Mochi's War

by Enss, Chris

  According to Catherine German’s memoirs, Mochi did not seem bothered at all when she saw Catherine and Sophia for the first time after being rescued. Medicine Water, on the other hand, “turned ashy color and seemed much frightened,” she wrote. “I recognized him at once as the husband of Big Squaw and one who had been active in the raiding band responsible for the death of our folks. The Colonel had the guards line up all the warriors in the camp as if for roll call and he led Sophia and me down that long line of Indians. I recognized but two of the seventeen Indians who were in the raiding band on September 11, 1874. Besides the arrested buck, I found his wife Big Squaw, and I was not sorry to see them take her prisoner, for as you know, she was never kind to us captive girls. She seemed to enjoy seeing the bucks tease or torment us.”[3]

  Catherine and Sophia described the many ways Mochi had been abusive. The Indian woman said nothing; there was no one present to offer a defense for her or the other seventy-five Cheyenne warriors charged with murder. One of the officers who oversaw the prisoners noted in the records he kept that “Mochi was so distinguished for fiend-like fierceness and atrocity that it was not deemed safe to leave her on the plains. She was a fine looking Indian woman but was as mean as they come.”[4]

  On April 6, 1875, Mochi, Medicine Water, and the other Cheyenne prisoners were paraded before the Darlington Agency blacksmith to be fitted with manacles. Once the metal bands were welded and in place around the Indians’ hands and feet, a length of chain was fastened to the irons. The captives’ movements were severely hampered. Those who struggled against being restrained were held in place at the point of a gun. The accused had not been tried in a court or been formally sentenced by a judge or jury. The United States military had been ordered to transport the detainees to a location in Florida, but the Indians did not fully understand what was happening.[5]

  Cheyenne women watching the scene sang songs in an attempt to persuade the prisoners to break free and to fight and die rather than be led away to an unknown land to merely exist. An Indian named Black Horse defied the soldiers and broke away from the group before he was shackled. Members of the tribe cheered his heroics and urged him on. Black Horse managed to leap onto a horse and ride toward the wooden gate surrounding the camp. Army troops leveled their guns at the Indian and a barrage of bullets struck him in the head and chest. He was dead when he fell off his mount and hit the ground. A stunned silence hung in the air for a brief moment before processing the prisoners resumed.[6]

  Humiliated and confused, the captives were loaded onto an eastbound train headed to a region the Indians would find inhospitable and unforgiving. Grey Beard, a Bowstring Society warrior who had fought with Mochi and Medicine Water, was determined never to reach the destination white leaders decided was fitting for all Indian renegades. In late May 1875, he jumped from the train as it was leaving a station in northern Texas. The May 26, 1875, edition of the Greencastle, Indiana, newspaper The Press described the daring attempt to escape. “Grey Beard, the most troublesome of the Indian prisoners leapt from the locomotive while it was running twenty-five miles an hour,” the report read. “The train stopped and the soldiers found him secreted in the bushes one hundred yards from the tracks. The troops fired on the Indian and a ball passed through his body above the waist. He expired as the train was leaving Sanderson about two hours after being shot.”[7]

  Another Bowstring Society member attempted suicide while en route to the Florida prison. According to the May 23, 1875, edition of the Athens, Tennessee, newspaper the Athens Post, “the Indian known as Lone Bear managed to get hold of a knife, with which he stabbed two soldiers and then himself,” the article noted. “It is reported that the soldiers are not seriously hurt. On the arrival of the train in the city of Nashville, Lone Bear was taken off and laid on the platform, wrapped in his blanket, and is supposed to be in dying condition.”[8]

  Lone Bear survived and was later transferred to the prison at Fort Marion. Being confined drove him mad, and three months after being locked away soldiers were urged to remove him from the premises. The August 5, 1875, edition of the Greencastle Banner reported that the “Indian became insane” and that “an application had been made to have him sent to a government insane asylum near New York.”[9]

  Mochi was lean and frail when she arrived at the gates of the Florida prison at the end of May 1875. She and Medicine Water were processed into the facility at the same time. Their records described their physical condition and the crimes for which they were being held:

  Medicine Water: Mi-huh-yeu-i-mup. Warrior. Age 40. Wt. 139 lbs. Ht. 5 ft. 7 ¼ in. Arrested at Cheyenne Agency, Indian Territory, March 5, 1875. Charge #1, willful and deliberate murder. Did kill or assist in killing a party of surveyors, white men, consisting of Captain Oliver F. Short and his son F.D. Short, James Shaw and his son, J. Allen Shaw and J.H. Renchler, residents of Lawrence, Kansas. Also Henry C. Jones. Charge #2, abduction, illegal detention, kidnapping. Did carry off or assist in carrying off Catherine, Sophia, Julianne, and Mary German, aged respectively, 17, 13, 7, and 5 ½ years. Held the first two as captives from September 11, 1874, until March 1, 1875.

  Interior of the Fort Marion prison where the Indian inmates would congregate daily.

  State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory

  Mochi: Woman. Age 34. Wt. 138 lbs. Ht. 5 ft. 6 ¾ in. Arrested at Cheyenne Agency, Indian Territory, March 5, 1875. Put an ax in head of Germain [sic] girl’s father.[10]

  Mochi and Medicine Water were led to a small tent that was to be their home for as long as they were interned at the prison. The Indians were served three meals a day which consisted of bacon, beef or tripe, potatoes, beans, molasses, rice, soup, and tropical fruit. Each was issued coffee, sugar, salt and pepper, and soap.[11]

  Every other day, armed guards escorted the prisoners to the beach to supervise the Indians as they bathed. Everything the Indians did, from eating to sleeping and all activities in between, was supervised. Mochi and many other Indians on site had difficulty adjusting to the constant surveillance and their surroundings. Some followed Lone Bear’s example and tried to kill themselves. They cut their throats, starved themselves, or hurled themselves off the stone walls of the prison onto the rocks lining the sea. The dead were given non-Indian burials. Their bodies were placed in pine boxes along with all their belongings and buried in a graveyard in the southeast corner of the grounds.[12]

  Illness was a continual problem for the Indians. Heat exhaustion and gastro-intestinal ailments were the most common complaints. It wasn’t until the inmates were ordered to clean the algae-stained walls and ceilings of their cells and re-canvas their moldy tents that the Indians’ physical health somewhat improved. Nothing could be done to help those suffering from severe homesickness, however, until a spokesman for the captives petitioned the federal government to allow their families living on reservations to come and stay with them. On July 22, 1875, Secretary of War William Belknap agreed to the request with the stipulation that there would be “one wife to one Indian and no children over the age of twelve.”[13]

  Cheyenne leaders at the Darlington Agency were unenthusiastic about the idea of sending for tribespeople from their homeland. They did not trust the government to see their people to Florida safely and respectfully and had serious doubts that anyone would be returned to the reservation when the prisoners’ time had reached an end. Cheyenne chiefs ultimately refused the removal of any more tribal members.[14] On August 9, 1875, President Grant revoked the order to send the families.[15]

  Mochi’s long, dark hair was cut short, as was the hair of all the Indians in her husband’s band. Their native clothing was replaced with uniforms: forage caps, blouses, trousers, knit shirts, and shoes. They were made to learn to read and speak English.[16] The transition from life on the plains to life in prison was impossible for Bowstring Society members like Big Moccasin, who killed himself in early November 1875. The Indian warrior was suffering from a deadly fever accompanied with nausea and vomiting.
He initially refused treatment but was later made to take medicine the doctor at the facility prescribed. He showed signs of improvement, but again his fever spiked and he had trouble breathing. The physician examined him and discovered that Big Moccasin was suffering from “incontinence of urine” brought on from a swelling in the genitalia. The Indian had tied his genitalia together with a leather cord, and, as a result, the organ had swollen and urine was not allowed to pass. The Indian was given a stimulant to revive his health, but it didn’t work. He died on November 4, 1875, and the cause of death was listed as suicide.[17]

