Journal Notes

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Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

“When the people were running there was hardly any place to hide, but there were ravines and there was one old lady who was getting children. She was getting children but she had medicine so they couldn’t see her and she would go back and forth getting children. There were more women holding the children down. Where it happened had to have shelter and some ravines. Land changes over the years through men tilling, farmers, and the wind, rain—it changes subtly. Those ravines might be buried now. To find anything you’d probably have to dig. But at the time there were hiding places, ravines. They were camped close to water for cooking and things.” Lettie June Shakespeare

This week marks the 160^th anniversary of the Sand Creek massacre.

Read about this event in the book

Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek.

Mochi’s War is available everywhere.

Ten percent of all sales of the book go to the Sand Creek National Monument site.

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Dog Soldiers participated in a second raid on Julesburg on February 2, 1865. According to George Bent’s account of the attack, a small band of Indians first tried to lure the soldiers out of their stockade. The plan was to get the troops in the open, overtake them, and ride into the unguarded stage station. The soldiers did not fall for the Indians’ ploy. The warriors regrouped and descended on the stockade together. George Bent noted in his memoirs that the Dog Soldiers rode past eighteen graves of men killed in the first attack on Julesburg. Six hundred Indians fought their way to the warehouse at the stage station and broke into the store on site. Mochi was one of the Cheyenne who helped gather the food and other provisions together and herded the horses away from the war-torn stockade. When there was nothing left to plunder, the Indians set fire to the buildings.

Mochi and the other Indians left Julesburg and headed across the Great Divide between the South Platte and North Platte Rivers. Telegraph poles lining the path they followed were destroyed. They were either burned or chopped down, and the wires were cut and carried away or tangled up and tossed into the brush. Regiments of cavalry troops from Mud Springs, Nebraska, and Camp Mitchell, Wyoming rallied and pursued the Indians, but the warriors would not allow themselves to be easily driven from the valley. Because of the Sand Creek Massacre, raid upon raid was enacted on soldiers and settlers from February to October 1865. Many warriors and white men lost their lives. Like other Dog Soldiers, Mochi would have taken part in the killing and the ritual mutilation of her enemies.

Somewhere in the midst of the fighting and retreating and fighting again, Mochi met a warrior named Mihuh-heuimup or Medicine Water. He had lost his wife at Sand Creek and was raising his young daughter Tahnea alone. Medicine Water and Mochi shared a strong desire to eliminate the white man from their homeland and to preserve the traditions and lifestyles of the Cheyenne people. If not for the Treaty of the Little Arkansas, Mochi and Medicine Water might not have considered marriage. They would have continued their attacks on United States troops and buffalo hunters until one or the other were killed, but a remission in the weekly fighting gave them the chance to rest and consider life beyond the battle.

To learn more about the driven Dog Soldier Mochi read

Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

Ten percent of all sales from the book

Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

go to the Sand Creek National Monument site.

Mochi’s War is available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com,

and everywhere books are sold. 

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Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

A Cheyenne storyteller sat cross-legged in front of an open fire in Black Kettle’s lodge near Cherry Creek, Colorado. Black Kettle and several warriors and elders were spread out across the room watching the smoke rise from the fire and disappear through a hole in the top of the tepee into the night sky. Mochi was with them, seated behind the old men listening to them talk and to the sounds beyond the lodge.

Black Kettle filled a pipe and lit it. He then pointed the pipe stem to the sky, then to the ground, and then to the four directions: north, south, east, and west. Before handing the pipe to the storyteller sitting on his left, he called upon the “Listeners-Above-the-Ground, Listeners-Under-the-Ground, and the Spirits Who Live in the Four Parts of the Earth.” After saying a prayer, the storyteller took the pipe from Black Kettle, smoked it, and began to talk. He told the story of what happened at Sand Creek, of the brave dead that lay under the cold, dark sky the evening after the massacre. He told about the white army that slaughtered women and children and of the blood spilled that would forever be remembered.

