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Post by Dietmar on Jun 5, 2008 14:08:14 GMT -5
There are some discrepancies in the acounts about Chief Stone Calf. Some newspapers name him a cruel and brutal raider and murderer of the German (Germaine) family, some others state he was opposing the raids of young warriors. Interestingly even the descendants of the surviving German family members state that Medicine Water (who later went to prison at Ft. Marion) was responsible for the raid and Stone Calf opposed to the raiders. New York Times 1885:CANTONMENT, Indian Territory, Nov. 12. --The noted and cruel Cheyenne chief, Stone Calf, died yesterday at his camp near here of spinal meningitis. Stone Calf was widely known and influential with the tribe of which he was principal chief. query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A05E4DC1E3EEF33A25750C1A9679D94649FD7CF&oref=sloginGerman Family Reunion/Cheyenne Peace Ceremonialwww.pan-tex.net/EloiseLane/_27/_27.html On September 9, 1990, an unusual event occurred at a site six miles west and two miles north of Russell Springs in Logan County, Kansas. This was a reunion of descendants of John and Liddia German and descendants of Medicine Water and Calf Woman whose destinies met at this site on September 11, 1874. On that date five members of the German family were massacred by a band of 15 Cheyenne braves and two squaws. (...) On September 10, 1874, the German family met two men who said that they were only a day's journey from Fort Wallace, Kansas. Happy at the thought that they would soon be with white people again, they camped together for the last time. Early the next morning, as German and his family were leaving the campsite, they were attacked by 15 Cheyenne braves and two squaws. The Cheyennes were led by Medicine Water and Calf Woman who killed John German with her hatchet. The mother, Liddia (Cox) German, Rebecca Jane (20), Stephen (19) and Joanna (15) were killed and the five victims were scalped. The survivors were Catherine (17), Sophia (12), Julia (7) and Adelaide (5). (The story of the German family is told in Girl Captives of the Cheyennes, written in 1927 by Grace E. Meredith, a niece of Catherine.) About three weeks after the massacre, the five scalped bodies were found and buried by a detachment of soldiers from Fort Wallace. Near the burned wagon the soldiers found the unscorched German family Bible containing the names and ages of the nine members of John German's family. Since only five bodies were at the site, the soldiers concluded that the remaining four girls were captives, and an intensive search for the Indians was begun. The Indians, who knew that they were being persued, headed south into Indian Territory. They traveled only by night, spoke in whispers at all times and took little time to eat during the daylight hours. Thinking that they could more easily escape the soldiers, they broke into small bands. After about two weeks, Julia and Adelaide, who were with Grey Beard's band, were abandoned on the prairie and left to fare for themselves. They wandered until they found a wagon trail which they followed to a creek where soldiers had camped. They found some old hard-tack, corn and meat scraps. With these leavings, wild grapes, hackberries and young blades of grass, Julia and Adelaide kept alive. Meanwhile, the Indians with Catherine and Sophia arrived at the main camp of Stone Calf, a Cheyenne chief who opposed Indian raids on white people. This camp was composed of about 300 lodges on the Staked Plains, probably somewhere in northeastern New Mexico. Catherine and Sophia were separated and forced to do the work of Indian women. They gathered firewood, sewed shirts and dresses with bone needles and thread of buffalo sinew, and cooked food. Word reached Stone Calf that the U.S. Military was demanding the return of the four girls. At once he gave orders to find the two younger girls left on the prairie. On November 7, 1874, a party of about 200 Cheyennes located Julia and Adelaide in the makeshift camp by the creek. (This was on the T.D. Hobart ranch on the Washita in Hemphill County.) Julia and Adelaide were taken to Grey Beard's camp on McClellan Creek, the site which has been located and researched by Gray County Commissioner Gerald Wright and Stan and Margie Anthony of Groom. Early the next morning, November 8, 1874, Grey Beard's camp was charged in a surprise attack by Lt. Frank D. Baldwin. Catherine and Sophia, who were at the camp, were hastily sent off with an advance guard while Julia and Adelaide were left behind. Half-starved and dressed in rags, they were under some buffalo robes when the soldiers found them. They were taken to Camp Supply and then to Fort - Leavenworth, Kansas. Catherine and Sophia were released from the Indians at the Cheyenne Agency, Indian Territory, on March 2, 1875. They were united with Julia and Adelaide and placed under the guardianship of Colonel (later General) Nelson A. Miles. When Miles received another assignment, the girls lived for a time with the Patrick Corney family in Seneca County, Kansas. The U.S. government appropriated money for the education and maintenance of the girls. Their grandfathers, Thomas German and William Cox, wanted them to return to Georgia, but Catherine decided that their opportunities for the future would be greater if they remained in Kansas. The girls were asked to identify the Indians who had mistreated them. On April 25, 1875, Medicine Water, Calf Woman and 31 others were transported as prisoners of war, without benefit of trial or legal defense. During the six weeks travel to Fort Marion, Florida, Medicine Water and Calf Woman were in chains and shackles. They were returned to Fort Leavenworth in 1878. Calf Woman died in 1882, and Medicine Water, who became a freighter for the government, died in 1925 at the age of 90. |
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Post by Gary on Jun 5, 2008 15:13:21 GMT -5
This is an interview with the late John Sipes who was the great grandson of Medicine Water. Medicine Water led the attack in which the German sisters were captured.
