Chief Kicking Bird

Ft. Sill Post Cemetery
The grave of Kiowa Chief Kicking Bird is located behind the grave of Quanah Parker.



Kicking Bird, a Kiowa chief, was the grandson of a Crow Indian who was captured and adopted by the Kiowas, his adoption being due to his great bravery and wisdom in councils. The Indian name of Kicking Bird was Tene-angpote. On Aug. 15, 1865, he signed an agreement with representatives of the United States to accept a reservation near the present city of Wichita, Kan., and he was a party to the treaty which was made at Medicine Lodge on Oct. 21, 1867, fixing the boundaries of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation in the present State of Oklahoma. Then the government, in 1873, failed to carry out the agreement to release certain Kiowa chiefs then imprisoned in Texas, Kicking Bird lost faith in the United States and was preparing to join an expedition against the Tonkawa tribe and the white buffalo hunters when he found out that his rival chief, Lone Wolf, was about to join the hostile Indians to commit depredations upon the frontier settlements. He gave up his own expedition and induced about two-thirds of the Kiowa tribe to remain at the Fort Sill agency. In the negotiations which followed he was treated as the head chief of the tribe. Kicking Bird was a man of positive character and labored for the welfare of his people. He aided in the establishment of the first school among the Kiowas in 1873. His death occurred suddenly on May 5, 1875, and it was thought by some that he had been poisoned by some of his enemies. His name Kicking Bird was adopted as a pseudonym by Milton W. Reynolds, the Kansas writer.

Blackmar, Frank W. Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc. Standard Pub. Co. Chicago : 1912