Journal Notes

Enter now for a chance to win a copy of Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

This book captivates a ruthless woman warrior who was born out of the pits of the Sand Creek Massacre. The word ‘warrior’ sends a tingle of fear down the spine and conjures up an imaginary fierce, merciless fighter seemingly invulnerable to fear or intimidation.

There are many reasons that a Native Indian woman would fight and become one of the women warriors. Most nineteenth century women warriors who fought in battles and conflicts did not pursue the life of a warrior on a permanent basis.

Most women fought because there was an urgent need for them to do so, which the reader will find out quickly that was the case for the young 24 year-old Cheyenne warrior.

The authors of this book writes of the malice in the young woman’s heart and the revenge that sat heavily on the edge of her tomahawk. The woman warrior fought to the death using bloodthirsty tactics to achieve victory. Not the usual image that we would associate with women, but there were many Native American warriors.

When asked to name some famous Indian women, most people have difficulty in recalling anyone other than Pocahontas or Sacagawea, the reader will have no difficulty with remembering Mochi, the Cheyenne Warrior after engaging themselves in this title, Mochi’s War.

Rebecka Lyman

Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal Tribune

To learn more about Mochi read Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek.

A portion of the book’s proceeds will go to the

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

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Praise for Mochi’s War:

“The authors have again collaborated to write Western history in an accurate yet accessible manner for mainstream readers…this biographical account provides a counterpoint to the many works that have mythologized such women as Pocahontas and Sacajawea.” – Library Journal ***starred review***

After the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, one woman survived physically unharmed, but emotionally devastated by the destruction of her tribe and determined to avenge her dead relatives. Her story has rarely been told, and Mochi’s War is the first book to tell it in full.

On November 28, 1864, Colonel John Chivington and his militia attacked a Cheyenne Indian village in southeastern Colorado. Between 150 and 200 Cheyenne Indians were estimated killed, nearly all elderly men, women, and children. The events at Sand Creek motivated Mochi to embark a decade long reign of terror. With each raid she remembered the horror of the massacre, and it goaded her on to terrible violence against 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 – the only woman ever to be incarcerated by the United States as a prisoner of War.

Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek explores the story and its repercussions into the last part of the nineteenth century from the perspective of a Cheyenne woman whose determination swept her into some of the most dramatic and heartbreaking moments in the conflicts that grew through the west in the aftermath of Sand Creek.

To learn more about Mochi read Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek.

Purchase a copy for a local school.

A portion of the book’s proceeds will go to the

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

Eureka! The Discovery of Gold in California Part Three

Many elementary schools across the country are now studying the California Gold Rush. This short, continuing story is intended to aid teachers in their efforts to share with their classes the significance of this historical events. Teacher who use the story in this week’s lessons can register to win a copy of the book Frontier Teachers.

Marshall could not seem to saddle his horse fast enough. Down through the beautiful California country he rode to Sutter’s Fort. As he came closer he glances at the herds of cattle browsing on the lush grass. He nodded when Sutter’s Mexican cowhands, the vaqueros, called cheerful greetings, waving their high sombreros.

The Fort was the only American strong hold in the territory. John Sutter had obtained land from Mexico. He had been loyal to the country until California was practically taken over by the Unites States toward the end of the Mexican war. But now he was in sympathy with America. His Fort was at the California end of the only wagon trail from the States, and he gave aid and work to any Americans who came that way.

Now as Marshall rode through the gateway in the adobe walls surrounding Sutter’s Fort, he seemed to enter a city in itself. Here were shops and sheds and houses. He heard the clang-clang of a blacksmith’s hammer on anvil, and the soft Spanish song of a Mexican woman as she slapped tortillas on a flat stone.

Marshall strode at once to Sutter’s house, and startled his boss with his air of excitement.

“What is this, Mr. Marshall?” asked John Sutter in his quiet way.

Marshall carefully opened his small bag and emptied its contents on a desk. Sutter leaped over to it, his eyes lighting up. “Looks like that is gold, Mr. Marshall. Where did it come from?”

“From the tail race of the mill. There’s more there. Lots more.”

