Trial of Satanta and Big Tree The Trial of Satanta and Big Tree occurred in May 1871 in the town of Jacksboro in Jack County , Texas , United States . This historic trial of Native American War Chiefs of the Kiowa Indians Satanta and Big Tree for the murder of seven teamsters during a raid on Salt Creek Prairie near Jacksboro , Texas , marked the first time the United States had tried Native American Chiefs in a state court . The trial attracted national , indeed , even international , attention . The two Kiowa leaders , with Satank , a legendary third War Chief , were formally indicted on July 1 , 1871 , and tried shortly thereafter , for acts arising out of the Warren Wagon Train Raid . Background . Fort Richardson , near Jacksboro , Texas , was built to stop the Kiowa , Comanche , and Kiowa - Apache warriors , from violating their confinement to the reservation lands in Oklahoma , which they did nearly every " Comanche moon " ( as the settlers fearfully called the period of the full moon ) . The warriors of those three tribes , along with the Cheyenne , crossed the Red River and made bloody raids into the sparsely settled northwestern counties of Texas , down into Mexico . Never was the frontier more tense than in 1871 because there was a prodigious look out for Indians smoking peyote . The time of the free Native American Plains Tribes had come and gone . But the warriors still made bloody efforts to stave off confinement . The Warren Wagon Train Raid was one such effort . This incident occurred on May 18 , 1871 . Wagon Master Henry Warren had contracted to haul supplies to Army forts in the west of Texas , including Forts Richardson , Griffin , and Concho . So on May 18 , Warren and his men were traveling down the Jacksboro - Belknap road heading towards Salt Creek Crossing , on Salt Creek Prairie , and were a few miles from Fort Richardson . That morning , the Warren Train encountered General William Tecumseh Sherman with an escort of a dozen troopers . General Sherman , general - in - chief of the United States Army , was on a three - week inspection tour of federal military posts on the Texas frontier . The Kiowas and Comanches , already waiting in ambush , followed the advice of their medicine man and waited for the more profitable prey of civilians he had seen in his dreams instead of attacking the small army group . This dream doomed the Warren train , but saved Sherman , who would almost certainly been killed had the large war party attacked his escort . Warren Wagon Train Raid . The warriors attacked the wagon train less than an hour after Sherman had left them . Despite efforts to defend themselves , the Warren Train was quickly overrun . Seven teamsters were killed , including one who was burned alive . The survivors rushed on to Fort Richardson , where they encountered General Sherman . The General , realizing that he had escaped death by fate , ordered Colonel Ranald S . Mackenzie and the 4th Cavalry to pursue the war party and bring back those responsible for the attack . Bragging leads to chains and a trial for Satanta and Big Tree , Satank opts for death . The Army did not catch the war party , the war party caught themselves . Leaders Satank and Satanta had come back to the reservation , and had they kept quiet , no one would have ever found out officially who had committed the Warren Wagon Train Raid . But Satanta could not bring himself to be quiet . He asked the Indian Agent on the Kiowa - Comanche Reservation for ammunition and supplies , bragging that he , Satank , and Big Tree had led the war party which had recently killed the teamsters at Salt Creek , and that they could have killed General Sherman if they had wished . Lawrie Tatum , the Quaker Indian Agent for the Kiowa , wrote a letter on May 30 , 1871 , in which he described the speech of Satanta ' s on the Warren Wagon Train Raid : Satanta made , what he wished understood to be a " Big Speech , " in which he said addressing me " I have heard that you have stolen a large portion of our annuity goods and given them to the Texans ; I have repeatedly asked you for arms & ammunition , which you have not furnished , and made many other requests which have not been granted , You do not listen to my talk . The white people are preparing to build a R . R . through our country , which will not be permitted . Some years ago we were taken by the haid & pulled here close to Texans where we have to fight . But we have cut that loos now and are all going with the Cheyennes to the Antalope Hills . When Gen Custer was here two or three years ago , he arrested me & kept me in confinement several days . But arresting Indians is plaid out now & is never to be repeated . On account of these grievances , I took , a short time ago , about 100 of my warriors , with the Chiefs Satank , Eagle Heart , Big Tree , Big Bow , & Fast Bear , & went to Texas , where we captured a train not far from Ft Richardson , killed 7 of the men , & drove off about 41 mules . Three of my men were killed , but we are willing to call it even . If any other Indian come here & claims the honor of leading the party he will