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Show i . . Recent Death of an 88-Year-Old Kansas Woman Recalls Gen. Custer's Dramatic Rescue of Two Captives From Cheyenne Indians 70 Years Ago By ELMO SCOTT WATSON (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) SHE died the other day and her passing snapped a living link between the present-day, modern America Amer-ica and an era in frontier history which now seems almost al-most as remote as the days when Kentucky was the "Dark and Bloody Ground" and a "Narrative of an Indian Captivity" was a familiar type of American literature. Yet it was only 71 years ago that she was kidnaped from her home in Kansas by a war party of Cheyenne Indians, suffered indescribably while held a captive by that tribe and was finally rescued by Gen. George A. Custer and his famous Seventh cavalry in one of the most dramatic incidents in the whole thrilling thrill-ing history of the Wild West. Her name was Mrs. 'Sarah Brooks but back in 1868 she was Sarah White, the 17-year-old daughter of Benjamin White, who had brought his wife and 10 children chil-dren from Wisconsin the previous year to a homestead on Granny creek,' a tributary of the Republican Repub-lican river in northern Kansas.. On the morning of that fateful day, August 13, 1868, Benjamin White and his three sons had gone to the meadows along the Republican to cut hay, leaving his wife, Sarah, their oldest daughter, and three smaller children chil-dren at the cabin. Presently a party of six Cheyenne Chey-enne Indians appeared, professing profess-ing friendship and asking for food. Mrs. White prepared a meal for them and as they started start-ed to leave they seized young Sarah and dragged her out of the house. One of the Indians leaped upon his horse and with the aid of another savage pulled her, fighting desperately, up beside him. Then, followed by the horror-stricken gaze of her mother who ran after her with outstretched out-stretched arms, they rode away. Meanwhile, another party of the same band of Indians had discovered her father and brothers broth-ers working in the meadow near the Republican. The boys escaped es-caped by running to the river and hiding in the bushes along its banks but the Indians killed Mr. White and rode away with his team of horses. That night when these Indians rode into the Cheyenne camp on Buffalo creek, young Sarah White recognized her father's horses and wept bitterly bit-terly over this evidence that he and her brothers were dead. A Stratagem That Failed. In the camp on the Buffalo she found an old newspaper which she hid in her dress. The next day, as she rode along, she tore off bits of the paper and dropped them unobtrusively, hoping that this might mark a trail which a party of rescuers could follow. But it was a vain hope, for seven months were to elapse before she was to be released from the horrors hor-rors of her c.aptivity. Three months after she had been captured, her misery was shared by another young woman Mrs. Anna Brewster Morgan, the 19-year-old bride of a young farmer in the Solomon valley. He had been attacked while working in the field by Indians who shot him with arrows, left him for dead, and, dashing to his cabin, seized his wife and bore her away. This party of Cheyennes traded her for some ponies to the bar which held Sarah White captive. The Indians made slaves of the two girls and subjected them to all sorts of indignities. The squaws, who were jealous of them, were especially cruel to them. They forced the white women to cut wood and carry it until their shoulders were raw and sore and when they sank down with exhaustion they were lashed with whips until the blood ran. Sheridan Takes the Field. These two unfortunate women were only two of the victims of a series of raids by Indians through Kansas that year during which several hundred settlers were slain and members of their families carried away as captives. cap-tives. As a result of these depredations, depre-dations, Gov. Samuel N. Crawford Craw-ford called upon the federal government gov-ernment for aid and Gen. Phil Sheridan was ordered into the field. For the difficult task of punishing the Indians and rescuing rescu-ing their captives, Sheridan relied re-lied mainly upon the Seventh cavalry, led by Lieut. Col. George A. Custer. Meanwhile, Governor Crawford had raised a regiment,, the Nineteenth Nine-teenth Kansas Volunteers, resigned re-signed temporarily from his post as governor and led the regiment to a rendezvous with Sheridan at Camp Supply, 100 miles south of fort Dodge. In March, 1869, Cus- The three Cheyenne Indians who were held as hostages by Custer Cus-ter for the surrender of Mrs. Morgan and Miss White and who were later taken to Fort Hays where two of them were killed by their guards. There is much confusion as to the identity of these Indians. Custer gives their names as Fat Bear, Dull Knife and Big Head and those are the names accompanying the above illustration (a wood cut made from a photograph taken at Fort Dodge, Kan., March 13, 1869) which appears in Mrs. Custer's book "Following the Guidon." Grin-nell, Grin-nell, quoting different Cheyennes as his authority, names them as Younger Bear, Chief Comes in Sight and Island (or Lean Man) but elsewhere in his book, "The