For several years Satanta has filled the office of head chief. A peculiar dash of manner; a grin equal to all occasions; a remarkable shrewdness exhibited in managing affairs between the different tribes with which his people come in contact, or their intercourse with the national government, have won for him a prestige which he has very well maintained. Satanta, when I first met him, was a man of about fifty years of age. He rose first through prowess on the warpath, and afterward through skill in council and diplomacy. He had an intelligent face, and was large in frame and of muscular development, exhibiting also a tendency to obesity. Lately Satanta has found a threatening rival in Lone-wolf, the war chief of the tribe (_Keim, 3_). Three years later we get the following notice from one who saw him with Big-tree, in 1873, while serving his first incarceration in the Texas penitentiary: In the corridor of the penitentiary I saw a tall, finely-formed man, with bronzed complexion, and long, flowing, brown hair, a man princely in carriage, on whom even the prison garb seemed elegant, and was told that it was Satanta, the chief of the Kiowas, who with his brother chief, Big-tree, is held to account for murder. I was presently introduced to a venerable bigamist who was Satanta's chosen boon companion, on account of his smattering of Spanish, and through this anxious prisoner was presented at court. Satanta had come into the workroom, where he was popularly supposed to labor, but where he never performed a stroke of work, and had seated himself on a pile of oakum, with his hands folded across his massive chest [figure 150]. His fellow prisoner explained to Satanta, in Spanish, that we desired to converse with him, whereupon he rose and suddenly stretching out his hand gave mine a ponderous grasp, saying: "How!" He then responded, always through the aged wife-deceiver, to the few trivial questions I asked, and sat down, motioning to me to be seated with as much dignity and grace as though he were a monarch receiving a foreign ambassador. His face was good; there was a delicate curve of pain at the lips, which contrasted oddly with the strong Indian cast of his other features. Although he is much more than 60 years old, he hardly seemed 40, so erect, elastic, vigorous was he. When asked if he ever expected liberation, and what he would do if it should come, he responded, "Quien sabe?" with the most stoical indifference. Big-tree was briskly at work plaiting a chair seat in another apartment and chewing tobacco vigorously. His face was clear cut and handsome, his coal black hair swept his shoulders, and he only paused to brush it back and give us a swift glance as we entered, then briskly plaited as before (_Scribner, 1_).