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Botalye rode alone against the soldiers’ position four times in a row.

For four days after attacking a U.S. Army supply train at Gageby Creek in the Staked Plains of Texas, a Kiowa and Comanche war party had exchanged fire with the soldiers defending their circled-up wagons. Now, on September 12, 1874, the Indians learned a relief column was on the way. Many would ride off over the next few days, but a few warriors decided to ride directly at the entrenched soldiers and test their firepower. When one of the latter, Set-maunte, mounted his horse, his brother snatched off his war bonnet, saying it was too dangerous. Another experienced warrior,Yellow Wolf, was similarly dissuaded by one of his own relatives.

Young Botalye then threw off his scarlet blanket, tied a white sheet around his waist and leaped onto his pony. “Friend, they stopped you,” he told Yellow Wolf. “But I’m going. I’m going to see how much power they have.” His friend Paikee-te galloped downslope with Botalye but soon turned back. Botalye kept going. Still a teenager and not a full-blooded Kiowa, this was his first taste of battle, and he had much to prove.

Born around 1857, Botalye was the son of a warrior of Poor Buffalo’s Kiowa band and a captive Mexican woman. Both parents were dead by the time the Red River War broke out in June 1874, and Botalye, 17, was under the care of his uncle, Maman-ti, a highly regarded war chief and do-ha-te (medicine man).

That summer Lt. Gen. Philip Sheridan, working with Brig. Gens. Christopher Columbus Augur and John Pope, devised a strategy to separate renegades from those Comanches, Kiowas, Southern Cheyennes, Arapahos and Plains Apaches who agreed to keep to their reservations in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) east of Fort Sill. Indians who did not report to their agencies by August 3 would be deemed hostile. In a multipronged campaign, columns from Forts Concho and Griffin in Texas, Fort Union in New Mexico Territory, Fort Dodge in Kansas and Fort Sill were to converge on the hostiles and corral them in the Texas Panhandle.

The Fort Dodge column, under Colonel Nelson A. Miles, headed south on August 11, and on August 30 its scouting force repulsed 200 Cheyennes. Miles’ force pursued the attackers 12 miles up the Tule Canyon onto the Staked Plains before it halted with low supplies. Loath to withdraw while the other columns were advancing, Miles sent back 36 empty wagons—under the command of 6th Cavalry Captain Wyllys Lyman and escorted by 20 cavalrymen and 100 men of Company I, 5th Infantry—for supplies. Lyman’s wagon train rendezvoused with a supply train at Commission Creek (present-day Ellis County, Oklahoma), transferred cargo into the empty wagons and started back to rejoin Miles.

In the meantime Miles had learned of 200 Indians camped to his rear and grew concerned over the fate of Lyman’s wagon train. There was reason to worry. On August 22 several Comanche and Kiowa war bands had tried to report to the Anadarko Indian Agency, only to be told they had missed the deadline and would be regarded as prisoners of war. That incident sparked a two-day melee with buffalo soldiers of the 10th Cavalry, after which the Indians, including Lone Wolf, Satanta, Big Tree and Maman-ti, fled to seek the main body of warriors. Their route unwittingly cut off Miles from his supply lines and put them on a collision course with Lyman.

Miles dispatched Lieutenant Frank D. Baldwin and three scouts to contact Lyman’s train. During their ride the quartet dodged several Indian encampments and re-captured a white captive of the Kiowas—a boy Maman-ti had adopted and called “Tehan,” in reference to Texas, his place of capture. Tehan was Botalye’s foster cousin. Finding the supply train, Baldwin turned over Tehan to Lyman before moving on with his scouts to Camp Supply.

On September 8 Botalye, who was searching for Tehan, and two other Kiowas spotted Lyman’s wagon train south of the Upper Washita River. “The next hill was grassy and had a few low mesquite trees on top,” Botalye later said. “We could see from there without being seen. It was lucky for us that this was so, for there in front of us, about a mile and a half away, was a line of wagons guarded by soldiers! There were 20 or 30 white-topped wagons, each drawn by four mules, coming slowly in single file, preceded by 10 to 15 cavalrymen spread out ahead. About 25 walk-soldiers were marching in a single file on either side of the wagons. In the morning light we could plainly see the blue of their uniforms.” While his companions maintained watch on the enemy, Botalye brought the news to his war band.

At about 8 a.m. on September 9, Kiowa scouts fired on the wagon train from long range. While Lyman’s cavalry skirmished with the mounted braves, the wagons kept rolling for about 12 miles until reaching Gageby Creek, at about 2 p.m. As the train approached the crossing, some 250 Indians rushed it from all directions. At that point Lyman corralled the wagons, making a tight defensive formation. The Kiowas killed an infantry sergeant and wounded a lieutenant in the initial attack. They also mortally wounded a civilian teamster as the man carried ammunition to the troops. The Indians then settled down for a siege.

