Cynthia Haseloff

When Kiowa war chief, Santana, boasted that he had led a war party against a wagon train of freighters, he set the stage for his arrest. The war party had robbed, tortured and mutilated members of the wagon train, and now the Kiowa chiefs were to be tried in a Texas court. The case seemed open and shut, but attorney Joe Woolfolk made it clear that the U.S. would have to prove its charge without using Santanas boastful self-incrimination.

Haseloff's characters embody the fundamental values--honor, duty, courage, and family--that prevailed on the American frontier and were instilled in the young Haseloff by her own "heroes," her mother and her grandmother. Her stories, in a sense, dramatize how these values endure when challenged by the adversities and cruelties of frontier existence. Her talent rests in her ability to tell a story with an economy of words and in the seemingly effortless...

In 1864 the frontier cavalry had been withdrawn to fight in the War Between the States, and the able-bodied men had enlisted to join the cause, leaving the families in the Brazos River valley very much on their own...and nearly defenseless. The Comanches and the Kiowas decided this was the perfect time to rid their land forever of the invaders who had threatened their very existence. The legendary Kiowa war chief Satanta personally led many of the...