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Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

The controversial surprise attack upon a camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory by a force of more than 670 U. S. troops, most Colorado volunteers, under Col. John M. Chivington is know as the Sand Creek Massacre. The number reportedly killed at Sand Creek varies widely from 63 people to 200. Most historians agree that the death toll was around 160.

Black Kettle, a prominent Cheyenne leader, believed he had entered into a peace agreement with the United States Army and that he and his people were safe. Historians say that when the first shots were fired on the camp, Black Kettle raised an American flag and a white cloth of truce to signal the desire to talk peace.

A warrior was born out of the tragedy at Sand Creek—one that would live only to see her slain family avenged. The Cheyenne Indian woman driven to violent and desperate measures was named Mochi. For more than ten years, she engaged in raiding and warfare against the United States government along with her husband, Medicine Water. These Cheyenne renegades became two of the most feared Indians in the American West.

“The Cheyenne hated a liar as a devil hates Holy water,” Indian agent Captain Percival G. Lowe wrote in his memoirs in 1896 about the uprising of Mochi and the other outraged Indians who survived the Sand Creek Massacre. “And that is why when they came to know him they hated the white man. They did not crave stealthy murder but wanted their enemies to die an overt and brutal death over what happened on the Sand Creek.”

The events at Sand Creek motivated Mochi to embark on a decade-long reign of terror. With each raid she remembered the horror of the massacre, and it goaded her on to commit brutal outrages on those encroaching on Indian soil. The war between the Indians and the government lasted ten years after the Sand Creek Massacre occurred. Mochi’s war ended with her arrest and imprisonment in 1874.

Read about the Cheyenne warrior and the fight she believed was her calling in

Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek.

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Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

“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 as mean as they come.”

Observation made by a military officer after Mochi’s arrest on March 5, 1875

Somewhere amid the high plain’s sage country, the Big Sandy Creek once ran red with the blood of dozens of Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women, and children. On November 29, 1864, hundreds of members of the Colorado Volunteers poured down upon a sleeping Indian camp, leaving in their wake the slaughtered remains of Native Americans who were scalped and mutilated.

The unprovoked attack on the Indian settlement was led by Colonel John Milton Chivington, who is said to have ordered every Indian at the scene killed. To those settlers and traders who had been terrorized by the Indians and because of exaggerated reports of Indian attacks on families and troops, the Sand Creek Massacre was regarded by some as proper retribution on the Indians, and Chivington was revered for his actions.

The event that forced frontiersmen and women to address the serious issues that had been building between them and the Indians occurred on June 11, 1864. Rancher Nathan Ward Hungate, his wife, Ellen, and their two little girls were slaughtered by Indians. Their mutilated bodies were brought to Denver and put on display in the center of town. The people there were thrown into a panic. In the following weeks, at the mere mention of Indians in the outlying areas, women and children were sent to homes that were fortified and guarded. Plains travel slowed to a trickle. The supply of kerosene was exhausted, and the settlers had to use candles.

A regiment of 100-day volunteers known as the Third Colorado Cavalry was organized and George L. Shoup, a scout during the Civil War, was named the outfit’s colonel. At the same time, John Evans, governor of the Colorado Territory, issued a proclamation stating: “Friendly Arapahoe and Cheyenne belonging to the Arkansas River will go to Major Colley, U.S. Indian Agent at Fort Lyon, who will give them a place of safety…. The war on hostile Indians will be continued until they are effectually subdued.”

On August 29, 1864, before the regiment saw active service, a letter from Cheyenne leader Black Kettle explaining the Indians had agreed to make peace was delivered to officers at Fort Lyon, 150 miles away from Denver. The letter noted that Cheyenne and Arapaho war parties had prisoners they would like to exchange for Indians being held by the volunteers.

Major E. W. Wynkoop of the 1^st Colorado at Fort Lyon marched his troops to Black Kettle’s camp to collect the captives. While there, Wynkoop persuaded the chief to send a delegation to Denver to talk about the conditions for peace.

From Fort Leavenworth, Major General Samuel Ryan Curtis, commander of the Department of Kansas, telegraphed Chivington prior to the conference with the chiefs: “I shall require the bad Indians delivered up; restoration of equal numbers of stock; also hostages to secure. I want no peace till the Indians suffer more.” Chivington took the order to heart.