Fighting Cheyennes," says that the two who were killed by their guards at Fort Hays were Slim Face and Curly Hair. ter, with 11 troops of the Seventh and 10 of the Nineteenth Kansas, set out to find several bands of the Cheyennes who were still on the warpath. A short time before a young man applied for permission to accompany ac-company the expedition. At first Custer refused but when he learned that the boy's name was Brewster and that he was the brother of Mrs. Morgan who was still held captive by the Indians he permitted him to go along. Young Brewster did not know which Indians had carried his sister sis-ter away but he hoped that Custer's Cus-ter's command might find them and that, by being with it, he might aid in her rescue, if she were still alive, or at least, learn what her fate had been. Discovers Cheyenne Camp. Moving out from Fort Cobb Custer's command struck a fresh trail and followed it to the north fork of the Red river in what is now Wheeler county, Texas. There he discovered a camp of Cheyennes under the leadership of a chief known to the whites as Medicine Arrow but called Rock Forehead by his own people. peo-ple. A little farther down the stream was the camp of Chief Little Robe, a noted "friendly." Sometime during this march Custer had learned that two white women, were captives in ' : li , . I k, vVkj V .... '-v, --,,, I i ' J Mrs. Sarah Brooks (from a photogrcph taken in 1934 and reproduced re-produced here by courtesy of the Kansas City Star and the Concordia Con-cordia (Kan.) Blade-Empire). Medicine Arrow's camp and henceforward their rescue became be-came his main objective. As the commander of the Seventh, Sev-enth, accompanied by an orderly, order-ly, approached the camp, he began be-gan making the customary Plains signal of his desire for a conference confer-ence by riding around in circles as he advanced. As he drew near, he was met by Medicine Arrow and several other chiefs who invited him to come into the camp for a council. Although Custer was fearful that they had a treacherous intent he agreed to their proposal and. entered the camp accompanied only by Colonel Cook of the Seventh. The result was that the soldiers camped near the Indian village and a series of councils ensued. The testimony as to subsequent events is very contradictory. The version which Custer gives in his book, "My Life on the Plains," is sharply at variance in many details with the Indians' version, as given in George Bird Grinnell's "The Fighting Cheyennes." Chey-ennes." Custer tells how a large party of Indians entered his camp and strove to distract his attention atten-tion while the remainder made preparations to take down their lodges and move the village away before the troops realized what they had done. Thereupon, he seized four Indians "chiefs and warriors, of prominence," Custer calls them to hold as hostages for the surrender of the two white women. The Indians insinuate that Custer Cus-ter acted treacherously in seizing these men while they were making mak-ing a friendly visit to his camp and that they were old men of no particular importance. However How-ever that may be, the fact remains re-mains that when Custer sent one of his four captives to the village bearing a message that he would hang the other three if the captives cap-tives were not delivered up to him, the Indians, after protesting that the women were not in their camp, finally sent Chief Little Robe to Custer's camp to arrange for the exchange of prisoners. Rescue of the Captives. Custer tells a dramatic story of the arrival of the two women in his camp the next morning how he sent three of his senior officers of-ficers forward to escort them into camp and how young Brewster, unable to restrain his eagerness to see his long-lost sister, raced forward past the officers and clasped Mrs. Morgan in his arms. "The, appearance of the two girls was sufficient to excite our deepest sympathy," writes Custer. "Miss White, the younger young-er of the two, though not beautiful, beau-tiful, possessed a most interesting face. Her companion would have been pronounced beautiful by the most critical judge, being of such a type as one might imagine Maud Muller to be. Their joy at their deliverance, however, could not hide the evidences of privation priva-tion and suffering to which they had been subjected by their cruel captors. They were clothed in dresses made from flour sacks, the brand of the mills being plainly plain-ly seen on each dress; showing that the Indians who had held them in captivity had obtained their provisions from the government govern-ment at some agency. "The entire dress of the two girls was as nearly like the Indian In-dian mode as possible; both wore leggings and moccasins; both wore their hair in two long braids, and as if to propitiate us, the Indians, before releasing them, had added to the wardrobe of the two girls various rude ornaments, such as are worn by squaws. About their wrists they wore coils of brass wire; on their fingers had been placed numerous rings and about their necks strings of variously colored beads. Almost the first remark I heard young Brewster make after the arrival of the two girls was 'Sister, do take those hateful things, off.' " The women were placed in an ambulance and the Seventh