Tales generally told by the storyteller were his alone to share. Cheyenne history and sacred beliefs were kept alive by storytellers and could not be told by others. If the storyteller wanted he could give the story away in the same way he might give away a blanket or some other gift. Black Kettle’s lodge was filled with Indians who had no use for such a gift. They had their own stories about the Sand Creek Massacre. Tales of what they witnessed would be passed on by them from generation to generation. It would haunt their dreams and drive them, and their own stories of the horror would never cease.

Mochi, along with the others on hand to hear what the storyteller had to share, said nothing while he was speaking. It was believed that any noise or moving about while the sacred stories were being relayed would bring great misfortune upon the camp. When the ceremony ended Mochi walked out of the lodge with the others. For the time being her home was with her cousins. When she wasn’t helping with meals and caring for children she was learning the ways of the Dog Soldiers and preparing for more attacks on white settlers. Colonel Chivington’s attack on Sand Creek was meant to destroy the Indians’ will to fight, but it didn’t work. According to George Bent, who became a Dog Soldier after the massacre, many warriors refused to accept the United States government’s plan for the native people and banded together to retaliate.

A number of Cheyenne, including Black Kettle, refused to take up arms against the United States, however. They separated themselves from those braves who chose to stand their ground. Black Kettle didn’t want any more bloodshed. Bands of southern Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne moved south of the Arkansas River, eventually making peace with the white man and signing a treaty promising to end the conflict.

Mochi didn’t agree with Black Kettle. She would become a warrior and stand against the U. S. government.

To read more about her fight read

Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

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Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

The history of women of the Native peoples of North America attest to their full participation in the community whether as elders and medicine women or as skilled agriculturalists and merchants and, in some cases even warrior. Women such as Pocahantas, Lozen, and Sacagawea are much more well-known than Mochi who made history as the only Native American woman to be incarcerated by the United States army as a prisoner of war.

In the spring of 1875, a locomotive pulling several freight cars left Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, bound for Fort Marion, Florida. Thirty-three Cheyenne Indian prisoners were on board; only one was a woman. Her name was Mochi, which means Buffalo Calf Woman. She made the trip shackled and chained to her husband, a warrior named Medicine Water. The irons affixed to the thirty-four-year-old woman’s wrists and ankles were so tight they cut into her skin and made them bleed. Her flesh would be permanently scarred by the time the six-week journey to Florida came to an end.

Hundreds of curious men, women, and children witnessed the Indian captives being taken away. Some of the onlookers shouted at the prisoners and called them “murderers” and “savages.” Neither Mochi nor the other Indians responded. They didn’t consider the settlers they had killed during their raids on homesteads in Nebraska and Kansas as criminal. Driven by the desire to stop pioneers from taking over their homeland and by revenge for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians slaughtered by the invading force, Mochi went to war. She would suffer the consequence.

The prison that would be Mochi’s home for more than two years was the oldest fortification on the continent. It covered an acre of ground and accommodated a garrison of 1,000 men. Building of the fort began in 1620 and was completed in 1856. A Spanish coat of arms and the name of the chief engineer of the structure, along with the date of when the fort was completed, were carved into the stone above the entrance.

Cheyenne Indians were relegated to the north side of Fort Marion along with Arapaho inmates. The Comanche, Kiowa, and Caddo shared the west side. Mochi and Medicine Water were assigned to an area away from the rest of the Cheyenne captives because they were considered too dangerous to be with the other Indians. Mochi was the only Native American woman to be incarcerated by the United States Army as a prisoner of war. There were other female residents at the fort, but they were wives of the prisoners who didn’t want to be without their husbands.

Mochi contemplated escaping when she first arrived, but the fort walls were sixteen feet thick and thirty feet high in spots. She slowly surrendered her physical self to the sentence she was given, but her mind and heart could not be contained. The tragic circumstances that led to imprisonment in Florida haunted her. For Mochi, hardship and heartache began at a place in Colorado called Sand Creek.

To learn the story of this remarkable woman read

Mochi’s War: The Tragedy of the Sand Creek

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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.