  Military officers in charge of the conditions at the prison continually tried to make the Indians adapt to the non-Indian world. Many inmates committed to learning all they could from the various classes offered at the facility. Whether it was math, reading, or agricultural courses, there were Indians who wanted to be educated. According to records maintained by Lieutenant Richard Pratt, a superintendent at the prison, former Dog Soldier Making Medicine believed education was “necessary for the social and economic improvement of his people.”[18]

  Making Medicine is reported to have told Lieutenant Pratt:

  I have led a bad life on the plains, wandering around living in a house made of skins. I have now learned something about the Great Spirit’s road and want to learn more. We want Washington to give us our wives and children, our fathers and mothers, and send us somewhere we can settle down and live like a white man. Washington has lots of good ground lying around loose, give us some of it and let us learn to make things grow. We want to farm the ground. We want a house and pigs and chickens and cows. We feel happy to have learned so much that we can teach our children.[19]

  Not everyone felt as Making Medicine did. Some Indians, including Mochi, resisted attempts to change. They refused to renounce their tribal ways of life and conform to the idea that the Indians should seek education and employment among those Americans who preferred them to be gone.[20]

  Superintendent Pratt’s efforts to “civilize the Indians” were a curiosity to many prominent educators, and some visited the prison to see the effectiveness of the program. Among those who came to Fort Marion was Dr. M. B. Anderson, the president of Rochester University, Presbyterian pastor and teacher J. D. Wells of Brooklyn, New York, and author Harriet Beecher Stowe.[21] All were generally impressed with what author K. Johnstone referred to as “Pratt’s ability to transform savages into citizens.”[22]

  According to the January 25, 1877, edition of the Athens Messenger, Stowe observed the Indians dressed in United States uniforms as “neat, compact, trim, with well-brushed boots, and nicely kept clothing and books in their hands.” She remarked that they were a “strong, thoughtful sensible race. There wasn’t a listless face or wandering eye in the whole class.” Stowe attended church with the Indians. She listened intently when the congregation knelt and bowed their heads to pray. Although she could not understand the words they were saying, she believed “a succession of moans communicated the wrongs, the cruelties, the injustice which had followed these children, driving them to wrong and cruelty in return.”[23]

  Stowe also toured the “great kitchen” of the prison, and it was there she saw Mochi, the “woman warrior” she’d heard about. Mochi was busy making a “great caldron of savory soup.” “She stood over a stove stirring the boiling pot of meat and vegetables until they were ready to be served. She then set out dishes with meat and bread.” Stowe remarked that the meal was a “pleasanter style of diet,” but it was obvious from Mochi’s stoic expression that she preferred “eating the hearts of enemies.” She was defiant and resented being made to do work deemed suitable for women prisoners to do; she still saw herself as a warrior. Mochi also resented influential visitors who came to the prison to study the tribes.[24]

  Learning to read gave the Indians the ability to learn the government’s plans regarding their future. The October 30, 1875, edition of the Indianapolis Journal contained an article about the Committee on Indian Affairs and its mission for the Indians. “Our objective is to take the subject out of the dark, undisciplined, superstitious life into a civilized and Christian culture,” the report noted. “It is work that must look well into the natural mind and heart and see clearly what we desire them to be and to believe.”[25]

  In addition to reading about the United States’ plans for the Native Americans, the Indians read about military officers they had encountered when they were living on the plains. Newspapers made available to them by merchants and tourists from the nearby town of St. Augustine contained information about Colonel Nelson Miles, General George Custer, and Colonel John Chivington. Many Indians were unhappy that Chivington, as well as the other men who fought alongside him at Sand Creek, were free men.[26]

  Chivington’s life off the battlefield was as controversial as when he served with the First Colorado Volunteers. Not only had he been physically abusive to his wives but on two occasions had also been suspected of burning down the homes where he and his family lived in order to collect the insurance on the property. In spite of his dubious and immoral past, he sought and gained the Republican Party’s nomination for the Ohio State Legislature in 1883. What happened at Sand Creek proved to be impossible for Chivington to overcome. His opponent made his inhumane behavior more than nineteen years earlier a major issue in the election.[27]

