The official report for the year thus notices the encounter:
A war party of Osages, Kioways, and Kaws, consisting of about four hundred warriors, went in pursuit of the Pawnees while out on their last hunt. They overtook the Pawnees and attacked them, but, being greatly outnumbered by the Pawnees, they ingloriously fled, leaving on the ground one war chief killed, and having killed and scalped one Pawnee woman (_Report, 81_).
[Illustration: FIG. 111--Winter 1852-53--Gúadal-tséyu stolen.]
The Pawnee boy captured by Set-ängya in the summer of 1851 escaped, taking with him two horses, including the finest one in the tribe, a bay race horse known as _Gúadal-tséyu_, "Little-red" or "Red-pet." The figure above the winter mark shows the Pawnee boy, distinguished by the peculiar headdress of his tribe, holding the bay (red) horse by the halter. The importance of the horse to the equestrian Kiowa is shown by the fact that this is recorded as the important event of the winter.
[Illustration: FIG. 112--Summer 1853--Showery sun dance.]
_Bíasot K`ádó_, "Showery sun dance," so called because there were continual showers during the dance. The figure above the medicine lodge is intended to represent the drizzling rain descending from the black clouds overhead, with occasional red flashes of lightning. Compare the corresponding rain and cloud symbols given below. The dance was held at the same place where the "dusty" sun dance was celebrated in 1851, near the present Fort Supply.
This sun dance is distinguished for a deliberate violation of the _taíme_ rules by Ten-píäk`ia, "Heart-eater," a noted warrior and medicine-man, rival of Ansó`te, the _taíme_ keeper, and father of Set-t'an, the author of this calendar. One of the strictest regulations of the sun dance was the taboo against mirrors, which form part of the toilet equipment of nearly every Indian, but which must not even be brought near the _taíme_ of the Kiowa. Notwithstanding this, Tenpíäk`ia, in defiance of the medicine and its priest, deliberately rode around inside the circle with a small mirror while the _taíme_ was exposed, and afterward tried to poison Ansó`te by scraping off the mercury from the back and mixing it with some tobacco which he gave to the priest to smoke. Ansó`te took one puff, but detecting something wrong, put away the pipe, saying, "There is something there of which I am afraid." Soon afterward Ten-píäk`ia, while hunting buffalo, was thrown from his horse and killed, which was regarded as a speedy punishment of his sacrilege.