Winter War Stories 
By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL 
A Trader’s Story. 
HE extraordinary tale of The Strange Ad¬ 
venture of a Kiowa War Party, printed 
in Forest and Stream, was told me years 
ago by George Bent, whose name is more or less 
familiar to the readers of Forest and Stream, 
and who had it from an old Kiowa named “Go¬ 
ing Down Hill.” It is curious chiefly because 
so many odd things seemed to happen to the 
one little group of people that went on this war 
party. Many of the things that happened are 
not to be accounted for, yet some of the others 
seem natural enough, and of course everyone 
who heard the story appeared to believe it. 
This is Indian good manners. For each tale of 
this sort there is always some foundation, and 
if things are reported that seem to us impossi¬ 
ble, it usually means that there was some error 
of observation on the part of the Indian or some 
failure to reason things out correctly. The story 
was told George Bent one winter when he was 
trading in the Kiowa camp, and I give as nearly 
as possible in his own language what he said 
about that winter. This is really the introduc¬ 
tion to the Kiowa story. 
Along in the winter of 1866-1867 I was trad¬ 
ing with the Kiowas in what is now the Okla¬ 
homa Territory and beyond down into Texas 
on what we used then to call the Staked Plains. 
Of course in those days things were mighty dif¬ 
ferent from what they are now. Then Indians 
were Indians, and free to travel where they 
wanted to. From time to time they were on the 
war path and the Kiowas and Comanches made 
trouble now and then. Those were the times 
of Satanta and Big Tree and Satank and a good 
many other Indians who, along with a whole lot 
of white men have gone over the range. The 
Indians that to-day are old men were just boys 
in those times. Nowadays you can count on the 
fingers of your two hands about all the old men 
in the Kiowa and Comanche camps that used 
to take part in the old wars. Buffalo were plenty 
in those days and I used to make a good trade 
each winter. I traded that winter in Kicking 
Bird’s lodge. 
While in Kicking Bird’s lodge I saw all the 
Indians of the camp quite often. Kicking Bird 
was a popular njan in the camp, generous and 
always calling out for feasts, so that most nights 
there were a lot of people sitting around the fire, 
and they were telling stories of what they had 
done in war and stories of the old times and 
of the queer things that used to happen in those 
ancient times when animals changed into peo¬ 
ple, and did almighty queer things and about 
that person that they call “white man,” who is 
always getting into some trouble or other, and 
a whole lot of other things that were interesting 
to me. 
I do not know if you people nowadays know 
how w T e used to trade in old times. If a trader 
went into a camp and had any special friend 
among the chiefs or important men he went 
right to that chief’s lodge and got off his horse 
and went in. When the lodge man learned why 
the trader had come, he set aside a space for 
the visitor to occupy with his goods, the women 
unpacked the horses and brought the goods into 
the lodge and took care of the horses, and from 
that time on, so long as he stayed in the village, 
the trader was a part of the lodgeman’s family. 
His goods were just as safe as if they had been 
locked up in one of these modern safe deposit 
vaults that I hear people talk about. In old 
times Indians did not steal from each other nor 
from their friends. When they were at war they 
took things from their enemies, but they did not 
consider that stealing, and I have never seen 
how anybody could call it stealing. Sometimes 
I see in the newspapers about where the Japs 
and the Russians are fighting over in Asia some¬ 
where, but I never heard anybody say that the 
Japs stole Port Arthur from the Russians, nor 
that they stole any of those ships that I hear 
they captured. 
Well, as I was saying, I traded that year in 
Kicking Bird’s lodge. He was a big man among 
the Kiowas, brave, smart and long-headed enough 
to see that there was not much of anything to 
be gained by fighting the white folks. He recog¬ 
nized that there were too many white people to 
fight, and he knew also that Indians never will 
pull together. You may get up a big war party 
of a half a dozen friendly tribes that have agreed 
to unite to clean out some other tribe that they 
all hate, but the chances are that before the big 
war party has reached the place for fighting, 
some bunch of the men will get jealous of some 
other bunch or somebody will have a bad dream, 
and little parties will begin to split off and split 
off, until finally half the number have quit and 
gone back; and all this for no reason that would 
appeal at all to a white man, though it does ap¬ 
peal to Indians. White people think Indians are 
queer and the Indians are all the time saying 
that the white people are queer. I guess maybe 
both are right and both are queer, and some¬ 
times I think that I, being half way between the 
two, can understand them both a good deal better 
than either one understands the other. 
All the same, Kicking Bird had been on the 
war path against the whites, and of course 
against the Mexicans, but then in those days 
the Indians did not consider the Mexicans white 
folks. To these southern Indians, Kiowas, 
Comanches, Apaches, Cheyennes and Arapahoes, 
Mexico and New Mexico was a good deal like 
a store. If anybody wanted horses or mules or 
sheep or scalps or most any plunder, he would 
get up a war party and go way down into Mexico 
where stock was awful plenty. Horses, mules 
and cattle covered the prairie, the people had 
good blankets and saddles, and there were lots 
of women and children to be captured. Usually 
the men made no fight, though sometimes the 
Mexican troops got after the war party and 
made it pretty active for them. 
Well, I was not meaning to talk to you about 
the fighting of those days nor the way the In¬ 
dians raided down into Mexico. All the same 
it used to interest me mightily to see how many 
Mexicans there were in these tribes; I mean 
pure-blooded Mexicans, not halfbreeds; men 
with heavy beard and curly hair that showed 
its kinks even through the side braids, and 
women, some of them mighty good looking ones. 
All these had been captured as little bits of 
children on the raids made into Mexico. Most 
of these captives were darker skinned than the 
average Mexican who wears a hat and lives in 
adobe houses, but a good deal paler on the other 
hand than the Indians. Their dark color was 
nothing but sunburn. Of course these men and 
these women had been raised in the camp, had 
forgotten all about their people or where they 
came from, and considered themselves just as 
good Indians as any member of the tribe that 
they were living with. 
It was not only Mexicans that were found in 
the tribe. There were lots of white people that 
had been captured down in Texas. I reckon 
you have all heard of “Kiowa Dutch.” He is 
an old man now more than eighty years of 
age, if he is still alive. He was captured—a 
little German boy whose parents were kijled. 
Then there is the Kiowa woman of the Chey¬ 
ennes. She was a daughter of an Irish family 
that came to Texas, was captured as a little bit 
of a girl by the Kiowas way back in the 30’s, and 
after living with the Kiowas for two or three 
years was captured from them by the Chey¬ 
ennes, and has lived with them ever since. I 