The ranch owner put his plump finger against his nose thoughtfully. “Now, how can we find out – ah, I know.” He went to a bookcase and took out a small encyclopedia. “Here we have it. Yes, I can try it out.”

He pored over the book for some time, reading the rules given for testing gold to find out if it was pure or mixed with other metals. Then he sent Marshall out to get silver coins from anybody who had them in the Fort. With about three and a half dollars in silver balanced on a small scale they figured it out. This was pure gold, unmixed with silver or copper!

John Sutter sat in his big chair for a long time, and stared across at his silent millwright. Gold! The word was like magic. How much would the river, and perhaps all his land, contain? Down under those waving fields of grain, those pastures where his horses and cattle and sheep grazed by the thousand – was there pure gold? What would this do to his little kingdom, where he ruled like a lord? He frowned, and chewed his under lip. Somehow this news brought a fear of losing what he had struggled so long to gain.

“Mr. Marshall,” he said quietly, “perhaps we had better not talk about this yet. Perhaps we had better think first of what to do? Let us preserve silence, for a while.”

Marshall nodded slowly. Here was a fortune. He had found it. It would be well to keep it secret from those who would perhaps steal it from him. He went to saddle his horse. As he rode into the foothills, the sun spread across the wind-blown fields of grasses and turned them all to shining, gleaming gold. A golden earth! Golden streams! A golden land!

 Register now to win a copy of the book Frontier Teachers.

Many elementary schools across the country are now studying the California Gold Rush. This short, continuing story is intended to aid teachers in their efforts to share with their classes the significance of this historical events. Teacher who use the story in this week’s lessons can register to win a copy of the book Frontier Teachers.

James Marshall stood up and saw his laborers sitting around their fire drinking coffee and eating flapjacks. Beyond them the Indian workers moved quietly, preparing their breakfast of dried deer meat. Marshall walked slowly to the fire where his sober Mormon workers ate silently, and opened his hand.

“I found it in the tail race.”

The men stopped chewing and one exclaimed, “Fool’s gold,” and laughed. Another spit carefully into a bush several yards away. “Tain’t nothing by iron pyrite,” he said. “Fool’s gold, that’s all.”

The first man took a closer look, reached for another flapjack, and said, “That’s right. That stuff fools lots of people.” They all grinned knowingly at each other.

James Marshall scowled and clenched his fist over the little pebble. They thought him a fool. He turned on his heel, and strode up the slope to a small log cabin where smoke was lazily rising from an adobe chimney. As he approached he saw Elizabeth Wimmer, wife of his foreman, standing with a long stick in hand over a big, black soap kettle. Elizabeth Wimmer was one of the few American women in this land so lately taken from Mexico. She had refused to be left at Sutter’s Fort when Peter, her husband, went to take charge of the Indian laborers building the sawmill.

As Marshall came up to her he growled, “Look here, Mrs. Wimmer! This looks like gold. The men say it’s iron pyrite.” He unclenched his fist.

Mrs. Wimmer leaned forward curiously. Then, before he could stop her, she picked up the little piece and dropped it into the bubbling soap kettle. “We’ll soon find out, Mr. Marshall. If it isn’t gold the lye in this kettle will eat it up quick.”

James Marshall said nothing, but turned and went back to the breakfast he had not yet eaten.

That night as he went to the cabin where he lived with the Wimmers he felt confident again. The mill would work well with the tail race deepened. He was thinking of the lumber they would soon be sawing and of the money they could get for it in the sleepy village of San Francisco. As he sat and smoked his pipe he was startled by Mrs. Wimmer. Through the door she marched, and up to the scrubbed pine table.

“There!” she cried triumphantly. “It’s gold, all right, Mr. Marshall!”

She flung on the table the heavy little stone. In the light of the candle it glowed and gleamed. Marshall picked it up, then put it on the floor, grasped a rock lying by the hearth, and hammered it. It didn’t break. Gold!

Next morning at dawn he went back to the tail race. From cracks between the boulders he picked up more of the tiny gold pieces. Carefully he stowed them away in a small buckskin bag and went back to his job of getting the mill going. Later in the day he announced to Peter Wimmer:

“Supplies are getting low. I’m going to the Fort for grub. Wimmer, you take over while I’m gone.”

Peter Wimmer glanced at his wife, but said nothing.