Interview with John Sipes, Jr.
Norman, Oklahoma • November, 1996
John is the great-grandson of Mochis, a survivor of Sand Creek and later a female Cheyenne warrior. Medicine Water was her second husband, they married after losing both of their families at the massacre. they fought against the whites on the plains for years following the massacre until they were captured and sent to prison in Florida.
Mochis is my great, great grandmother. She was born in 1844, Yellowstone country, Wyoming. She was 20 years old at Sand Creek. And that's when she lost all her family and she was already married at that time. And she lost her husband. The Old Ones say, I have to go back and think here for a second. Being at that age, she picked up a rifle that her father had. The Old Ones say that he saved a couple of trappers from dying of the cold, the snow, and starvation, oh, two or three winters before that. How long she carried the rifle, I, no one knows any more. But she used that rifle to ride with her new husband, Medicine Water. I do know she rode all the 12 years with him and stayed with him, and was able to raise a family, to hold a family structure together. These stories that the Old Ones tell me, it's kind of unique that she was able to play all these roles: mother, keeper of the lodge, able to cook and feed, and, then if it came time to fight, she went to fight. And the Old Ones say that she probably had, and I'd have to agree, she probably had her own feelings of maybe never coming back but she had the commitment after Sand Creek to do all this. She knew of no other way to handle losing all her family, but to fight back, the Old Ones said.
She knew that such destruction at Sand Creek was totally uncalled for. There was no need for the soldiers to have done the things they did to the people. [After Sand Creek] she attacked the Germann family up there in Kansas, going across the plains out of Fort Wallace. She picked up an axe and she put it into John Germann's head and that's what she was charged with. But at the time, the Old Ones say, she probably saw no kind of difference in the swords being used on the Cheyenne and her family at Sand Creek. The way they cut up and they mutilated their bodies at Sand Creek. And that probably was still on her mind, the way that occurred at Sand Creek. And that was time of war, I mean, and people die in war and she was at war. She declared war along with all the other members of the family.
Medicine Water wasn't a headsman. He was just a warrior up until they were charged and sent to Fort Marion. But that time frame, during Sand Creek and shortly after, the Old Ones say that part of the extended kinship of the family, went back to the Smoky Hill River area with the Dog Soldiers where the [Sacred] Arrows were during Sand Creek. They say Smoky Hill, basically when the Cheyenne say the Smoky Hill River, it could be the Republican [River], on the Saline [River], that whole part of the country, that little strip of Kansas, they considered Dog Soldier country. That's where basically they ended up.
The old stories I hear from the old folks say that she [Mochis] owned a war horse, as a warrior. She was a warrior. And she learned to ride very, very young like all Cheyenne do. It's always amazed me how she was able to ride such great distances and be able still to maintain and fight. Her stamina and will to be able to ride and fight for the people is just amazing. And the old folks always say her abilities to go long, long, long ways on a horse was just amazing to the family themselves even to the elders that I have talked to. They shake their heads and they say she must have been well adapted to a horse.
Her true name is Mo-Ca, which in turn means, simply means Buffalo Calf Woman. The Cheyenne had a prophet named Sweet Medicine. and his wife was named Calf Woman. And so the old folks say that was how they came about to name her was when they went to the sacred mountain and they brought out the Sacred Arrows to the Cheyenne, she was part of one of the holy persons involved. That's how they say that she got her name. And she kept that name all through her life, it never did change. Some of the warriors, most of the Cheyenne warriors, they had another name given to them after they became, shall we say, today we would say if you are a veteran. But she kept that name all through her life.
I do know the war party she was a part of which was the one up in the Smoky River, they rode non-stop to the Staked Plains which is a good 400 miles, approximately. The unique thing about it is they rode by night, slept during the day because the soldiers were after them. And I've always wondered to myself, all this they were fighting, skirmishing the soldiers, yet, she had the stamina to ride and ride and ride and keep fighting. She was not a big lady. She was about 5'4" and weighed about 140, so she had to be real agile to stay on a horse, to stay in the saddle for that long period of time.
The Staked Plains is located in the panhandle of Texas. The Cheyenne used to roam through nomadically early on and there's a place in the northeastern part of the panhandle of present day Texas where they would get their flint to make their points. That's another reason they would go there. When they would go on to the buffalo hunt, the buffalo would range that far south during the cold winter months. They would stay there. Then after it'd start to come into spring and into the summer months, well, they would roam back north.