Over the next few days 28-year-old Prussian-born 5th Infantry Sergeant William Koelpin rose to the occasion. “Sergeant Koelpin, who was in charge of the infantry, took a detachment of 14 men and left the corral and took up a position on a knoll to the southeast of the corral about 50 yards away,” Lyman later wrote. “From there he engaged the hostiles on the ridges at ranges from 300 to 600 yards away. His occupation of the knoll prevented the Indians from using it against the corral and kept the Indians from closing to a more effective range. The long-range fighting lasted the entire day of the 9th, 10th and 11th, and several times Sergeant Koelpin was required to dash back to the corral to pick up ammunition and water for his men. During the night of the 9th several times the Indians attempted to close on both the corral and the knoll, only to be driven back by the accurate fire of the men.”

On the night of either September 10 or 11—there is a one-day discrepancy between the dates as recorded in Lyman’s report and Baldwin’s diary—Lyman dispatched scout William F. Schmalsle to report the wagon train’s plight to Camp Supply. In the meantime, Tehan, who had convinced the whites he was on their side, made a break to rejoin his people. “When Tehan came back that night,” a Kiowa account stated, “he had on a uniform, with a new pair of pants. He told us that the soldiers were starving for water, and that he was going to help us fight them.We told him that they were his own people and asked him what was the matter. Tehan replied that he liked to eat raw liver so well that he was going to stay with the Indians.”

By the fourth day of the siege many Indians left to protect their encampment. One who remained, Botalye, like Koelpin on the soldiers’ side, rose to the occasion—albeit with the ulterior motive of making a name for himself. Riding alone through the gunfire, Botalye closed on the wagon train until he could see the startled faces of the soldiers, then galloped up the far ridge. Cresting it, he tried to give a cry of triumph like a wild goose, though it came out sounding more like the yelp of a frightened puppy. Botalye then rode at the wagon train again, making it safely back to his starting point. Ignoring entreaties that he stop, he turned and made a third run. In the midst of that charge he flung himself over the side of the horse, as Kiowa and Comanche riders were trained to do. Bullets clipped two feathers close to his scalp lock, cut one stirrup and creased his horse’s neck. Another holed the knot in the sheet tied to his waist.

Botalye then wheeled about and completed a foolhardy fourth one-man charge. As the young rider vaulted from his pony, Satanta laughed and said, “If you hadn’t done it, I was going to whip you.” Then the war chief threw his arms around Botalye, remarking: “I couldn’t have made four runs myself. No one ever comes back the fourth time! Once or twice is enough. I’m glad you came back alive.”

Lone Wolf, Big Tree, To-hauson and other noted warriors also congratulated him, but the ultimate honor came from the leader of his own war band. “I’m going to give this young man a new name,” Poor Buffalo declared. “If any danger comes, we can depend on him! I name him Eadle-tau-hain.” It was a somewhat wry way of conferring full warrior status while acknowledging the rash valor that earned it, for the name translated to “He Would Not Listen.”

Lyman kept the wagons corralled until reinforcements arrived from Camp Supply early on September 14. The wagon train then resumed its journey and rejoined Miles on the Washita. Lyman had lost just two men killed, with at least three wounded. The Indians suffered perhaps a dozen casualties.

Hours after leaving the Lyman Wagon Train, Botalye/Eadle-tau-hain again showed his courage during a harassing attack on an 8th Cavalry detachment between Sweetwater Creek and Dry Fork of the Washita, making repeated passes at a mountain howitzer crew. He and his friend Little Owl made the last such charge before the Kiowas disengaged.

The Red River War continued until June 2, 1875, when Quanah Parker surrendered 407 Quahadi Comanches and west Texas was declared “pacified” and opened to white settlement. Congress awarded the Medal of Honor to Koelpin and 12 other soldiers in the siege.

Eadle-tau-hain, on the Indian side, was not eligible for the Medal of Honor for his bravery in the Battle of Lyman’s Wagon Train. But he did later join the Army. By 1892 the daring Kiowa had enlisted in the all-Indian Troop L of the 7th U.S. Cavalry at Fort Sill, serving primarily at Fort Grant, Arizona Territory, until the troop was disbanded on May 31, 1897. When he died in 1936, Eadle-tau-hain was buried, per his request, in the military cemetery at Fort Sill.

 

Originally published in the August 2011 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.