To learn more about Mochi and the events at Sand Creek read Mochi’s War

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Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

“Historians Enss and Kazanjian (coauthors, None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead) succeed in personalizing one of America’s most troubling memories, the brutal and unprovoked massacre of a sleeping village of Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples at Sand Creek (present-day Colorado) by troops of the Colorado Volunteers in November 1864. This still controversial military engagement (see Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre) sets the background in which Mochi, a Cheyenne woman, lost her entire family and barely survived herself, by killing a soldier and then fleeing her camp. She reinvented herself as a Dog Soldier and member of the Bowstring Society, one of the few females to claim association in these elite Cheyenne warrior groups.

She remarried, to Medicine Water, himself a military leader, and they in turn brutally raided and avenged themselves on American soldiers and settlers alike for over a decade. The authors have again collaborated to write Western history in an accurate yet accessible manner for mainstream readers. They provide a graphic account of the Plains Indian Wars from 1864 to 1875. VERDICT Highly recommended for adult readers of Western and Native American history, this biographical account provides a counterpoint to the many works that have mythologized such women as Pocahontas and Sacajawea.”

To learn more about this significant historic event read

Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

It was a pleasure meeting with Pulitzer Prize winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin and producer Beth Laski today. I’m happy to report the documentary project we’re working on for the 250^th anniversary of the country entitled Plain Genius: The Women Who Built America is moving quickly toward production.

A gentleman at the restaurant where we had lunch took a picture of the three of us. Doris and Beth are of normal height, I’m the size of Hagrid from the Harry Potter films. I could hunt geese with a rake. When I was in college I can’t tell you how often I heard, “Wow, you’re so tall. I bet it’s hard for you to date.” My height was the least of my worries.

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Tilghman: The Legendary Lawman and the Woman Who Inspired Him

Tilghman was appointed Chief of Police of Cromwell, Oklahoma, in September 1924. He found Cromwell to be as rotten a location as he was warned. The landscape was thick with oil derricks. Massive sections of pipe were stacked near mining shacks and mining equipment, stray tool pieces and wood shards from derricks that had been rocketed into the air by oil gushers were strewn about, and puddles of mud and oil were all around.

Among the businesses on the main thoroughfares were numerous taverns, dance halls, and houses of prostitution. “This is a bad place,” Tilghman wrote to his wife shortly after he arrived, “and these modern criminals are not like your old outlaws that had a sense of honor and gratitude, and decency in certain ways. These dope runners and the like would sooner shoot you in the back than meet you face to face.”

Tilghman wasted no time in helping to make Cromwell a safer and more desirable place to live. He functioned as sanitary officer and general welfare custodian as well as policeman. One of the first directives was the installation of water barrels for fire emergencies. He also ordered the trash and debris that littered the streets and alleyways around businesses to be cleaned up. By the end of the month his focus had shifted from the exterior of the store fronts to the businesses themselves. He shut down and padlocked the doors of twenty-five pool halls and arrested owners who had violated the Prohibition Act.

Not everyone applauded the lawman’s efforts. Deputy Sheriff of Seminole County turned federal prohibition officer Wiley Lynn, did not care for Tilghman, and resented his presence in Cromwell.

Since Chief Tilghman had come to town, he’d put a stop to drunken miners and oil field workers firing their weapons indiscriminately. Few had dared to violate the directive. So, when the lawman heard a gunshot outside Murphy’s Café where he was having coffee with one of his deputies, he hurried out of the building to investigate. As he exited the eatery, he saw Lynn at the end of the boardwalk holding a gun. “What the hell are you doing out here?” Tilghman asked gruffly. Lynn approached Tilghman with his gun in his hand and the lawman walked toward him holding his own gun.

School Commissioner Hugh Sawyer saw Lynn quickly walking toward Tilghman with his gun drawn and tried to intercede to disarm him. In the meantime, Tilghman moved in to meet Lynn’s attack. When the two met a scuffle ensued. Tilghman was using both arms to keep Lynn from pointing his gun at him. Lynn, seeing an opening and using his free hand, reached for another gun he had in his suit jacket pocket. He leveled the gun at Tilghman and fired three bullets into his chest. The veteran lawman sank to the street, unconscious, and his colleagues and townspeople rushed to him.

Wiley Lynn ran back to his car and sped away from the scene with his passengers by his side. Chief Tilghman was carried to a secondhand furniture store and placed on a sofa. He died shortly thereafter.

To learn more about the killing of Marshal Tilghman read

Tilghman: The Legendary Lawman and the Women Who Inspired Him