 Register now to win a copy of the book Frontier Teachers.

Many elementary schools across the country are now studying the California Gold Rush. This short, continuing story is intended to aid teachers in their efforts to share with their classes the significance of this historical events. Teacher who use the story in this week’s lessons can register to win a copy of the book Frontier Teachers.

And now…Part one of Eureka! The Discovery of Gold in California.

The early morning sun gleamed like a bright golden coin above the California foothills. It was January 24, 1848. In all the green wilderness world there was no sign of life except a wisp of smoke from a breakfast fire, and the figure of a man walking beside a ditch that led from a nearly finished sawmill to a river. Suddenly he stopped and stared intently down. James Marshall was a surly man, without friends, and he was a long way from his old home in New Jersey. The other men at Sutter’s Fort thought him a little peculiar, and stupid. But he was the only millwright in all the California country, and he knew that he was a good mechanic.

He looked up at the mill he was building for John Sutter, the German-Swiss owner of this big landed estate, and he felt satisfied. The mill was coming along well, the dam was finished, and the tail race, or ditch, to let water back into the American River, was dug out. Each night Marshall opened the gate to allow the water to wash as much gravel and sand down the tail race as possible. Then in the early morning he went there to see how it looked. It would not be long before his mill, the first in the new territory, would be sawing lumber to ship down the Sacramento River to the village of San Francisco.

James Marshall glanced down again. Something had caught his eye. What was it? He leaned forward. Something glittered a little in the gravel against a stone.

“What’s that?” he muttered to himself. He sat on one heel, and picked up the little glittering lump that felt strangely heavy. “Gold! Could it be gold?”

The small piece looked more like brass. It was no larger than a tiny dried pea. He rubbed it. It still looked golden.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

“My life has run in strange places. My years have been full of color. I have known the heights of success, but likewise I have known the depths of despair.”

Leslie Carter, Liberty magazine, 1927

Catherine Louise Dudley Carter sat at her desk and clutched a pen in her hand. Nothing was left of her life but the raw will to do the only quasi respectable thing open to a woman in her circumstances. She had lost the wealthy position and standing in society that she had taken for granted for so long. She’d been kicked out of her palatial home. She had failed in her divorce case and in obtaining the money to maintain her lifestyle; her nine-year-old son had been ripped from her arms, and her once good name had been scandalously linked to actor Kyrle Bellew and New York Senator James F. Pierce.

The scandal didn’t bother her too much—small-minded persons, including her husband, just did not understand. “There is great romance, there is great love, there is great passion—all things difficult to guide—and some men and women reserve the right to have these things, regardless of that sharp dividing line which makes it legal,” she later wrote, dramatically justifying her choices.

Unfortunately, she’d fallen to the wrong side of that sharp legal and moral dividing line and now knew the cost. Her husband, wealthy industrialist Leslie Carter, had won everything in what the New York Times, in June 1889, called the “most indecent and revolting divorce trial ever heard in the Chicago courts.” Louise Carter considered herself virtually penniless, her reputation shredded to ribbons by the press, while her husband gloated over winning his countersuit charging her with adultery.

She shuddered at the memory of the witnesses against her, a veritable parade of chambermaids, housekeepers, hotel guests, and other traitors her husband had somehow coerced into telling the most awful tales about her. He had taken everything from her. She decided to take the one thing he’d given her that could most embarrass him: his name.

The plan she conceived to become an actress did not stop short of stardom. Her name—no, his name—would be blazoned in lights for all to see. She would, forevermore, be known as Mrs. Leslie Carter. That, she thought, would make her husband’s impassive face show some expression. “Nothing ever happened to Leslie Carter; consequently, nothing ever happened to his face,” she recalled. The day would come she vowed, when the name she hated would be on marquee lights and his humiliation would be as great as hers was now.

Dreaming of revenge would not make it happen. Images of poverty and squalor rose in her mind. Somehow she must triumph over this ugly trick of fate that her husband and a jury had played. The theater offered the only way out, with the added attraction of mortifying her ex-husband. Shrugging away the fact that her first attempt at becoming an actress had been unsuccessful, she concocted a new plan to succeed.

