THE RESCUE OF THE GERMAN SISTERS
McClellan Creek, Texas November 8th, 1875
John German had been traveling from Georgia for three years, moving his wife, Lydia, son Stephen, and daughters Joanne and Rebecca Jane, Catherine, 17, Sophia, 12, Julia, 7, and Addie 5, to Colorado. The civil War veteran returned to his home after the war to find the farm destroyed. With limited funds, he decided to set out to make a new life for his family. John would halt for a season or two to work and earn enough to move on. With their meager belongings loaded into two ox drawn wagons, the family had survived the most dangerous part of the trip and were only a day away from the safety of Fort Wallace in western Kansas.
On the 12th of September, 1874, three hundred miles south, Scouts Billy Dixon and Amos Chapman along with four soldiers were fighting for their lives in a Buffalo Wallow in the Texas Panhandle. At the same time, Captain Wllys Lyman’s wagon train was circled and his men were fighting off an attack by Comanche and Kiowa warriors during the longest battle of the Red River War. The morning before, the 11th, John and Lydia German had risen early in western Kansas to ready their family and livestock for another days travel which would take them to the safety of Fort Wallace.
Shortly after starting their journey that morning, the family was attacked by a Cheyenne Dog Soldier war party led by a warrior named Medicine Water. John was immediately shot and killed. Lydia, the mother, was attacked and killed by tomahawk wielded by Mochi, Medicine Water’s wife. Older daughters Joanne and Rebecca Jane, along with their brother Stephen were killed and scalped. The Indians plundered the German’s belongings, rounded up the stock, burned the wagons and kidnapped Catherine, Sophia, Julia and Addie.
The girls were put on horses behind the warriors. The raiding party first went to a place where they had hidden saddles and other items before they attacked the German family. After their mounts were re saddled, the girls had to endure another nine miles of tortuous travel before stopping. They were exhausted, terrified, thirsty and hungry. Sofia remembered the scene of her families mutilated bodies night after night, day after day, and year after year, whether her eyes were open or close. She recalled “the brushing of Mother’s long hair a hundred strokes each evening”. Now those beautiful long strands had been divided among the warriors to adorn their rifles.
They rode on, now in a cold rain. The war party finally stopped, and the terrified girls watched as their fathers cattle were killed, butchered and the meat roasted over a fire. They recalled at this stop the warriors danced and were happy and decided which of the girls to keep. Some reports state it was here in this camp that the the oldest sister was tortured and killed. The sisters shivered, their only protection was a hastily constructed blanket over some sticks.
Julia and Addie German
On the 12th, their second day of captivity, the travel pace slowed and the Indians killed a few buffalo to eat. The morning of the 3rd day, Catherine could roast some meat to feed her sisters. It had been two days since they had eaten. The days ride was hard and fast. The youngest girls were tied to the horses or mules to keep them from falling off. Sophia said “”when I got so tired I could hardly stay on, the tied my feet by a thong under the horses belly. That strap held my legs so tightly I soon had large sores and raw places on my legs, knees and ankles-I still have scars today”, (60 years later). Their horses had been turned loose into the Indians pony herd. Julia rolled with the pack under the belly of her mule, the pack saving her from being killed by the mules hooves.
The warriors traveled night and day, eating only once, and sometimes not at all. Often they killed a horse to eat instead of taking the chance that they might alert the soldiers by killing a buffalo.
On the 15th, near Lakin, Kansas, seventy five miles south of the attack site, part of the war party split off to raid and burn a store at Pierceville and stole several head of cattle. The warriors returned with the cattle and stolen loot. Most of the cattle were then killed, and the rest left on the Prairie.
Because of lack of soldiers and vast distances, the group of about one hundred Indians had left the reservations in Indian Territory were able to slip past Cavalry units on the Texas Plains, split into smaller groups and spend the summer raiding across Kansas and Texas. Twenty five people were reported killed that summer in Kansas alone.
Medicine Water’s band was now in Texas, trying to avoid the troops while carrying the captive sisters. They traveled cautiously, hiding in the hills and brush. they traveled the Red River at night . During the night on the 24th, the war party stopped and began whispering among themselves. Catherine, remembered hearing a dog barking in the distance, giving her hope of deliverance. They resumed traveling until daylight, rested in a canyon, and resumed traveling again. Then, the Indians became alarmed, changed horses, and backtracked.
the two youngest are abandoned
At some point, the band split up, with the older sisters being pushed on ahead. The two Indians who carried the littlest sisters halted, and then Julia, 7 and Addie, 5 were placed on the ground, the warriors departing, rushing to catch up with the rest. Momentarily, one reappeared, directed the little ones to hand him something from the ground, motioned for them to follow, and then set off on horseback to join the tribe, leaving the little ones alone on the prairie. In later life the girls could never recall what they handed back to the Indian. Catherine tried to lag behind to watch over them, but the Indians urged her mount onward. She became sure her littlest sisters had been killed.
Julia and Addie wandered until finding wagon tracks which they followed until nightfall . The next morning they followed a set of wagon tracks and found a deserted Army camp and searched around and found pieces of hardtack and scraps of meat. They wandered alone for six weeks, dodging wolves, buffalo, and coyotes, subsisting on what they could forage; wild plums, hack berries and tender shoots of grass.
Eventually the older girls reached Medicine Water’s camp, where in a bizarre spectacle, they were placed on ponies and ran through the camp, where whomever could catch and snatch them from their ponies, could own and keep them, as wives, slaves or concubines. Each girl was then taken to the tipi of their new owners and there they were to live, as the property of the victors. eventually they became separated from each other.
On September 30th, 1874, three weeks after the German family massacre, two hunters found the bodies and burned out wagon of the girls family, and sent a telegram to Fort Wallace, reporting the incident. A young Lieutenant Hewitt, and two privates were sent with a detachment to investigate. While searching the site, he found the Germans family bible. John German had left identifying information in the bible, along with entries of children and previous address. Through this information, the Army was able to determine who was missing and likely captive of the Indians. Soon, everyone on the frontier and across the U. S. would know about the sisters kidnapping.
grandpa reads the news
Kansas Senator John Edwards, upon hearing of the travesty, wrote a letter to the Topeka commonwealth informing the public about the massacre, and the fact that bodies and a bible had been found, even naming John German. The Senator demanded more protection for settlers on the frontier. Sadly, the German children’s Grandfather, Thomas D. German, still living in Fannin Co. Georgia, from where the German family had first departed, learned of his son’s and family’s death by reading about it in the Knoxville Chronicle on October 16th, 1874. After the initial shock, this southern gentleman penned an extremely well composed letter to Lieutenant Hewitt, at Fort Wallace, Kansas, identifying himself as next of kin, asking the status of burials, and pleading for the return of the family bible.
Soon an all out search was underway. Col. Miles reacted by ordering Lt. Frank Baldwin to take a detachment of Calvary and Infantry, along with Scouts, a howitzer, and a train of twenty three six mule teams with empty wagons and search the Panhandle. Baldwin departed November 4th, with knowledge from captured hostiles and Scout spies that the older two girls had been seen with Grey Beard’s band and the two younger were possibly with Medicine Water, who was now in Grey Beard’s camp.
After their abandonment, the girls eventually wandered into an area of brush and cover near McClellan Creek where they could forage and had slight protection from the elements. By now, the moderate fall weather was well past and winter was rapidly on it’s way, bringing very cold nighttime temperatures. The night of November 6th, while the girls shivered in the darkness, with no blankets and only leaves and brush for comfort, Baldwins detachment was camping nearby, along the cottonwoods of McClellan Creek. Unknown to both, Grey Beard’s camp was also nearby.
On the afternoon of November the 7th, two scouts from Grey Beards camp by chance discovered the girls, still alive. By this time the girls were nearly starved to death, and exceedingly frail. Addie could still walk but later reported she would stumble and fall quite a lot. Julia was nearly too weak walk at all. The Indians appeared upset to find the girls still alive. After discussing the matter, they loaded the girls onto their horses and rapidly set off, back towards their Chief’s camp.
They eventually stopped for the night and were soon joined by other warriors who had been raiding across the Prairie, among them no other than Medicine Water. The older girls Catherine and Sophia had been split up, Sophia had been bartered away twice, and Catherine was now the property of an Indian in Grey Beards band. As luck would have it, the bands were rejoining together, likely to winter in Palo Duro Canyon.
Shortly after sunrise, on the morning of the 8th, the Julia and Addie were taken into Grey Beards camp, and separated. After their arrival, a warrior went into Sophia’s lodge, awakened her and took her to a lodge where she found her lost sister Julia lying on a blanket.
At 6:50 am that morning Baldwin’s troop were moving slowly northward, when one of his scouts rode back into the troops at full gallop, to report sighting Grey Beard’s camp ahead. Quickly riding ahead of his column, Baldwin counted “100-200 lodges and 600-800 ponies, approximately three and one half miles ahead.” Baldwin recognized Grey Beards tipi. Sending a scout to advise Miles of the situation, Baldwin quickly formed his troops and made a rapid charge upon the camp, even using the empty wagons and teamsters. They surprised the camp, and routed the Indians with cannon and gunfire. The Indians fled out of the canyon and up on to the high, flat plains.
RED RIVER WAR INDIAN SCOUTS
According to Sophia, she and Catherine, who was with another band, were placed on ponies and rushed toward the plains with the first Indians leaving camp. Catherine, who could now understand a few words of the language heard an order being given to a brave to kill Julia, who was hiding under a buffalo robe. The brave returned to the camp and fired his gun at the robe , but missed Julia. Before he could shoot again, he was felled by an infantryman. The soldier, seeing movement and thinking an Indian was under the robe, again raised his rifle to fire. Another soldier, George James of Co. D., deflected the soldiers gun, and slowly raised the buffalo robe with the barrel of his own rifle. What they found brought tears to the eyes of all present. Frail little Julia hidden under the buffalo robe. Years later Mr. James, at 80 years old, told his story in a letter:
“although I am eighty years of age, your letter brought it all back as though yesterday that hazy morning when our scouts brought back word that Indians were just ahead of us. When we struck them and charged through their camp there were five of us who became separated from the company. The names of the men with me that morning are Chris Freymeyer, Frank Howell, John O’rourke and Box [sic] Dixon.”
Soon Baldwin returned and a search of the entire camp was made. In one tipi they found an equally frail Addie, trying to place fuel on a fire. The men immediately began care of the girls, nurturing them as best as conditions would permit. The camp cook charge of them until they could strengthen enough to make the journey back to Camp Supply. Once there, he went about camp collecting clothes for the girls, even having “an old Navy man sew a couple of dresses” for them. Here they were placed in the care of the Army Surgeon, and when they were strong enough, traveled to Fort Leavenworth with the doctor.
The caption reads: “Julia (5 years) and Addie (7 years) German. Taken in December, 1874. These girls were rescued by United States Troops under Lt. Frank D. Baldwin, November 8th, 1874. This cut is taken from the book “Memoirs of Major General Frank D. Baldwin.“
Miles continued to press the Indians .
The two older sisters were now long gone with Grey Beard. He kept them to use as bargaining chips. Through friendly Kiowas, Miles demanded of Grey Beard that the terms of a peaceful surrender included the safety of the German girls, and that he and his band return with them to the Darlington reservation in Indian Territory. Miles added that if the girls were harmed, no surrender would be accepted. Miles must have been persuasive as the large band of Indians suffered the freezing conditions of late winter weather to make the two hundred mile trek from their camp near the New Mexico border to the reservation in Indian Territory.
On March 1st, 1875, Stone Calf, with wife, at right, and Grey Beard along with their tribes, including Medicine Water with his wife Mochi, surrendered themselves and the girls to the Army, about seventy five miles west of the Agency.
After the older girls were released, General Miles was designated their guardian. They then went to Fort Leavenworth. The soldiers took up a collection to pay the girls train fare to the Fort. Miles wrote to his wife and asked her to take good care of the girls, when they arrived.
While the other commands were heading back to the relative safety and warmth of their forts, Miles sent the Eighth Cavalry to back their base in New Mexico, but he and the rest of his contingent-422 men, moved east to a cantonment that had been established on Sweetwater Creek, in what is now Wheeler County, Texas. That Cantonment would become Fort Elliott, and would be Billy Dixon’s duty station until his retirement as a Scout.
All the girls recovered, married and had children. In 1927, Catherine’s niece published her aunt’s narrative of the captivity. The following year Addie (Andrews) and Sophia (Feldman) traveled through the Pampa, Texas area en-route to see Catherine (Swerdgeger) and Julia (Brooks) in California . They had been communicating with a noted Panhandle pioneer in Pampa, Mr. T. D. Hobart, who arranged a trip out to the site where the girls were rescued. Several dignitaries attended, and the event was covered by area newspapers. Olive Dixon, Billy’s widow, interviewed them for the Amarillo Globe newspaper. An Historical marker was erected in 1936 and in 1955, Sophia was the guest of honor at the Gray County Texas’ fiftieth anniversary celebration.
The two youngest German sisters, left, visiting the Panhandle in 1927. Right, Mr. T. D. Hobart, early Panhandle Pioneer, and Mayor of Pampa, in 1927 when the ladies visited.
Once asked if she hated “the Indians,” Catherine German replied: “Oh, no. I saw how they suffered while I lived with them that winter—so many died from the cold and lack of food. Besides, I am a Christian and cannot live with hate.”
The German sisters-Catherine right, Sophia left, addie bottom AND julia top. circa 1920’s
NOTE:
The information here is from the 1998 book The Moccasin Speaks-Living as Captives of the Dog Soldiers, compiled by the late Arlene Feldman Jauken, great granddaughter of Sophia German Feldman. Her extensive research into family documents, period correspondence, and conversations with her great-grandmother weave a spellbinding narrative of the German family’s ordeal. Mrs. Jauken has done amazing research of all the actors of the Red River War- the Indian Chiefs, Army Colonels, and politicians. Her understanding of that time period is enlightening. She even met with Medicine Water’s great great grandson, forging a life long friendship in which each came to understand the others losses and shared each others grief. It is a remarkably useful reference for the Red River War. It is a spectacularly well written read of how the Sisters learned forgiveness, and met with the ancestors of their captors.