Well, the Old Ones say the village [at Sand Creek] was still sleeping. Of course, you know, some people may have been up. I would assume as the old folks tell me that some of the women would have been up, starting fires to start to cook. And they were under the impression that they were safe there. They were assured they were safe from Major Anthony at Fort Lyon. I have my own doubts that the soldiers that came into Sand Creek. They had to come from the south. We know they came from the south. They were moving, there were so many of them moving and it's like, how in the world didn't they hear noises and stuff. So there's a lot of unanswered things there that even the old folks talk about.
And the old folks always say even if they heard something, they probably didn't pay too much mind to it because of being told that they were going to be safe there. They may have thought that maybe it could have been maybe Major Anthony. He had assured them that as soon as he heard something, he would notify them of the things that they were wanting to know. See that's things that even the old folks can't answer. Yet, today, you hear people saying, you know, when they'll write books and they'll write a paper and they'll say, "this is exactly what happened here". Even the Cheyenne don't know exactly the details. But orally, the scene was, most of them were sleeping.
And the old folks say that by the time they found out what was really occurring, the soldiers were coming up Sand Creek. They were already in the bottom of Sand Creek. They had cut the horse herds off; of course, that was the main thing that they had to do. But there was still some young Cheyenne that did managed to get away on foot and maybe catch a couple of horses. But they just turned into such total chaos, confusion and they, the Old Ones say that the soldiers, they say that the massacre occurred eight to ten miles along the creek.
I've asked my old great aunts and I've asked my mother time and time again. The Cheyenne call Sand Creek, "Bo-no", in Cheyenne means dry creek, no water. The old folks say there was no water in there. There were pools of water only certain times of the year, when it would rain. And I've asked them, "is there any timber, was there any timber there?" They say there was no timber at Sand Creek. And then I ask them, do they know the exact site, and she goes, "at the Big Bend". I say, "the biggest bend they have in Sand Creek?" She says, "The Big Bend. How many Big Bends are at Sand Creek. There's only one bend, isn't there?"
In 1906, they asked George Bent, pardon me, Hyde asked George Bent to draw a map of Sand Creek. No, it was 1904. So he did and he sent to him. And some of the Cheyenne chiefs have seen this map. And they called him in and they told George Bent, "this isn't true. This isn't the way Sand Creek was laid out." so I asked the Old Ones about it. The Old Ones said, yeah, they recall a few stories where there was some confusion on the map drawing part of it. So in 1906, George Bent redrew a map. What he did, the old folks and the chiefs were upset. He put Left Hand's village in the center of the Cheyenne camps. And the Cheyenne never, never allowed any other tribe, Arapaho or otherwise, within the camp circle. That never occurred.
So I took it on my own to talk to as many elders as I could, looking at the old map that I got a copy of and not only did they say, "no!" They were offended that this map had been drawn. So I said, "OK, he redrew it in 1906." And they said, "OK, that's fine. He took that camp out." So Left Hand's camp was not within the Cheyenne proper, those camps, "A-na-sha". Getting back to the point of trying to find out where Sand Creek was because I've traveled to Sand Creek myself a couple of times and I just had this feeling that something was wrong there. I don't know what's wrong. But I came back and went to the elders again. I always went to the elders to try to get these answers.
Fortunately, there were at least, maybe five or six of them still living. And I went to them and I asked each one of them individually. "Do you think the place that we go is Sand Creek?" And they said, "Sand Creek?" I said, "they call it a site". They said, "why do they call it a site? It's holy ground. I mean, it's been blessed." Two days after the fight occurred at Sand Creek, they went in there. The Cheyenne came back and they blessed that whole area all the way up and down through there because there were bodies scattered all over, even way out in the hills. The Old Ones say that the soldiers were chasing the people scattered for five or eight miles around there 'cause everyone was in such a turmoil. So today I've come to my conclusion, as well as most of the elders that I talk to, is Sand Creek is not a site. Holy ground. It's been blessed.
So I kinda don't want to work with anybody who says that this is the Sand Creek site because I don't agree that this is a site. You can't just confine one little certain area and say this is where Sand Creek was. I can assure you the Cheyenne people that had people that died there are not going to, they're not going to buy that, shall I say at all. There'll be a dispute from now on.
Well, the old folks say that basically that [after the fighting] there was such a turmoil trying to protect the families, protect the old folks and the children, and trying to get some kind of a grouping there to get them out of there. But they couldn't. There were so many soldiers and the sharpshooters, I think, is what mainly kept 'em scattered, from coming together. Because when you take a group of sharpshooters sitting on a hill, it's almost impossible to get a group of people together.
[Where did the sand pits come from that the Cheyenne people hid in during and after the massacre?] Well, that's been another thing that I've asked the elders. "Were the pits already dug prior to Sand Creek? Did they know that this was going to happen?" And they say, "no." They say that there was so much sand, and it's easy to dig fast knowing the only way that they could get any kind of a cover through there was to dig those pits. And those pits were dug along north of the camp sites. And there was one camp further down from Sand Creek. Sand Hill was camped more down away from the main. He didn't suffer so much. Most of them got away. It was the main camps that were concentrated there.
And ah, about the rifle pits, the Old Ones seem to think they were dug during the time of the fighting. But I've read the army reports and they say the Cheyenne had them already dug and they were waiting. That's something I just can't agree with. Personally I don't think they were. The Cheyenne as a whole, they knew about war and fighting. That was a way of life. And I think that the soldiers that attacked them, they knew this. They knew the Cheyenne were a war-like people. And women and children were taught from young on up, you know, that in order to survive the Cheyenne had to fight. So being a war-like people, I think they knew to dig these pits. And they didn't just go out and dig them and wait knowing that they were coming because if they knew that, they would have been ready. The Cheyenne were great fighters and I totally disagree with the points that they're bringing out, that they dug these prior to Sand Creek. Anybody with any common sense would know that if you're going to be attacked, you're going to be waiting; you're going to fight back. And they didn't have a chance to fight back.
I think that I would be safe in saying, in compiling the different stories I've heard from the Old Ones was that she [Mochis] couldn't do much [when the fighting broke out]. She had to save herself. But they say that her camp was pretty much in the middle of the realm of the whole camps. Well I would think that she went into shock. Anybody would that would witness that, you know, you're not going to know what to do. But she knew enough to try and get away. And she did get away, without being shot. The Old Ones said that she ran up the creek. She didn't get out around where they were killing them, shooting them.
[Who do you think the villains of Sand Creek were?] The villains of Sand Creek, wonderful question. Well, the old folks, getting back to the oral stories, they'll tell you it was the government itself. It was the lies and the treachery and the so called treaties that they didn't understand. And Indian people didn't know how to sign. Let's go back to 1851, during the Great Horse Creek Treaty. That's what the Cheyenne know it as because the Old Ones say that the reason they call it Horse Creek was that's the first place they saw a tame horse. See they were already nomadic and they were already living in the area. So that's how the Cheyenne know the signing of that treaty. [The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851] The Cheyenne didn't know nothing about Fort Laramie. They knew to meet at Horse Creek. And they knew that, OK that's the stream where the Cheyenne first saw the horse that was tame. They were used to catching horses and taming them themselves.
OK. At that time there, the government says that they gave the Cheyenne x amount of land, which they did. But they tried to convince the Cheyenne that it was to be their lands and all it did basically was set the boundaries of where the Cheyenne could roam. Not a reservation. It was not a reservation.
Those boundaries were from the Arkansas [River], from the headwaters, north and that was the dispute with the Cheyenne. The Cheyenne say that the Old Ones were told that the Boundaries were the South Platte. But they understood it, they would say, "well our country goes to the North Platte. Which is north of the North Platte [River] up to the summit of the Rocky Mountains, which is the top down." That would involve the South Platte [River]. But they were trying to convince the Cheyenne, "OK, you don't go north of the South Platte." And they couldn't convince the bands that were north of the South Platte that you ceded these lands according to the 1861, or the Fort Wise signing of that treaty. So the Cheyenne were confused as to where was what. They knew in their minds that, "this was our land." They knew the land by the boundaries that they knew themselves. But here's the government, how shall we say, this river, this point, ta-ta-ta-ta, that's yours. You stay in there. They didn't do that because they didn't understand it. And then at the same time they tried to convince the government that not all Cheyenne signed. And that's even put in the 1861 Treaty was that the chiefs that did sign, the six chiefs that signed it, they were saying through the interpreter, "we can't sign this because not all the chiefs are here. We have a lot of our people on the North Platte. Those bands are up there and they don't even know this is going on." But, no. They went on ahead and they had them sign it.
[The peace chiefs went ahead?] I think by using the word, peace chiefs, I think you mean the old chiefs. A Cheyenne chief, if he lived to be 40 years old, he retired. He was considered an old chief. A council chief. They still had the power to sit in the Council of 44. You're peace chiefs would be, technically, the four older chiefs of the Council. Because each band had four chiefs. And you had your societies that were in these band, and then you had the sub chiefs, shall we say, 'sub chiefs'? I'll use that term, which were the big sub chiefs and the head chiefs of the societies, you could be safe in saying, your war chiefs. So the Council chiefs were technically the old chiefs. But the societies as a rule were the dominate, the people that made the decisions that went to the chiefs. It was all a strict form of government system there that the Cheyenne had intact.
The war societies. In 1874 they designated and voted Medicine Water to be the head war chief of the Cheyenne through the Bow Strings. At that time period the Bow Strings were the dominate fighting force that was active since the Dog Soldiers were scattered. You had the Dog Soldiers joining the Bow String.
