Bad Medicine

In the spring of 1874, medicine man Isa-tai (translates as “Wolf’s Vulva”) convinced 250 Kiowas, Commanches and Southern Cheyenne that White Man bullets could not touch them. Led by Quanah Parker, the raiders, including Isa-tai riding naked except for a cap of sage stems, attacked 28 buffalo hunters at a remote Texas camp called Adobe Walls. At least 25 of the attackers discovered they were not impervious to White Man bullets and one of them was shot off his horse at a distance of 1,530 yards by Billy Dixon, shouldering a Sharps “Big Fifty” buffalo gun. At just under a mile, it is considered the longest kill shot in the history of the West.