There’s no evidence, or even reason to believe, that the two women were shot by Indians as you claim, and not killed in the general slaughter. The American soldiers were shooting indiscriminately, and could not have known there were white female captives. This is not good history, it is racist lying.

By Paul on May 30, 2009 at 2:30 am

Actually it is documented in several historical accounts. Indians standard practise was to kill white prisoners if they were about to be rescued.
Tall Bull himself dispatched her with the butt of his rifle, caving in her skull. She was not shot. He then attempted to kill Maria, he used his rifle again, shooting her. Fortunately she lived, while he was killed. She lived to recount what happened to her and her fellow female prisoner. It is not a pretty story….
Let’s not try and whitewash the American Indian. They were in fact quite brutal in their treatment of captured whites. And there is plenty of historical evidence to back this up.
Sorry you can’t handle the truth. And don’t label someone a racist for speaking facts you don’t like….

By Mike on Jun 12, 2009 at 4:38 pm

One more correction to your statement Paul, you said the soldiers could not have known there were white prisoners and were shooting indiscriminately. Where did you get THAT little piece of misinformation? The soldiers were actually attacking in an attempt to rescue the white captives… They had scouted the camp out with scouts. They knew full well the women were there and were attempting to rescue them from the living hell of being a captured white female in the hands of the Cheyennes!
Read a few books on what captivity was like for white prisoners, particularly young, white females.
Besides being sold to Mexico into a life of slavery once the Indians tired of their fun and games with them, a white female could look forward to nightly gang rape if she was not “lucky” enough to be claimed by one owner.
Even if she was, her Indian ‘owner’ would often barter or trade out her sexual services, profiting from her forced prostitution. Visitors to the tribe were sometimes allowed to use them.
One reason why the Cheyenne in particular were more prone to this type of behavior is that Cheyenne females were considered one of the more chaste tribes. They would not sleep with a buck until marriage.
It was considered bad behavior on a female’s part to engage in unmarried contact. Cheyenne bucks knew full well they were disgracing the white female prisoners. And that makes it even more deplorable on their part.
They knew it because their own females would not behave as they brutally forced white captives to behave.
Cheyenne females were quite chaste. Because of that, braves in need/want of a female often traded and bartered with the buck who owned the white female for her “hospitality”.
Read about the capture of the four German girls (German is their name, sometimes spelled Germaine) and what the girls endured during their months of captivity.
The two youngest were rescued first, when the soldiers arrived to rescue them, the bucks fled on horseback with the two oldest girls, Catherine and Sophia. The soldiers were astonished to see how one bold brave actually rode back after the bucks had fled and began firing his rifle into a pile of buffalo robes. The robes covered the two youngest girls, both of whom were nearly starved to death. Both girls had been tortured even though they were only small children, by having cedar splints pushed under their fingernails and around their eyes and then set afire.
Imagine how badly this brave wanted to kill these two little girls that he risked death rather than to allow them to be returned to her white people.
The two young girls told of how the older girls were gang raped upon capture and then traded about the tribe. The eldest girl Catherine was bartered out so often, that by the time she was rescued, she had been forced to sleep with nearly every male in the tribe.
There are numerous books which recount tales of Indians trying to kill white prisoners rather than reurning them, or seeing them reunited with their people again.
No denying Indians were treated terribly by whites as they spread Westward, but in retelling the tales of history, let’s not paint the American Indian to be saints. Many tribes were extremely war-like and fought with rival tribes over land and hunting grounds, well before the whites arrived. Many tribes had the opinion it was a source of pride to raid a rival tribe, steal their women, children and posessions. Taking another tribes women was a method of dishonering him.
The disputes with whites was partly a continuation of established practices. Fights over lands and hunting grounds with whites, if anything only made them more war-like.
The American Indians were not hippie flower children. Revisionist history writers have tried to paint this picture to a generation or two from the 1960’s on up.
As is often the case, the truth of right and wrong lies somewhere in the middle. Wrongs and rights can be laid on both sides.
That the American Indian suffered greatly from whites is undeniable and only too true. But American Indians were not peace-loving innocents like some would try and paint them.
Read some real historic accounts. And speak truth even when it hurts…

By Mike on Jun 12, 2009 at 5:35 pm

Paul:
I think Mike responded very well, especially in his first post, to the article I wrote and the comments that you made. I would only like to add, if you are interested, that you ought to find and read my book, Dog Soldier Justice: The Ordeal of Susanna Alderdice in the Kansas Indian War, released July 1, 2009 as a Bison Book with the University of Nebraska Press. I document everything there. If you are interested in knowing what we can best today determine what actually happened back in 1869, then read DSJ. I wrote the article above for Wild West as I was writing Dog Soldier Justice. But, as Mike noted, calling me a racist for documenting the known facts is itself a racist commebnt by you. Also, in DSJ I prove, without question, that the soldiers knew they were attacking the village that held two female captives.

Maria Weichel was gravely wounded at her rescue and she also said Tall Bull shot her. Is she lying? That interview where she said this was done the night she was rescued and appeared in General Carr’s report written two weeks later. What more proof can one give that the Indians killed Susanna and tried to kill Maria? And, I also found an interview with Tall Bull’s wife (one of them) and she said she witnessed Tall Bull kill Susanna. Is she lying? If she is, then every Indian document should be dismissed. And I guess every military document ought to be dismissed. But that is poor history. Historical documents are to be accepted in the absence of good reasons to reject them. There are no good reasons to reject these primary source documents.

By Jeff Broome on Aug 5, 2009 at 12:51 pm

As a female, ahem, maybe the issue of rape as a weapon of terror should be addressed regardless of the ethnicity or nationality of the rapists. At some point we have to address atrocities and condemn them even when the perpetrators can be categorized as “victims” themselves. As an American of mixed Native Indian/Hispanic roots I am repelled by the violence initiated against civilians, period. But, having said that, I am also suspicious of accounts that hail the Calvary, I’ve personally seen too many relatively recent papers that describe massacres, like Sand Creek, as “the affair” at Sand Creek! Now that’s revisionist bullshit! However, to deny the terror and horror of what Susanna Alderice suffered is likewise, repugnant. I am more interested in how women of her kind were treated by the “white” settlers when they returned; probably not too well, separated and made to feel utter shame, most likely. And that is also part of the story, or should be.

By Roxane on Oct 1, 2009 at 10:09 pm