started start-ed on its march to Fort Dodge, taking with it the three Indian captives whom Custer determined deter-mined to hold until the Cheyennes came in off the warpath. Mrs. Morgan was overjoyed to learn that her husband was recovering recover-ing from his arrow wounds in the post hospital at Fort Hays. Later they went back to their home in the Solomon valley and lived there for several years. But the memory of her captivity preyed upon her mind which at last gave way and she ended her days in a Kansas state insane asylum. Miss White also returned to her home and while engaged in teaching teach-ing school met E. O. Brooks, a veteran of the Civil war. They were married and made their home near the White homestead where she had been taken captive. cap-tive. There she lived for more than 70 years, reared a family 0f one son and six daughters and tried to forget what she had suffered suf-fered for seven months as an Indian In-dian captive. Death came on May 12, 1939, to end the ugly nightmare of those memories. Six years after the capture of Mrs Morgan and Miss White by the Cheyennes and their rescue by Gen." George A. Custer occurred oc-curred a similar incident in which the same tribe of Indians was involved in-volved and in which another famous fa-mous Indian fighter, Gen. Nelson A Miles, plaved the role of rescuer. res-cuer. That was the capture and release of the German sisters during the war with the Southern Plains tribes in 1874-75. On September 10, 1874, a covered cov-ered wagon, drawn by an ox team, and accompanied by two men on horseback, halted on the banks of a small stream in western west-ern Kansas. The party was composed com-posed of John German, a native of Blue Ridge, Ga., and a veteran of the Confederate army, his wife, Lydia, their son, Stephen Wise German, and their six daughters Rebecca Jane, 20; Katherine, 17; Joanna, 14; Sophia, So-phia, 12; Julia Arminda, 7; and Nancy Adelaide, 5, called "Ad-die" "Ad-die" by her sisters. They were on their way to Colorado where they were going because of German's poor health, and they expected to reach Fort Wallace, not far from the Colorado border, the next day. The next morning their camp was attacked by a war party of 19 Cheyennes who killed and scalped Mr. and Mrs. German, their son and two of the girls, Rebecca Jane and Joanna. Then they carried the other four daughters daugh-ters away and held them as captives cap-tives until November 8 when the camp of Chief Gray Beard was attacked by a detachment of General Miles' army, led by Lieut. Frank D. Baldwin. When the Indians fled, taking Sophia and Katherine with them, they left the two little girls, Julia ; ' - f GEN NELSON A. MILES and Addie, who were found by the soldiers in the deserted camp. "When rescued they were the most emaciated mortals I have ever seen. Their little hands were like birds' claws," writes General Miles in his memoirs. They were sent to Fort Leavenworth Leaven-worth under the care of an army physician and there the women' of the garrison nursed them back to health. On returning to Miles' command, ' the doctor brought with him a photograph of Julia and Addie and when Miles saw this it gave him an idea. On the bck of it he wrote this message: Headquarters Indian Territory Expedition Expedi-tion in the field, January 20, 1875. To the Misses German: Your little sisters are well, and in the hands of friends. Do not be discouraged. Every effort is being made for your wel- fare. NELSON A. MILES, U. S. Army Colonel and Brevet Major General Commanding Expedition. Then he gave the photograph to a Delaware Indian scout and. told him to find the Indians who still held Sophia and Katherine. and give the picture to them secretly. He was also ordered to tell Chief Stone Calf that no mercy would be shown his band, if the girls were not returned alive and unharmed. The Dela-, ware scout set out over the snowy plains and after a remarkable, journey of more than 400 miles, found the Cheyenne camp on the Pecos river in New Mexico and managed to deliver his message to the captives who had begun to despair of ever being rescued. By this time the Cheyennes, who had been kept so constantly on the move by the vigorous campaigning cam-paigning of Miles and Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie, and who were nearly near-ly destitute, were quite willing to listen to peace overtures. So Stone Calf took the two girls from their captors, placed them in a lodge next to his and treated them with special consideration on the journey back to the Cheyenne Chey-enne agency in Indian territory. There they were surrendered to Miles. A short time later the four German Ger-man sisters were reunited at Fort Leavenworth and on the recommendation recom-mendation of General Miles the sum of $10,000 was deducted' from the annuities given to the Cheyennes and $2,500 placed to the credit of each of the girls. Miles became their guardian and served thus until they came of age. Addie, who became Mrs. Frank Andrews and mother of 11 children, chil-dren, was, at the last accounts, living near Bern, Kan.; Julia, now Mrs. Julia Brooks, was Irving near Humboldt, Neb., and near her lived her sister, Addie; and Katherine, now Mrs. Katherine Swerdfefer, was living at Atas-cadero, Atas-cadero, Calif. |