be lieing to you , for I did it myself . Nor was Tatum the only white man Satanta admitted his role in the raid to , for according to a letter written by General Sherman , dated May 28 , 1871 , originally published in the San Antonio Express , and reprinted in the New York Times on June 27 , 1871 , Satanta admitted to General Sherman in person , via an interpreter , that he led the party that attacked the Warren Wagon Train . According to General Sherman , Satanta openly admitted leading the attack , denying only that they had burnt a man alive . Sherman then ordered the arrest of Satank , Satanta , and Big Tree , and personally carried it out on the Agent ’ s porch . Sherman then hit on the ingenious idea of sending the Indian Chiefs to Jacksboro , Texas to be tried in state court for murder . He ordered them tried as common felons by the Court of the Thirteenth Judicial District of Texas . This would deny them any vestige of rights as a prisoner of war , which they might keep in a military court martial , and send a message that acts by a war party would be regarded as common crimes rather than legitimate resistance by representatives of a Sovereign state . This would mark the first time Indian Chiefs had ever stood trial in the white man ’ s court . General Sherman also determined that there would be no lynching , or mob justice , involving the Indian Chiefs , but made clear his determination to see them convicted in a civil court . In a letter to Colonel MacKenzie , dated May 28 , 1871 , General Sherman said : They must not be mobbed or lynched but tried regularly for murder and as many other crimes as the Attorney can approve ; but the military authorities should see that these prisoners never escape alive , for they are the very impersonation of Murder , robbery , arson , and all the capital crimes of the Statute Book . Satank , a proud member of the elite Koitsenko warrior society , had no intention of allowing himself to be tried and humiliated by the white man ’ s court . He refused to get in the wagon to be transported to trial , and was ignomously thrown in by guards . He famously told the Tonkawa scouts to tell his family they would find his body along the road to Jacksboro . As they left the Indian Agency , Satank began singing the death song of the Koitsenko , while he covered his head with the blanket . The guards did not realize he was knawing his wrists to the bone in order to get his hands free . Once this was done , he attacked one trooper with a knife hidden in his clothes , and after stabbing him , got his rifle from him . Before he could turn it on the remainder of his guards , he was shot and killed . The troopers tossed his body out of the wagon and left it in the road , as he had foretold . His body lay unburied there where it fell , with his people afraid to claim it , for fear of the Army , though Col . Ranald S . Mackenzie assured the family they could safely claim Satank ’ s remains . Nonetheless , they were never claimed . Trial at Jacksboro . No transcripts remain of the trial of Satanta and Big Tree , and all that is left are verbal accounts . On those , several things are undisputed . First , neither the town nor the army never counted on the attorneys appointed to defend them . Thomas Ball , a new - to - Texas attorney from Virginia who knew nothing about the Texas frontier or the Indian Wars , and Joseph Woolfolk , a rancher , Confederate veteran and Indian fighter who never wanted to be an attorney , and who but for financial pressure , would have long since ceased to practice , were appointed to defend the two Indians . They were appointed to answer the political pressure being brought by Quakers , but Ball and Woolfolk defended Satanta and Big Tree zealously against the best efforts of prosecutor Samuel Lanham . ( Lanham went on to become Governor of Texas ) The efforts of Ball and Woolfolk created even more of a stir than the case would have caused in any event , and even foreign reporters were present in Jacksboro , Texas . Secondly , all accounts agree the case became not just a national , but an international , cause celebre . Third , and ironically , Ball and Woolfolk , white men , defended the two warriors by arguing precisely what the Kiowa would have — that the Indians were but defending their land from invasion , that the United States had never followed a single comma of any of its treaties with the Indians , and that a state of war existed between the Kiowa and the Americans . Finally , all accounts agree that at the trial Satanta warned what might happen if he was hanged : " I am a great chief among my people . If you kill me , it will be like a spark on the prairie . It will make a big fire — a terrible fire ! " . Nor was the government entirely unified on what should be done with the Indian Chiefs ; while General Sherman and the Army were pressing strongly for their conviction and execution , the Bureau of Indian Affairs agreed with the attorneys for Satanta and Big Tree and said they should be acquitted since their actions were undertaken during wartime , that their people had been at war with the United