Driven by Revenge

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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