(From the Master's Thesis of Randi Nott, North Central College, Naperville, Illinois, Winter, 1997)

Medicine Man Esa-tai

In the spring of 1873 when the government was surveying the reservation lands, some of the Comanches feared that the land was about to be divided for settlement.  This led the Comanche to join the Kiowas in their annual Sun Dance.  They had not yet been broken but the time was ripe for a movement of Nativistic revivalism.  A medicine man named Esa-tai stepped forward with evidence of his strong powers, he "belched forth a wagonload of cartridges and swallowed them again" in the presence of several Comanche.  He also claimed that he had ascended to the clouds and spoke with the Great Spirit.  In their desperation the Comanche were willing to turn to him for the kind of leadership the established chief could not provide.1

In the spring of 1874 the medicine man announced that the Comanche should gather for a tribal Sun Dance. 

The Battle

Esa-tai had promised military success against the whites and the day after the Sun Dance, a large party of Comanche and Kiowa charged into the great Cheyenne camp which stood near by at the head of the Washita River.  Lead by Esa-tai and four war chiefs, one being Quanah Parker, the three tribes reenacted previously successful battles to ready themselves for their next battle.  The following day they rode off for Adobe Walls, an old trading post that was the center of operations for the encroaching buffalo hunters.   Adobe Walls was to be the starting point of the war of extermination of whites from the Comancheria.  Instead of surprising sleeping hunters at the break of dawn, the war party confronted a wide awake group of hunters armed with large, powerful and accurate buffalo-hunting rifles.  Protected by the thick adobe walls, the hunters were able to defeat the warriors.2  Esa-tai was discredited in the eyes of the Comanche.

Sources

1.