Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 1999
Document Type
Article
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 1999, pp. 56-57.
Abstract
Set-t' ainte, or "White Bear," whose name was Anglicized into Satanta, was one of the most feared Southern Plains warriors and raiders in the mid-nineteenth century. Robinson's biography of Satanta also remembered as the "Orator of the Plains"-grew out of the author's research into the history of Fort Richardson and the May 1871 killing of seven teamsters outside the nearby town of Jacksboro, Texas. White Bear and Big Tree, the two Kiowa warriors held responsible for the teamsters' deaths, were the first American Indian leaders to be tried in a civil court (State of Texas v. Satanta and Big Tree, 1871). Robinson concluded that White Bear was "a central figure in the history of the Southern Plains, deserving his own biography."
Like earlier White Bear biographers, such as Clarence Wharton (Satanta: The Great Chief of the Kiowas and His People, 1935), Robinson has consulted and referenced a number of primary and secondary sources to recreate events centered on his subject's life and tragic death. Wharton's book, however, is not footnoted and does not list a bibliography of sources; its only compelling feature derives from its author's having interviewed many of White Bear's contemporaries. A shorter account of White Bear by Donald Worcester appears in R. David Edmund's American Indian Leaders (1980). In comparison, Robinson has consulted more primary documents residing in various archival repositories, although his study does not really contribute any new biographical information.
The book's first two chapters are undoubtedly its weakest, a consequence of inaccurate ethnographic reporting. Robinson refers to James Mooney's Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians (1898) and Colonel Wilbur S. Nye's Carbine & Lance (1939), two of the most frequently cited works on the Kiowas of White Bear's time; however, he misinterprets some ethnographic data from the former and has ignored the other two works by Nye that would have added to his data base. In Robinson's defense, one must acknowledge that Mooney's seminal monograph, so chock-full of historic and ethnographic information, is difficult to wade through, although some errors could have been avoided by a more careful reading. For instance, Robinson alleges that the Kiowa Sun Dance was an annual affair, which is consistent with Mooney, although closer examination of the calendar reveals that Sun Dances were not held some years. Moreover, a Sun Dance, performed to renew the buffalo herds and the Kiowas, was conducted only if an influential male vowed to sponsor one. Had Robinson consulted Bernard Mishkin's Rank and Warfare among the Plains Indians (1940), or Jane Richardson's Law and Status among the Kiowa Indians (1940), he would not have confused the six "major bands" of the Sun Dance encampment with the ten to twenty "subbands" or topotoga. In addition, warriors did not acquire "merit by their proficiency with a scalping knife," but, as Mishkin points out, by counting coup or risking their lives during combat. Other ethnographic misinterpretations relate to Kiowa belief systems.
Comments
Copyright 1999 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln