Under the terms of the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty, the Southern Plains Indians (Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahos, and Southern Cheyenne) exchanged their homes in the buffalo-laden Plains for reservations in the Southwest Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). In return, the U. S. Government would provide rations, annuities, farming implements, and security from outlaws and unscrupulous merchants – everything needed to become sedentary farmers. In addition, the Indians were allowed to hunt buffalo outside the reservations, provided the herds were large enough. U. S. officials, however, provided very little, if any, from their side of the treaty. Bootleg whiskey traders, such as “Slippery Jack” Gallagher, peddled their wares within the reservations or from backcountry inns called “Whiskey Ranches.” Desperadoes stole horses from reservation corrals while buffalo hunters decimated the buffalo herds to the point of extinction. Hungry and their patience worn thin, many Indians began leaving the reservations during the early 1870’s for the Panhandle Plains in the East. The reservations, managed by peaceful, non-violent Quakers, could do little to pacify the hot-tempered Kiowas and Comanches. Instead, the Indians used the reservations for bases to conduct raids into North Texas and the Panhandle. The Indians traveled in small, fast-moving war parties that were almost impossible to chase down. Farms and ranches were raided for horses, cattle and, depending on their age - children. The scalped corpses of teamsters, surveyors and settlers littered the countryside. Because of the slaughter of the buffalo herds, buffalo hunters faced a gruesome death if caught by the Indians. Knowing what awaited them, the hunters carried vials of cyanide to be taken before capture.
General Phil Sheridan, who favored a scorched earth policy toward the recalcitrant Indians, planned an advance of five troop columns into the Texas Panhandle to corral them. On August 11, 1874, Colonel Nelson Miles led the column heading south from Fort Dodge, Kansas. To supply his troops, Miles depended on a remote U. S. Army post, in present-day Woodward County, Oklahoma, with the generic name of Camp Supply. So remote in fact, it later became the site of Oklahoma’s first insane asylum. Sheridan had established the post to supply his winter operations against the Southern Plains Indians in Texas and the Indian Territory. Dangerously over-extended in the drought-ridden Panhandle, Miles’ column needed water and provisions. From his camp at Sweetwater Creek in the Panhandle, he dispatched Captain Wyllys Lyman with a military escort and 36 empty supply wagons to rendezvous with an ox-drawn supply column from Camp Supply. On September 7, he met up with the train at Commission Creek – 48 miles from Camp Supply. After transferring the supplies to his wagons, he headed back with an additional 104 men that had accompanied the supply column. Sensing an ambush, Lyman assembled the wagons into a double column with fifty men per wagon marching on either side. At Oasis Creek, Lyman was met by Lt. Frank D. Baldwin, three army scouts, and a Kiowa prisoner on their way to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas carrying dispatches from General Miles. Curiously, their prisoner was not Kiowa, but a young red-haired White man dressed in Kiowa garb. According to the prisoner, he had been abducted by the Kiowas when he was a child. Given the name Tehan (Texan) by his captors, he was raised to be a warrior and had participated in several raids as a sort of warrior apprentice. Baldwin captured him before he could alert a nearby Kiowa camp he was guarding.
“What are you doing here?” He asked. “Are you living with the Indians?”
“Yes,” Tehan replied. “They treat me good.”
Whether it was from relief or protection from skeptical Whites, Tehan assumed the role of liberated captive rather than defiant Indian warrior. Feeling he might be useful to Miles, Baldwin left him with Lyman.
On September 9, 1874, the Kiowas discovered their warrior missing and set out after him. Along the way, they discovered Lyman’s wagons and the hapless Tehan among them. From a ridge, they took potshots at the wagons until forced away by a cavalry company escorting the train. After 12 miles, seventy mounted Kiowa warriors attacked the train about a mile from the Washita River. Lyman circled his wagons before being overrun - fighting them off until sundown. Trenches were dug during the night for additional protection. Water was obtained from a small pond or buffalo wallow 400 yards away. For four days, the Kiowas laid siege to Lyman’s wagons. A courier was dispatched to get help from Camp Supply. On September 10, Scout William F. Schmalsle rode out after dark through the Indian line toward Camp Supply. Hotly pursued, he steered his horse into a buffalo herd, causing them to bolt and block off his pursuers. The Kiowas also got help too - from Tehan; who turned on his captors and somehow managed to escape during all the commotion. Now wearing a White man’s uniform, Tehan told his fellow Kiowas to fortify the wallow against Lyman’s thirsty soldiers. Denied their water source, the soldiers opened cans of fruit in the wagons and drank the juice. After reaching Camp Supply two days later, Schmalsle obtained 58 cavalrymen before heading back to Lyman. They reached the train on September 14. With a larger cavalry force, Lyman was able to rejoin Miles. Thirteen of Lyman’s men received the Medal of Honor. Casualties included two men killed and three wounded.
By September 12, the siege started to fall apart; the Kiowas spotted a column of U. S. troops under Major William R. Price in the distant. They slowly began to drift from the scene. Among their leaders present at the siege were Lone Wolf, Satanta, Big Tree, Big Bow and the Kiowas influential shaman - Maman-ti or “Owl Prophet.” They decided to keep moving west to the Palo Duro region, but were discouraged by messages dispatched from fellow Kiowas living on the reservation to return or face annihilation. Thinking they would receive a more sympathetic ear from the troops stationed there, many of them headed east for the Arapahoe and Cheyenne reservation. Instead they were herded back to the Kiowa reservation, without their horses and with Satanta and Big Tree in chains. In violation of his parole for a previous raid, Satanta was sent back to Huntsville Penitentiary where he jumped to his death from an upper story window. The unreserved Kiowas, under Lone Wolf, made their way to Palo Duro Canyon until hunted down by U. S. troops under Captain Ranald S. Mackenzie .
No tangible records exist on the mysterious Tehan. According to Rev. J. J. Methvin, a missionary at the Wichita Agency, Tehan was killed by Big Bow in order to cover up his crimes during a raid into Texas. Big Bow, on the other hand, claimed Tehan died of thirst during a retreat from U. S. cavalrymen. Tehan’s foster sister, Red Dress, stated he went to live with the Comanche and later the Mescalero Apaches. Twenty years would pass before Tehan resurfaced, not as a Kiowa warrior, but as a somber Presbyterian minister from Buffalo, New York named Joseph K. Griffis. The good reverend claimed to be Tehan and that he had drifted east to learn more about the White man’s ways. He joined the Salvation Army, which set him on the path toward the ministry. Years later, Oklahoma journalists tried to investigate Tehan, but came up short as to his actual origin and whereabouts. The trail for answers ran cold.
After eight months of warfare, the Comanches and Kiowas were forced back on to the reservations. With the exception of a small herd saved by Texas cattle baron Charles Goodnight, the vast buffalo herds in the Texas Panhandle disappeared - to be replaced with cattle and wheatfields.
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