States . But the jury was local , and despite the efforts of Ball and Woolfolk , the Bureau of Indian Affairs , the pressure of the press and the Quakers , and the warnings of Satanta , the two Indians were convicted . The trial became known in Texas for its " cowboy jury . " The War Chiefs had been formally indicted on July 1 , 1871 , their trial began on July 5 , 1871 , and they were convicted on July 8 , 1871 . The two Indians were convicted of seven counts of first degree murder , and sentenced to death . Aftermath . The trial court set the date for execution on September 1 , 1871 . It was never kept , though it would have been far kinder , by the tribal customs of the Kiowa , to have executed Satanta and Big Tree . The two chiefs were deprived of their final chance for dignity , according to their customs , tribal martyrdom , when Ulysses S . Grant , the president of the United States , decided that a wiser course than hanging would be the commutation of their sentence to life imprisonment . The President " advised " the Reconstruction governor of Texas , Edmund J . Davis to commute their sentences . Davis then commuted their sentences and ordered them to prison . The two chiefs were sent to the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville , a fate far worse than death for a Native American , especially in those days . The Plains Tribes , Kiowas , Comanches , Kiowa - Apaches , and Cheyennes were finally at the time when they would recognize that they were condemned to internal exile on the lands " reserved " for their forcible relocation ; or to assimilation in the general society ; or to a worse fate : an indeterminate existence in some dismal urban ghetto . The imprisonment of Satanta had caused enormous rage among the Kiowa and Comanche , and Kiowa leaders Kicking Bird and Lone Wolf threatened all out war unless the Chiefs were freed . The Secretary of the Interior asked if they were freed , if the Kiowa would walk the " peace path . " Lone Wolf and Kicking Bird promised they would , and so Texas authorities released Satanta and Big Tree on parole from the Huntsville penitentiary in late 1873 . General Sherman , along with most Texans , was enraged , and he wrote to the Governor , " I believe Satanta and Big Tree will have their revenge , if they have not already had it , and if they are to take scalps , I hope that yours is the first that will be taken . " In spite of this general protest , the officials were following the advice of the Secretary of the Interior , who was so anxious to secure peace on the frontier that he accepted a pledge by the Kiowas and Comanches that upon the release of the two chiefs , they would yield and follow the path of peace . Hostilities continued nonetheless , and a year after their release Big Tree and Satanta were arrested for parole violation , participating in the attack on Adobe Walls and other acts occurring during the so called Red River War . After an investigation Big Tree ' s parole was reinstated , but Satanta was returned to Huntsville for his involvement in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls . Sadly , the Kiowa People deny he was involved in that battle , other than being present . He yielded up his war lance and other symbols of leadership to younger , more aggressive men , and did not take an active part in the battle . But his very presence there broke the terms of his parole , and back to prison he went . By 1878 Satanta could not go on any longer . The Kiowa Chief who had been named the " orator of the Plains " at Medicine Lodge was reported by guards to be in a state of despair . In his book , the " History of Texas " , Clarance Wharton reports of Satanta in prison : After he was returned to the penitentiary in 1874 , he saw no hope of escape . For awhile he was worked on a chain gain which helped to build the M . K . & T . Railway . He became sullen and broken in spirit , and would be seen for hours gazing through his prison bars toward the north , the hunting grounds of his people . The details of the story of his suicide are fairly well known , that he managed to crawl through a high window of the Huntsville facility and leap headfirst to his death on the bricks of the prison yard . While Satanta suffered in prison , Big Tree , returning to the reservation and accepting pacification , lived on in the sadness of a warrior in exile . He later became a Christian and eventually , a minister in the Baptist church . There were days he would proudly recount his cruel acts against the white man , although it is faithfully recorded that he always concluded those tales with the solumn note that God had forgiven him for those " hideous " acts . Satanta is buried near Satank ' s remains , ( which were finally gathered from the road by the army , on Colonel MacKenzie ' s order ) on Chief ' s Knoll , in the Fort Sill Cemetery , at Fort Sill , Oklahoma . Surviving his comrade Satanta by fifty years , Big Tree died in 1929 and he was one of the models for the Indian Head nickel . Fort Richardson , its purpose gone with the surrender of the Plains Tribes , was closed in 1876 .