I feel real confident in sitting here telling you the things that I've been taught by the elders in all my years. And I'm in no kind of position to say that my elders would have taught me things that were not true. It's our way of life, of how we preserve our culture, history and ceremonies and everything including the language even down to the songs and the stories that are alive today. I guess I'm trying to say, Cheyenne oral stories that preserve our culture, history, ways of life is alive today within our Cheyenne people. It's not gone totally. Of course there are some things that we don't know about like for example the way that they used to prepare for battle.
They had a game that they played with a stick and a hoop, a sacred hoop. And there were certain songs that went with that and the tribe. The camp people would choose sides and they would gamble on these warriors who would play this game and ride through the sides as they lined up on each side. They had certain songs that went with that. The hoop never hit the ground. That kept them practiced, you know, different ways on the horse and got them ready for battle. All that's gone. Even the songs are gone. Nobody knows the songs anymore. Of course, things like that in our tribe are not known.
They had a animal dance with song which had a certain place within the Cheyenne ceremonies. The only thing I know about it is that I talked to one of my great uncles one time and he said the last time he can recall it was in 1917. The way he described it to me was that the people played the part of the animals. They had the bear, the deer, elk, the antelope and they had a culprit in there; it was a tiger. And I said, "a tiger? How did they utilize a tiger?" He said, "generations ago they must have seen a tiger. Tigers must have roamed North America." Then again, you have to stop and think, I do anyway, maybe the old theory about coming across the Bering Strait had something to do with this. But there was a tiger that played a very vital part in the song according to my great uncle. And he said that certain people that were involved with that, a priest. He said, "I recall one priest was talking and praying and singing." He said that this stuff started coming out of his mouth that looked like popcorn. It was multicolored. And he said, "I was just sitting there watching and that's the last time that I saw that." And I said, "how did he do all this?" He said, "he was a priest." I didn't ask any more questions.
So, you know, things like that we can't preserve. Another thing that I am starting to look at right now is the Cheyenne had a Sacred Pipestone. It was about the size of a modern golf ball and it was kind of indented on the top. How I became aware of that is through a friend of mine who is in Montana, who still writes today for a newspaper up there for the Cheyenne people in Lame Deer. He's probably 85 years old and he still writes. He told me in the 1930s, back in 1936 there were only 26 Indians who owned newspapers in the whole country. He owned and started the 26th one and he's still writing today. He's the one that asked me if I knew anything about the Sacred Pipestone of the Cheyenne that's lost. It was lost in the 30s. The last keeper was known as Stump Horn.
The Old Ones say that the warrior women had their own guild, had their own songs, their own medicines, war shields. She [Mochis] did carry a war shield which was part of her preparation for war. The Old Ones say that she had her own medicine that was given to her by a medicine, well it would not have been a medicine man, it would have been a medicine woman that worked in that guild of the warrior women which is as I explained, they had other Cheyenne warrior ladies that did fight also. But she would have had her own type of preparation. She would have gone out and prayed by herself. She would have gone to the medicine woman, explained what she needed, went through that process and that was her own personal medicine that she used. And her shield decorations would have been things that she would have done herself. That would have been her own technique of her preparation. The war horse played a vital part in all of this. That's the only thing that this horse did. She would only have used the horse for war. It was kept separate. It was never mixed with the other herds. It was kept away from the herds because of the medicine used on the horse. It would not have been proper to have mixed it with the regular herd. And there was a certain way that she tied the tail. It could have been braided. It could have been tied down with eagle feathers. And there was a certain harness that it wore. If she painted her horse, it was her own paints and her own design. That all went into her ways to prepare to go to war. It was just not get on a horse, let's go fight, situation. It was a long process that she went through.
It was not normal at all [for women to be warriors]. There were a chosen few. They had to go through the process to be chosen to do this. So it wasn't a matter of walking up and saying, "I want to go fight. I want to be a Cheyenne Warrior Woman". They looked at your life. They looked at how you were. In her case, they would look at her motherhood, the structure of her family, ways of life. There are many things they watched. And then if she met all the, well I guess you might call it, the qualifications to be in that guild, then she made a request. She would have to let it be known that she wanted to play this role in the tribe, as one to go fight. And they would get her and start to train her. It was a big training.
I would say that the soldiers were probably very much surprised to see her riding side by side as a warrior. She was a warrior in her own right and, well for instance, I'll use an example here. The agent in 1874 of the Cheyenne was named John Miles. John Miles sent a letter to the Kiowa agency, this was in December of '74, that a detachment of soldiers from Fort Reno were approximately 65 miles straight west of Fort Reno and they had an encounter with a war party. Medicine Water. Shots were fired but nobody was hurt in that engagement. They chased them as far as they could but could not catch them because the soldiers had big, big mounts, horses fed on oats and they were, well, basically they were fat and they couldn't run fast. They chased them toward the Staked Plains and they had to stop giving chase to them; they couldn't catch them. But they did have that encounter. At the time, the Kiowa agency was going to send the Kiowa tribe out to the Staked Plains to hunt. So John Miles immediately sent a dispatch to the Kiowa agency explaining that Medicine Water, one of the worst of the Cheyenne, was in that area going toward the Staked Plains. Not to let the Kiowa go in there to hunt. That's how bad they wanted to get her and Medicine Water. They didn't capture them.
The Old Ones say Stone Calf, after the Staked Plains War broke out, he was the head war chief for the Cheyenne. Stone Calf was a peace chief. He took off and went to Mexico, he didn't want any part of it. He wasn't going to fight. Then after it calmed down he came back. He came into Darlington. He surrendered. The officer in charge then was named Neil. Captain Neil sent Stone Calf out to the Staked Plains to find and talk to Medicine Water and his band that was left, to come in and surrender.
Medicine Water sent word back with Stone Calf. "You're going to have to come and get me, I'm not tired of fighting you yet." Medicine Water and Mochis both knew the soldiers were coming in full force. They were coming after them five different ways. They were even having the New Mexico calvary coming in. And they knew that they had them penned in there.
Mochis and Medicine Water knew they were in the camps with the arrow keeper, the Sacred Arrows were there. They had to get the arrows out of there. So they sent the arrows north. And here's what I can't figure out. How Mochis once again rode from the Staked Plains, to the Smoky Hill River, which is way in the extreme part of northwest Kansas. They got the arrow keeper there and 18 warriors. Then Medicine Water sent 18 warriors on with the arrows and the arrow keeper to Yellowstone Country out of the way of the soldiers. They got back to the Staked Plains and literally their ponies were dropping. They couldn't go on any more. They couldn't fight any more. So he sent in his mother, Old Yellow Hair Woman, and Man on Cloud, his younger brother, into the agency. This is in the dead of winter. Some of the Cheyenne women over heard some of the soldiers talking that when they got hold of Medicine Water and Mochis and the war party that would not come in, they were going to hang them.
So Old Yellow Hair Woman and Man on Cloud left the agency that night and made it back out there and told him. Oral history has it that Medicine Water thought, "well, better come in because they were to the point that they couldn't fight." So he sent a runner in and told them that he's coming in. Captain Neil immediately sent out a detachment of soldiers. They were two miles out of Darlington and they stopped them and right then they were both of them put in chains and shackles. Then they were brought on into Darlington.
Mochis had to have been worn and torn from the fighting but yet she still had it in her to stay with him, coming in. And I think her life at that time was, she didn't even get to see the little ones. My great grandmother used to tell my mother, they never saw her. They could only look at her from a distance, you know. When the soldiers brought her in chains and shackles. They were both put into the stockade and the soldiers were put around her to guard her. I don't know why they couldn't fight anymore.
They were kept in the guard house until they shipped them to Fort Marion. The President wanted to get them as far away from the Cheyenne as possible. They had first wanted to send them back up to the Great Lakes area with the Ojibwa. Get them away from down here. I don't know why they were so afraid of them. I mean, they were subdues and they were forced on the reservations, but they wanted to show the Cheyenne a lesson. And, of course, some of the other tribes. They said, "this is what's going to happen to you if you continue to resist." But it didn't pan out, getting them sent to the Great Lakes. Some of the old folks laugh, they said they were sending them back to their homelands anyway. Because that's where the Cheyenne basically started.
[Did the Cheyenne view Sand Creek as a massacre?]
Well, that's the terminology that they know today. Back then, I don't think they knew the meaning of 'massacre'. They had the Congressional hearings on it and they called it a 'massacre'. The Cheyenne looked at it as a group of individuals that just slaughtered women and children and old folks that couldn't fight back and to them that wasn't war. Like I said before, if they were going to declare war, that wasn't the proper way the Cheyenne looked at it.
Again, being warriors, they were going to get even, that was their way of life. Not so much even, but they were going to do the same thing to them and there will be war. And there was war. Sand Creek caused the Cheyenne to go to war at a time that they never did fight. They only fought war; they prepared for wars, like with the Pawnee, the Pawnee tribe. When they were going to fight the Pawnee, they waited until spring when the horses were fat and healthy. When they could ride a long ways and fight, fight fast. But when Sand Creek occurred, it was in the cold time, you know, the winter time.
Yet, they sent the war pipes out. I think that's the only time they ever sent the war pipes out to get someone to ally with them and to fight with them. The first ones to pick up the pipes were the Lakota, the Brule Sioux. And they're the ones who led the Cheyenne to Julesburg. Because if you picked up the war pipe to ally with the Cheyenne, you went first in the war party. You led the war party. Of course, the Cheyenne had the person leading to carry the war pipe. They had a designated person to carry the war pipe. And every evening that they sat down, they couldn't eat until that person who had the war pipe sat down with certain ceremony and that pipe always pointed in the direction they were going to go to fight the enemy. Toward the enemy. So Sand Creek is the first time the Cheyenne went to war during the cold months.
[What impact did Sand Creek have on other big events with the Cheyenne?]