  The political tactics were particularly effective in Clinton County, Ohio, where Chivington was a resident. A large number of Quakers lived in the area. Not only did they object to war in all forms but they also considered themselves the special guardians of the Indians. Voters voiced their opinions about the scandal-ridden parson-turned-business-owner in newspapers throughout Ohio. According to the August 24, 1883, edition of the Lebanon Patriot, Chivington was accused of campaigning with “the Gospel in one hand and a flaming Indian sword in the other.”[28]

  An unsigned letter in the August 17, 1883, edition of the Clinton County Democrat was equally condemning:

  Chivington is patronizing, oily-tongued, and understands to perfection the art of dissembling. Hypocrisy and deceit are distinguished characteristics of his being. Virtue and honor are strangers to his moral character. Under the cloak of religion he seeks to hide the deformity of his moral nature. While professing better things, and falsely claiming to be a laborer in the Master’s vineyard, he has dishonored religion by committing deeds which, when brought under the searching influence of the moral horoscope, stand out, so conspicuously as dark and damning blotches, that make him unfit to represent a people celebrated for integrity, prosperity, and honor.[29]

  Plains Indian prisoners gather in front of the chapel for a photograph at the northeast corner of the prison, circa 1867.

  State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory

  Richard Henry Pratt was the founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, PA. He was the superintendent of education at Fort Marion prison during Mochi’s stay there.

  Library of Congress LC-USZ62-26798

  Chivington was asked by the nominating committee to withdraw from the race. He reluctantly did so but cited as the reason an unscrupulous opponent who was spreading rumors about him. An article in the October 8, 1883, edition of the Daily Denver Times quotes Chivington as saying, “One end of our country is settled very largely by Quakers, and when this story was brought out against me, it hurt me with them, for it seems as if they would prefer to vote for the incarnate fiend rather than for a man who had in any way hurt their peculiar pets, the Indians.”[30]

  Although Chivington had decided never again to run for public office, he continued to accept requests for public speaking. One such invitation came in mid-September 1883. The occasion was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the settlement of Colorado. Many distinguished leaders who played a part in settling the region were on hand to welcome the controversial man.[31]

  When Chivington arrived at the reception, he was greeted with a round of applause and enthusiastic cheers. In addition to the supporters w
ere a number of people who thought of Chivington as a “butcher.” He made no apologies to the critics in the audience. “But were not these Indians peaceable?” He sarcastically asked the captivated crowd somewhere in the middle of his speech. “Oh, yes, peaceable! Well a few hundred of them have been peaceable for almost nineteen years, and none of them has been so troublesome as they were before Sand Creek.” He continued:

  What are the facts? How about the treaty that Governor John Evans did not make with them in the summer of 1864. He, with the usual corps of attaches, under escort, went out to meet the Kiowa. When he got there they had done a day’s march further out on the plains and would meet him there, and so on day after day they moved out as he approached, until wearied and suspicious of treachery, he returned without succeeding in his mission of peace.[32]

  He told them by message that he had a present for them, but it was not peace they wanted but war and plunder. What of the trains captured? Of supplies and wagons burned and carried off and killed? Aye, what of the scalps of white men, women, and children, several of which they had not time to dry and tan since taking. These, all these and more were taken from the belts of the dead warriors on the battlefield of Sand Creek, and from their tepees which fell into our hands.[33]

  What of the Indian blanket that was captured fringed with white women’s scalps? What say the sleeping dust of the . . . men, women, children, ranchers, emigrants, herders, and soldiers who lost their lives at the hands of these Indians? Peaceable? Now we are peaceably disposed, but decline giving such testimonials of our peaceful proclivities, and I say here, as I said in my home town in the Quaker County of Clinton, Ohio, in a speech one night last week, “I stand by Sand Creek.”