344 CALENDAR HISTORY OF THE KIOWA [eth. axn. 17 



minated that it was practically a failure and the Indians suffered 

 much in consequence. The killing with its sequel is thus noted in the 

 official report : 



Captain Nolan, commandins tbe company of troops -nho were escorting the Indians 

 while on the hunt, had, in view of the scarcity of liufFalo, allowed parties, each 

 accompanied by a squad of soldiers, to go off from the main camp to points where 

 it was said straggling droves of buffalo could be found. While a Kiowa man wivs 

 one day a short distance from the camp of one of these parties and alone he was run 

 onto by a company of Texas state troops, shot down, killed, and scalped. A few 

 moments after this grand military feat was performed the little Indian camp was 

 discovered, and they were just in the act of covering themselves with additional 

 glory by charging it and butchering the sijuaws and pappooses when the squad of 

 colored troops presented themselves, mounted ou the bare backs of their horses, 

 having had no time to saddle them, and the warlike band disappeared. Upon the 

 return of the Indians to the agency a reijuest was made that the Texans who 

 murdered the Kiowa should be arrested and punished by the authorities, expressing 

 at the same time no intention of avenging his death themselves. It seems that 

 after waiting some time and concluding that nothing could or would be done by the 

 authorities, a party of young Kiowas, headed by the brother of the murdered man, 

 quietly left their different camps, dashed hurriedly across the line into Texas, killed 

 and scalped a white man they met iu the road, and returned as secretly to their 

 camps, apparently feeling that they had avenged the death of their brother and 

 friend by this taking of one scalp. 



A party of troops was sent after this avenging party immediately on 

 learning of this last killing, but so quietly had they pro- 

 ceeded that no trace of them could be found or any 

 definite information procured on which to base measures 

 for their punishment. The white man killed was named 

 Earle, and the agent expresses his belief that if proper 

 satisfaction had been made in the first place by pun- 

 ishing the murderers of the Kiowa or making presents 

 to his family according to the Indian custom, the aveng- 

 ing party would not have entered Texas on their deadly 

 mission (Report, 99). 



Fig. 166 -Summer STTMMEK 1879 



1879— Horse-eat- 

 ing eun dance; TsenpiH K'ddo, " Horseeatiug sun dance." It is in- 

 Boy shot. dicated on the Set-t'an calendar by the figure of a horse's 



head above the medicine lodge. This dance was held on Elm fork 

 of Eed river, and was so called because the buffalo had now become 

 so scarce that the Kiowa, who had gone on their regular hunt the 

 preceding winter, had found so few that they were obliged to kill and 

 eat their ponies during the summer to save themselves from starving. 

 This may be recorded as the date of the disappearance of the buffalo 

 from the Kiowa country. Thenceforth the appearance of even a single 

 animal was a rare event. The official report says: 



In the month of June last a portion of each baud was permitted to go to the west- 

 ern part of the reservation to subsist themselves awhile on buffalo, deer, eti', as the 

 supplies for the year had been so nearly expended it was not seen how they could 