I would say that it had a direct bearing on the thing that Custer did because it was so similar to what Chivington did. And my personal opinion and I know the elders in my family well enough that if I were to ask them that same type of comparison. If they thought there were two people with the same kind of thought to fight; Chivington and Custer would have been two peas in a pod. They would have agreed. You know, there's an old saying, women and children don't fight battles.
But Custer, what he did down here at the Washita, basically the Cheyenne told him what was going to happen. Because after, after the massacre on the Lodge Pole River [Washita] that following spring, in March of 1869. Our people were camped on the Staked Plains, on the Sweetwater [River]. And Custer found them. Custer barged in on the arrow keepers tepee where the Sacred Arrows were hanging and demanded to smoke.
The Old Ones in the family say when he went in there, none of the Cheyenne were supposed to even be in the presence of the arrows in the tepee. But he barged in there and he demanded a smoke. So the chiefs that went in there to smoke with hem, the arrow keeper lit the pipe. And they passed it around to him. And the chiefs instead of passing the pipe like normally is done, they passed it behind them until it came to him. And instead of taking the four normal sacred puffs of the pipe and going through the procedure, he went to just smoking away. And they were just watching him. And after he got done, well, the arrow keeper took the ashes and poured it on his boot and told him, "if you ever come to war with the Cheyenne again, try to kill our women and children like you did down here on the Lodge Pole, you're gonna die". And that's what happened to him at the Little Big Horn. The Old Ones say the time he took off and started up to the Little Big Horn, he wanted to surprise them, but the Cheyenne had a lot of wolves out. They were watching him. They knew every move he made. They watched him all the way up there. They knew where he was going. They just waited until he got in that trap. They just let him ride in there himself.
[What do the elders think caused such a brutal attack at Sand Creek?]
Listening to the old folks talk and trying to compile all the oral stories that each of them, you know, we have to bear in mind, I come from a very, very strong traditional Tsis Tsis Tas family and all my great uncles were headsmen and chiefs and ceremonial people and priest in different areas of our, how shall I say, the traditional circle of my extended kinship. And their opinions varied but they all drew on the same type of focus of why Sand Creek occurred. And that would be that Sand Creek, number one, had to do with land.
My own opinions of it, from listening to the old folks. They didn't understand the politics of the time, the thinking that was going through the politicians of Colorado Territory at the time. But as I look back at their reports and how they felt about it, then I compare how the old folks were thinking, it was a mastermind. It was a mind game between the two. The Cheyenne being such a structured governmental people who wanted to work with the governnment and they tried, but it didn't pan out that way. And once again the culprits of it all, I believe were the Indian agents, number one.
Then, of course, we have to go back again to the 1861 The chiefs that signed it said they wished to convene with the other chiefs so that they would take advantage of all the gifts and all the provisions that they were going to share in. But they couldn't get the rest of the bands to come down from the North Platte to sign. And they wouldn't. They sent word that they weren't going to do do that; they didn't want to give up these fine lands. Then Governor Evans came into play. He was the Indian agent for that part of Colorado and I think he masterminded a plan to make himself very rich; he didn't do it by himself. Then it back fired on him. The Arapaho played pretty much a part in this and the old folks still seem to think that the Hungate Murders that were blown out of proportion were done by the Arapaho, but the Cheyenne got the blame for it.
The way the correspondence was coming back and forth from the Commission of Indian Affairs up in Washington back to Evans and the surveyors, everyone involved in the land part. The Commission of Indian Affaris was telling Governor Evans at that time, "you're settling on Cheyenne lands that are unceeded according to the 1861 Treaty." In 1863, they were trying to get the Cheyenne to sign another treaty. The Cheyenne weren't going to do it because they already saw all this happening.
Governor Evans, I think another piece of the puzzle, was trying to protect himself by catering to the Utes, taking them to Washington under Army escort after he convinced the Cheyenne not to go over there and attack them. The Old Ones say it was after Sand Creek that the Cheyenne really got involved with the Arapaho as closely as they ever were before. After Sand Creek they started to communicate more often.
Yet the Cheyenne were smart enough to know, "we're being framed here", shall we say. So I would be saft in saying, of course, sitting and listening to the old folks talking, the Cheyenne weren't going to take it. I mean, nobody would have taken that. I think the changing of Wynkoop at Fort Lyon, turning it over to Major Anthony, that was the turning point of all it because the Cheyenne knew Wynkoop could be trusted. He knew the Cheyenne and they could talk with him and they knew that he tried to communicate with the officials out of Colorado Territory and out of Washington City to try to get some kind of a solution in a positive way done. And when they changed commanding officers at Fort Lyon, I think the Cheyenne started to realize, "there's going to be war". They didn't know that it was going to be brought onto them so quickly as Sand Creek.
