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Figure 7. — Fort Harker, Kansas; south side. (t'XVA/ j8^i86; Smithsonian photo j8y86.) 



defended l)y only 25 men, at least a part of whom 

 were Mexicans descriiied by Marcy as liadly fright- 

 ened.'* The soldier in the center background making 

 a dash for the corralled wagons is probably a flanker 

 cut ofT by the sudden attack, possiijly the Lt. Williams 

 who was wounded, since only officers in the infantry 

 were mounted. The group of Indians around the 

 fire (in the right centerground) cannot l)e accounted 

 for. 



StieffeFs two pictures of the meeting of the Govern- 

 ment's peace commissioners with the Indians at the 

 general tribal rendezvous on Big Medicine Lodge 

 Creek in October 1867 (tigs. 3, 4) are his most im- 

 portant from a historical standpoint, especially the 

 one of Satanta, the Kiowa chief, addressing the 

 meeting.-^ 



2' Marcy's report, of>. cit. (footnote 24). 



-'Jack Rowland, artist for Harper's Weekly, also pictured 

 Satanta speaking to the commissioners, and with more accuracy 

 in that all the civilian commissioners are visible, but his pictures 

 lack the color and drama of StiefTel's work. See: Harper's 

 Weekly, November 16, 1867. 



Indian imrest during and immediately after the 

 CW\\ War caused by the ever-increasing white migra- 

 tion to the W'est had grown to such proportions that 

 in 1867 the Congress launched an all-out effort to 

 establish a lasting peace on the frontier. The plan was 

 to per.suadc the warring tribes to sign treaties whereby 

 they would move onto reservations where they would 

 be undisturbed by the whites and, in turn, would 

 cease to molest the frontier settlements.'" The Indians 

 concerned with the Medicine Lodge treaty w'ere the 

 Kiowa, Comanche, Apache. Cheyenne, and Arapa- 

 hoe. This treaty is unusually important, as it changed 

 the entire status of these tribes from that of inde- 

 pendence with free and unrestricted range over the 

 entire plains area to that of dependence on the 

 Government with confinement to the limits of a 



"^^ The records of this treaty meeting are contained in the 

 Office of Indian .Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives. 

 The final treaties are reproduced in Indian AJfairs: Lairs and 

 Treaties, vol. 2, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1903, 

 pp 754-764. 



P.APER 1 2 : HERMANN STIEFFEL, SOLDIER ARTIST OF THE WEST 



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