overcome! In Big Tree, we perceive the tiger-demon who tasted blood and loved it as his own food—who stops at no crime how black soever—who is swift at every species of ferocity and pities not at any sight of agony or death—he can scalp, burn, torture, mangle and deface his victims, with all the superlatives of cruelty, and have no feeling of sympathy or remorse. We look in vain to see, in them, anything to be admired or even endured. Powerful legislative influences have been brought to bear to procure for them annuities, reservations and supplies. Federal munificence has fostered and nourished them, fed and clothed them; from their strongholds of protection they have come down upon us ‘like wolves on the fold’; treaties have been solemnly made with them, wherein they have been considered with all the formalities of quasi nationalities; immense financial ‘rings’ have had their origin in, and draw their vitality from, the ‘Indian question’; unblushing corruption has stalked abroad, created and kept alive through
“‘—the poor Indian, whose untutored mind,
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.’
“... For many years, predatory and numerous bands of these ‘pets of the government’ have waged the most relentless and heart-rending warfare upon our frontier, stealing our property and killing our citizens. We have cried aloud for help.... It is a fact, well known in Texas, that stolen property has been traced to the very doors of the reservation and there identified by our people, to no purpose....”
Mackenzie realized those things and knew he could receive no cooperation from Grierson at Fort Sill, so in September, acting on orders, concentrated a force of eight companies of the 4th Cavalry, two companies of the 11th Infantry and thirty Tonkawa Indian scouts at old Camp Cooper near Fort Griffin. The infantry would be used to guard the supply bases as he moved northwesterly in the hope of engaging the wild brethren under Chief Quanah. He bivouaced in the mouth of Blanco Canyon and lost sixty odd horses to an Indian raid that night. The next day the command moved up the canyon and later came out on the flat prairie of the Llano Estacado. A large retreating body of Indians was sighted but a Norther blew up, and Mackenzie was forced back down the canyon by the cold weather. He withdrew to Fort Richardson where the command arrived in late November. He accomplished nothing and as for himself, he received an arrow wound during a small skirmish in the canyon.
With the coming of spring, things picked up. Mackenzie received orders in May to establish a camp of cavalry and infantry on the Fresh Fork of the Brazos, from which his cavalry should operate in pursuit of hostile Indians. He moved out of Fort Richardson in June while Shafter at Fort Concho organized wagon trains and supplies, these coming from as far away as Fort Brown. He was to meet Mackenzie near the mouth of Blanco Canyon, where the base was to be established. By September, 1872, Mackenzie and his cavalry had moved from Blanco Canyon to Fort Sumner (New Mexico), thence north to Fort Bascom (New Mexico), then southeasterly to Palo Duro Canyon and south to his base camp in Blanco Canyon. He had found no Indians or Comancheros, but he had followed well marked Comanchero trails across the Llano Estacado and had no trouble in finding water holes. The Staked Plains were not nearly so tough as the high army echelons had been led to believe.
Puzzled by the lack of Indians he set out for the headwaters of the Red River and on September 29, discovered a large camp on a tributary of the Red, northeast of Palo Duro. He immediately attacked with five companies of cavalry, routed the braves, burned 262 Indian lodges, and captured 127 women and children, and an estimated 3,000 head of horses. His own losses were light if we except the fact that the Indian braves returned that night and recovered all of their horses by stampeding them. Mackenzie never forgot that midnight raid.