The Cheyenne just didn't want to have nothing to do with an individual that was capable of taking the lives of women and children at random like he did [Chivington] and stand there and just be able to watch it all and ordered these things done to people like he did. I've heard him called a different thing besides the devil, which in terms of the Cheyenne language would be 'the devil' would be the evil person. The evil spirits that he, you know, was to represent in the Cheyenne circle of life of how we deal with the evil and goodness of our people.
And I had an old great uncle tell me that the Cheyenne never had evilness in the medicine aspects of our ways. He said the Cheyenne had "big medicine", he would say, "and it was good medicine and they used it in a good way." But Chivington, the way they looked at it at that time was that he had bad medicine. And it just wouldn't work with the Cheyenne. So there's no way the Cheyenne could even start to think of him as a person, a human being. He was just an evil person. They didn't want anything to do with him.
The Cheyenne weren't going to give up their lands. And the only way they were going to get their lands for the gold fields and keep them intact and get to the gold and everything. And let the politicians achieve their goals of becoming powerful politically. Those politicians knew that they had it in their hands, that if the Cheyenne weren't going to give up those lands in order to achieve their goals, it didn't matter if they had to kill the Cheyenne to do it. And that's what they did. And genocide was name of the game as some of the army officers so aptly put it. Sherman was one of them that said "the only way that you're going to accomplish anything out there on the plains, to open up the progress of the movement, to conquer the West, and to take the gold fields, was to…either they're going to have to move out of the way or we're going to have to kill them off. Kill them all, and keep going." So I think that's why Sand Creek came about. A few people in power had it in their power to make the decisions. It was the big driving force who ate the little force. Which by then, you know, I guess I should say, they killed off the Cheyenne, or they tried to and they almost accomplished it at Sand Creek. And down here at the Washita.
John Smith had a big role in it. John Smith was not too well thought of by the Cheyenne. The old folks that I have talked to, they knew that he had his own little ways of gaining power and he did it at the expense of the Cheyenne. He did it at the expense of the trust that the chiefs had put in him and when they finally figured out that he was lying and using the Cheyenne to gain his own ways to become rich. John Smith wanted to be a powerful man like any other. They didn't trust him anymore. The chiefs that were present in signing some of the treaties and papers according to the Old Ones, they wanted to replace John Smith and Evans wouldn't do it. And I still think that was a part of his plan, was to keep John Smith because Left Hand, and in particular, [Arapaho, Left Hand] not the Cheyenne Left Hand that signed the 1861 Treaty, Left Hand could speak English, I understand. And he wanted to represent the Arapaho himself by going to Washington and Neva, his brother, and a couple of other Arapaho chiefs. They could have spoken for themselves and there were some Cheyenne chiefs that understood English, but not well.
The Cheyenne wanted to utilize William Bent as their interpreter because they trusted William Bent. Evans wouldn't have it. In terms, William Bent was made to suffer a little bit too because of Evans knowing that these certain people were in the way of his gaining power and control of land and I still think the bottom line was land. And to kill the Cheyenne was the easiest way to do it. And the soldiers were at hand to do it. So that was the game plan.
Loosing family members there, to me there's still time when I think about this and I pray about this. I think about the grandmothers and the grandfathers that I lost there and what it meant to my family and has meant to my family even today of the devastation and wanton killing of loosing my family.
At times, being a historian for my family and my people, I still carry a lot of anger. That's why I have to utilize the sweat [lodge] because I think about it and I think it's only part of anyone that would have lost people at Sand Creek. You still are going to carry a bit of anger with you. And I try not to have those feelings but they're going to be with me for, until I guess ,until I die. And hopefully I don't see at this point, I can't say that I have, that I have any forgiveness for Sand Creek because Sand Creek was…It was a wanton killing of people that shouldn't have occurred. And I think, in particular, the Cheyenne youth that are growing up, they shouldn't have to be able to look at Sand Creek the way its been published and put out without knowing the oral histories and meaning that it has to our people as a whole today. And I think they should know both sides in depth as they can from the Cheyenne point of view from all the descendants. And I can't speak for all the descendants, but I can speak for my family that I lost there. That for generations, even on into the spirit world, I know the Cheyenne are going to be wanting to know this after I've gone.
I hope that somewhere in their lives that they sit down and look at Sand Creek. If they're a descendant and even if they're not a descendant. If America wants to preserve her culture, her history, like they say they do, they need to know both sides of Sand Creek. They need to know the feelings, there's two, two different types of feelings here. The Cheyenne who lost people there. They're not going to forget. And we're going to mourn and mourn. and their spirits are not going to rest until, I think, that the whole truth of Sand Creek is known.
The whole truth of Sand Creek needs to be as fully understood by the non-Cheyenne as well as the Cheyenne. And that's something that's real hard and I don't see the whole truth coming out. But the truth that needs to be brought out is that it was a wanton killing of people that shouldn't have happened for the glory and power of a few men and a few other individuals that used human life to gain their glory. But the Cheyenne will never forget it. But the young people should always remember. That's all I can say on Sand Creek. The door will never close. It's going to be there and it's not going to go away.
Gary
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