Dipping her pen into a small bottle of ink, she wrote to a man who had promised to help. The plea Louise Carter sent to wealthy meatpacker Nathaniel K. Fairbank resulted in an offer to assist her to become an actress, and his influence secured an appointment with New York theatrical manager E. G. Gilmore, who agreed to handle her career.

To learn more about Leslie Carter and about the other talented performers of the

Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

The pliant figure leaned over the ship’s rail, expressive eyes intent on the blue-green waters of the harbor. A mass of wavy light-brown hair with tints of gold lifted and curled with every breeze, its arrangement a matter of complete indifference to the angler. Suddenly the slender form froze, breath held, and then, with a quick yank and a breaking smile, lifted the rod and hauled a wriggling fish aboard the Cabrillo. Exclaiming in French, dark eyes sparkling with pleasure, Sarah Bernhardt ordered her catch, small as it was, to be prepared for dinner.

It was May 19, 1906, and the farewell production of Camille was scheduled for a few hours later at the ocean auditorium built on the water at Venice, California. Sarah stayed, and fished, at the hotel built like a ship, and she performed in the adjacent theater on the wharf at the seaside resort, Venice of America. Having caught a fish, Sarah wended her way to her quarters. Piled high in her dressing room were the results of a recent shopping trip to the Oriental bazaar nearby: silk and crepe matinee coats of pink and pale blue and mauve, all embroidered with butterflies and bamboo designs.

The tiny window in the dressing room provided a sparkling view of the ocean, and the streaming sunshine picked out details of the furnishings: a repoussé silver powder box, containers of pigment, eyebrow pencils, silver rouge pots, and scattered jewelry twinkling in the light. The tragedienne who attracted huge audiences wherever she went swooped up a small tan and white fox terrier, wriggling with joy at her return, and snuggled it close for a moment as she related the happy details of her fishing venture to a visiting reporter. Then she put down the small dog and closed her mind to the fun waiting outside the porthole.

Within moments Sarah became Marguerite Gautier, filled with the sadness and torment of the beautiful French courtesan in Camille, the play by Alexandre Dumas that became her signature role, performed all over the world more than three thousand times. Sarah’s ability to sink fully into the character of the play made the tragic death scene so convincing that it became a trademark for “the Divine Sarah.”

No one played tragedy with such believable intensity as Sarah Bernhardt, and no one brought as much passion and enthusiasm to the pursuit of pleasure. From fishing on the Southern California coast to bear hunting in the woods outside Seattle, on every western tour the French actress indulged in some kind of adventure. Sarah Bernhardt threw herself into life with the same characteristic energy she put into her stage appearances. Yet she often slept in a coffin, preparing for that final sleep.

To learn more about Sarah Bernhardt and about the other talented performers of the

Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

“I intend to play westward, and to appear in the town in which I was born—Sacramento.”

Mary Anderson’s comments to a reporter at the San Francisco Call, 1886

The angry hawk clenched its talons on the heavy leather gauntlet, stabbing the delicate wrist beneath. Wings bated, the half-wild bird glared fiercely into the large gray eyes of his captor. Mary Anderson stared back with steely determination. This unruly bird would be tamed, she resolved, and would become a living prop for her performance of the Countess in Sheridan Knowles’s comedy, Love. A stuffed bird would not provide the realism she intended, and what Mary Anderson intended usually came to be. Mary wrote in her memoirs:

There is a fine hawking scene in one of the acts, which would have been spoiled by a stuffed falcon, however beautifully hooded and gyved he might have been; for to speak such words as: “How nature fashion’d him for his bold trade, /Gave him his stars of eyes to range abroad, /His wings of glorious spread to mow the air, /And breast of might to use them’ to an inanimate bird, would have been absurd.

Always absolutely serious about her profession, Mary procured a half-wild bird and set to work on bending its spirit to her will. The training, she explained, started with taking the hawk from a cage and feeding it raw meat “hoping thus to gain his affections.” She wore heavy gloves and goggles to protect her eyes. The hawk was not easily convinced of her motives, and “painful scratches and tears were the only result.”

