DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, about a mile and a half east of where you're sitting right now, something happened on May 18, 1871, that rippled all the way to courtrooms and governors' offices and newspapers across this nation. So settle in.
A wagon train — twelve wagons, owned by a man named Captain Henry Warren, who contracted supplies to U.S. forts out here on the frontier — was moving through this stretch of Young County. Twelve wagons. Just doing the work of keeping forts stocked in a region that was, to put it plainly, contested ground.
What came next was swift and brutal. Kiowas and Comanches from the Fort Sill Reservation, over in what is now Oklahoma, attacked that train. Seven teamsters were killed.
Seven men who'd set out that morning to haul supplies and never made it to the other side of the day. Now here's where the story takes a turn that nobody out on that road could have predicted. The chiefs who led the raid were soon arrested.
One of them, Satank, committed suicide. But two others faced something this frontier had not quite seen before — a nationally spotlighted trial, held up in Jacksboro. And at that trial, a chief named Satanta did something that stopped people cold.
He spoke. With great eloquence, the marker says — and those aren't words a legal record throws around lightly — he spoke on behalf of his people. Whatever you make of the events that led to that courtroom, the man commanded attention in it.
The court handed down death sentences. But Texas Governor E. J.
Davis later commuted them. Seven teamsters lost on a dirt road in Young County. A trial that caught the eye of a whole nation.
And a chief who found, in a Jacksboro courtroom, words worthy of the moment. The land out here holds all of it — and it doesn't let you drive past without knowing.
What the marker says
(1.5 mi. E), On May 18,1871, Kiowas and Comanches from the Fort Sill Reservation, in present Oklahoma, attacked a train of 12 wagons owned by Capt. Henry Warren, a contractor of supplies for U.S. forts in this frontier region. Seven teamsters were killed. The chiefs who led the raid were soon arrested, and Satank committed suicide. In a nationally spotlighted trial at Jacksboro, Satanta spoke with great eloquence on behalf of his people. Texas' Governor, E. J. Davis, later commuted the death sentences given by the court. (1977)