"I'm givin' you all this preamble to give you a clear idee of the situation that led up to the killing of Peacock. There was a slight split among the Kiowas durin' this war, for ol' To hausen--Little Mountain--their head chief, with a few of the cool-headed older warriors of the tribe, had refused to join Satank an' the hostiles in makin' war on the whites, an' To hausen, with his little band, had kept out o' the way for fear of bein' mistaken by us for the hostiles. But the biggest part of the tribe, under the leadership of Satank an' Satanta an' Big Tree, was a-doin' their level best to wipe out every white man, woman, an' child on the plains. "Satank was the recognized leader of the hostiles an' was always very bitter in his hatred of the whites. "As our two commands, Sturgis's an' Sedgwick's, had kep' him on the jump purty lively durin' the summer, an' he'd got the worst of it all 'round, 'long in the last of August or fore part of September, I think it was, Satank seemed to conclude--as the time was soon coming when the Injun agent at Bent's Fort would be a-giving out the annuities that Uncle Sam sends out every fall to the peaceable Injuns--that he'd better make a treaty with Major Sedgwick for the winter, anyway, so's him an' his band could come in for their share of the presents. So he applied to Peacock for a letter of recommendation to Major Sedgwick, thinkin' that a letter from such a prominent trader would help him to make easy terms with Sedgwick. "'Well, sir, right there's where Peacock made the blunder of his life, an' it cost him his life, too. Peacock was a pretty smart man an' was acquainted with nearly every Kiowa in the tribe, an' it's hard to understand how he could be so foolish as to do the way he did. But Satank an' his band had made him a heap o' trouble durin' this last outbreak, an' now Peacock thought he saw a chance to even up with his old enemy. So, instead of writin' a letter to Sedgwick askin' mild treatment an' makin' excuses for Satank an' his scalpers, he wrote one reading something like this: MAJOR SEDGWICK, _Commanding Kiowa Expedition_: The bearer of this is Satank, the leader of the hostile Kiowas and the instigator of all, and the actual perpetrator of many of the atrocious murders and outrages that have been committed on innocent men, women, and children on the plains during this last outbreak. He is, by long odds, the worst Indian on the plains, and you can't do the country a greater service than to kill him on sight. (Signed) PEACOCK.