While the Kiowa might have regarded the sun shield as Satanta’s most important possession, among the whites his best-known trademark was the bugle that he blew to signal an attack or announce his presence. The Kiowa say he captured the bugle during a fight with federal troops after observing the soldiers responding to the different bugle calls. Although other Indians also carried bugles and signaled warriors with army calls during fights, whites linked it with Satanta and automatically assumed he was present if they heard a bugle during an Indian fight.

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The Civil War provided new opportunities for the Indians to expand their depredations with virtual impunity. With most soldiers withdrawn for fighting in the East, the frontier was more or less undefended, and they could raid at leisure. Texas, one of their traditional marauding grounds, was a particularly attractive target. Because Texas was a Confederate state, the North not only looked the other way but actively encouraged the raiding. According to ethnologist James Mooney, the Kiowa ‘distinctly stated that they had been told by military officers of the [federal] government to do all the damage they could to Texas, because Texas was at war with the United States.’

The year 1864 was one of the bloodiest in the history of the southern Plains. Satanta began by leading a raid into the vicinity of Menard, in west Texas, where he and his warriors killed several whites and carried off one woman into captivity. Then, he joined other Plains Indians in depredations in Colorado, for which Black Kettle’s friendly Cheyenne followers subsequently were made to suffer in the senseless Sand Creek Massacre.

One of the worst raids was in Young County, Texas, in October 1864. Although the Comanche Chief Little Buffalo led the war party, one of the captives later told her rescuers that a Kiowa chief called ‘Satine’ had blown a bugle to signal the others. There is little doubt this was Satanta. In a later raid he kidnapped several members of a Texas family named Box and, pleased with the ransom paid by the government, remarked that trafficking in white women was more profitable than horse stealing.

In 1867, raids by Satanta and others in the south, combined with the Red Cloud War in the north, prompted the government to try to negotiate treaties with the various Plains tribes. This was the second peace effort in two years. The earlier Treaty of the Little Arkansas, in which Satanta participated, had accomplished nothing. Now, once again, the federal commissioners met with the tribes, this time near Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas in October 1867.

The commissioners gathered at Fort Larned, where Satanta and several other chiefs met them and accompanied them the 80 miles to the conference site. During the council, Satanta commanded the attention of the news correspondents, including young Henry Morton Stanley, who would later gain fame as the greatest of all African explorers.

Satanta spoke often, at one point making a speech that later became required reading in American literature classes. He said: ‘I have heard that you intend to set apart a reservation near the mountains of [western Oklahoma]. I don’t want to settle; I love to roam over the prairie; I feel free and happy; but when we settle down we get pale and die….A long time ago this land belonged to our fathers; but when I go up to the [Arkansas] river I see camps of soldiers on its banks. The soldiers cut down my timber, they kill my buffalo; and when I see that my heart feels like bursting; I feel sorry.’

While his words may have impressed later generations, at the time they had little affect on the peace commissioners, who, according to Stanley, gave Satanta ‘a rather blank look.’ Nevertheless, in this and subsequent statements, the chief succeeded in discomfiting the commissioners about the government’s failure to live up to the obligations of past treaties. The fact that Satanta himself violated treaties when it suited him did not become a major issue. In the end, the Kiowa agreed to sign the treaty and accept the reservation Satanta found so objectionable. They also agreed to accept schools, annuities and supplies from the government and to shift from raiding to agriculture.

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