The Kiowa Verdict

TO TRY A WARRIOR

In 1871 Satanta, a Kiowa war chief, boasted at the Kiowa-Comanche Agency that he had led a war party against a wagon train of freighters. When he repeated his boast to General W. T. Sherman, who was on a tour of frontier forts, the order was given for his arrest along with two other chiefs who were implicated. The killing, torture, and mutilation of the freighters was said to have been a ghastly crime. But never before had members of an Indian war party been put on trial to defend their brutal actions. The chiefs would be tried in a Texas courtroom, with a former Indian fighter to defend them. Would a fair trial even be possible in such a setting? And would the outcome be justice . . . or vengeance?