She was advised to keep the bird from sleeping until its spirit broke, but she refused to take that course. Persevering with the original plan, Mary continued to feed and handle the hawk until it eventually learned to sit on her shoulder while she recited her lines, then fly to her wrist as she continued; then, at the signal from her hand, the bird would flap away as she concluded with a line about a glorious, dauntless bird. The dauntless hawk and Mary Anderson were birds of a feather.

Born July 28, 1859, at a hotel in Sacramento, California, Mary’s earliest years were unsettled. Her mother, Antonia Leugers, had eloped with Charles Henry Anderson, a young Englishman intent on finding his fortune in America. It was a love match not approved by Antonia’s parents. The young couple arrived in Sacramento in time for Mary’s birth but too late to scoop up a fortune from the nearest stream. The easy pickings of the 1849 Gold Rush were gone.

To learn more about Mary Anderson and about the other talented performers of the

Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

If a woman gets the reputation of being a professional beauty, it is hard work to live up to it.

Lillian Russell, The Theatre Magazine, 1905

The green silk robe shimmered in the light of the dressing room. Adjusting the neckline, Lillian Russell glanced into the mirror and considered the interviewer’s question about beauties never appreciating their good looks. “I think they do,” she countered. “They are glad to have it, as they are grateful for any other gift. I am pleased and gratified when someone says I look nice.”

Looking “nice” was a part of the job that the corn-fed beauty from America’s heartland never forgot. The costume she wore in the second act of Lady Teazle showed off her abundant charms to perfection. The green silk, the large plumed hat, and the ebony walking stick adorned with orange ribbons were but a pretty frame for the statuesque blond performer whose sumptuous exterior diverted attention from a sharp mind and a warm heart.

As she continued dressing for the second act of the play, she answered questions from Miss Ada Patterson, longtime reporter for The Theatre Magazine. “How,” asked Patterson, “had a girl from Iowa earned the name “America’s Beauty”?

“I came away from Clinton when I was six months old, and I don’t remember much about it,” she told the reporter. A backward glance over a smooth white shoulder gave a glimpse of the famous smile, curving perfect lips. A spark of mischief flashed in the beautiful, blue eyes framed by long, thick eyelashes as she added, “Although there are Tabbies who say they remember my life there when I was six months old sixty years ago.”

The feature later published in The Theatre Magazine of February 1905 never came right out and said that America’s most famous beauty was now forty-three years old. Behind her lay phenomenal success as well as heartbreak and failure, yet none of it dimmed the glow. The interviewer that day compared the throat and shoulders rising from the green silk to the Venus de Milo. The pure soprano voice still hit high C with ease, and, after more than twenty-three years on stage, the name Lillian Russell still drew people to the theater.

 To learn more about Lillian Russell and about the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

Actress Jeanne Eagels was an attractive, petite entertainer with delicate features. According to her friends and peers she was childish, adult, reasonable, unreasonable – usually one when she should be the other, but always unpredictable. The Oscar nominated actress was born Amelia Jean Eagles on June 26, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri. She was the second of four children born to Edward Eagles, a carpenter, and Julia Sullivan Eagles.* Edward and Julia were from Kentucky and both had an ancestry that could be traced back to France and Ireland.

As a child Jeanne was frail, but mischievous. There wasn’t a boy on the block that wasn’t afraid of her. According to the sole biography written about the famed thespian by Edward Doherty and entitled The Rain Girl, Jeanne was a tomboy. She liked to climb onto the roofs of barns, swing from the limbs of trees, walk fences, and skip from rafter to rafter in the attics of the buildings in the neighborhood.

“She was six or seven when she fell from a fence she and her sister were walking on,” Doherty wrote about Jeanne. “She broke her right arm and ran home to her mother. A doctor was called, but he wasn’t the best in the world. He set the arm, but it pained her all the rest of her life, especially when it was wet. And it was wet every night and every matinee for five years when Jeanne performed in her most recognizable stage role, that of Sadie Thompson in the play Rain.” Throughout the duration of her career, Jeanne told newspaper and magazine reporters that she had broken her arm while traveling with the circus. She claimed she’d fallen off a white horse she was riding around the ring. It was the first of many stories she herself would contribute to the legend of Jeanne Eagels.

To learn more about Jeanne Eagels and about the other talented performers of the

Old West read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.