s told by the president to speak
his mind without any reservation; to withhold nothing, but to truthfully
relate what his tribe had to complain of on the part of the whites.
The old rascal grew very pathetic as he warmed up to his subject. He
declared that he had no desire to kill the white settlers or emigrants
crossing the plains, but that those who came and lived on the land of
his tribe ruthlessly slaughtered the buffalo, allowing their carcasses
to rot on the prairie; killing them merely for the amusement it afforded
them, while the Indian only killed when necessity demanded. He also
stated that the white hunters set out fires, destroying the grass, and
causing the tribe's horses to starve to death as well as the buffalo;
that they cut down and otherwise destroyed the timber on the margins of
the streams, making large fires of it, while the Indian was satisfied to
cook his food with a few dry and dead limbs. "Only the other day," said
he, "I picked up a little switch on the Trail, and it made my heart
bleed to think that so small a green branch, ruthlessly torn out of the
ground and thoughtlessly destroyed by some white man, would in time have
grown into a stately tree for the use and benefit of my children and
grandchildren."

After the pow-wow had ended, and Satanta had got a few drinks of red
liquor into him, his real, savage nature asserted itself, and he said to
the interpreter at the settler's store: "Now didn't I give it to those
white men who came from the Great Father? Didn't I do it in fine style?
Why, I drew tears from their eyes! The switch I saw on the Trail made my
heart glad instead of sad; for I new there was a tenderfoot ahead of me,
because an old plainsman or hunter would never have carried anything
but a good quirt or a pair of spurs. So I said to my warriors, 'Come on,
boys; we've got him!' and when we came in sight, after we had followed
him closely on the dead run, he threw away his rifle and held tightly on
to his hat for fear he should lose it!"

Another time when Satanta had remained at Fort Dodge for a very long
period and had worn out his welcome, so that no one would give him
anything to drink, he went to the quarters of his old friend, Bill
Bennett, the overland stage agent, and begged him to give him some
liquor. Bill was mixing a bottle of medicine to drench a sick mule. The
moment he set the bottle down to do something else, Satanta seized it
off the ground and drank most of the li