In May 1871 Satanta, a senior war chief at the height of his power among the Kiowas, led a party of more than 100 braves into the north Texas plains. With him were two other chiefs: Seventy-year-old Tsatangya, the most prestigious Kiowa chief, and twenty-two-year-old Big Tree, known for his daring in combat. As Satanta led his warriors toward a point on the Butterfield Trail, a small U.S. military party moved toward the same place. The leader of this group, General William Tecumseh Sherman, was there to determine whether the southwestern frontier was under any serious threat from Indian raiding. The night after General Sherman's party arrived at nearby Fort Richardson, a wounded civilian staggered into the fort. Indians had ambushed a supply train not twenty miles away, leaving seven men dead and several wounded. Sherman took charge of the pursuit of the Indians, who had vanished into the wilderness with tools, guns, and more than forty mules. The general's attitude toward the threat of Indian activity on the frontiers greatly changed during the spring of 1871: from that time he maintained a much more severe stance on the policies that should be used to control the Indians. And it was Sherman who would command the U.S. Army for the next dozen years - the period of the Indian Wars."