Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (33 page)

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"Get up and shoot me and let me alone." He turned over and did not say anything more that night.

Q.-Was it a constant thing?

A.-No, not all the time. He was away twice, making all together a week.

Q.-He was the one who did it first? A.-Yes, sir.

Q.-How long after the capture?

A.-The same night-Monday. Of course they were drunk and we dared not refuse them to any great extent. A good many times I pushed him off and made a fuss and raised a difficulty.

Q.-Was it done while his own squaws were in the tent? A.-Yes, sir.

Q.-And they knew about it? A.-Yes, sir.

Q.-Did any others do the same thing?

A.-No, sir. Not to me. He took me as his squaw, and of course the rest dared not come around.

Q.-Have you told this to anybody besides your mother?

A.-Yes, sir. Inspector Pollock interviewed us. And I believe, also, Dr. Avery of Denver. She is a lady physician in Denver. Of course we don't want the newspapers to get hold of it.

Q.-Did you tell Mrs. Avery that she must not make it known?

A.-She will not. The Indians delight in telling such things
.
It is generally talked around at the camp, and a good many white set tlers who live around the borders call in now and then, and of course they will spread it if they can.

Q.-Did not they [the Indians] seem to think it was very wrong? A.-No; they thought it was a pretty good thing to have a white squaw. His squaw told me I must not make a fuss about it. I think she felt sorry for me but she did not dare do anything for me. Jane said,
"If
he wants to protect you I cannot help it." I told her I did

not think much of the protection.

Arvilla Delight Meeker was wounded in the shoulder during the massacre. She described how the ambush occurred just as the settlers were finishing dinner.

ARVILLA
MEEKER: I guess I had not wiped more than two plates before firing commenced . . . . We were running away and got into the sage brush and when the ball struck me I dropped on the ground so that I would not be so much of a mark, and as I lay there

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I saw them capture Josie and Mrs. Price. I thought they would not see me, but as soon as they had captured the others they came to me.

Q.-As to the outrages, what of them?
·

A.-It was made known to me that if I did not submit I would be killed or subjected to something of that kind, and after I gave up nothing was said about it. Douglas I had connection with once and no more. I was afraid he had disease.

Q
.
-He forced you to submit?

A.-Yes, sir. His squaw was gone that night. The Indians talked about matters and things until twelve o'clock. Af ter they went away he came to my bed.
·

Q.-Was he drunk then? A.-No, sir.

Q.-Had you been notified that you would have to submit?

A.-He himself had not but all the rest had. His children said I had to be Ute squaw that night, and used indecent language. One great advantage in it was that he was protection for me from the other Indians. Douglas was chief and the rest dared not approach me, and so that was better than the rest. The children were cross and all of them were cross. I do not know as his wife ever spoke to me.

Q.-Did she know of what had happened? A.-1guess she knew it.

Af ter her husband was murdered, Flora Ellen Price and her two children were captured by some Uncompahgre Utes and later were transferred to the camp of Johnson, a White River medicine man.

Q.-Did any of the Utes treat you badly or strike you? FLORA ELLEN PRICE: No, none of them struck me.

Q.-What did they do?

A.-1do not like to say. You know, of course, and can judge.

Q
.
-This is an official investigation on the part of the govern· ment and I cannot guess at these things. It is your place to state, in order that we may know the extent of the crime and who the guilty parties are.

A.-It will not be made public in the papers, will it? Q
.
-Certainly not through this Commission.

A.-Well, this Uncompahgre Ute and Johnson outraged me. Q.-Johnson, the old man himself?

A.-Yes, sir; the old man himself .

150 AGA:INST OUR WILL

Q.-Did any others besides Johnson outrage your person? A.-And the Uncompahgre Ute, these two were all.

Q.-Was it by force? A.-Yes, sir. By force.

Q.-None of the others attempted it?

A.-No, sir; none of the others attempted it. Q.-Did any of them treat you kindly?

A.-Yes, sir. Mrs. Johnson treated me very kindly-that is, Susan. She wept over my troubles and said she was sorry for what happened at the agency. She said she did not want them to kill at the agency.

Q.-Did she know what Johnson had done to you? A.-No, sir; she did not.

Q.-Is there anything further you wish to state?

A.-No; only that I want to have those Utes taken and killed, and I want to have the privilege of killing Johnson and that Uncom pahgre Ute myself.

The "Susan" mentioned in Flora Price's testimony was the younger sister of Chief Ouray, leader of all the Utes in Colorado. Once she herself had been captured by some Arapahoe. Arvilla Meeker's captivity account also mentioned the friendliness and intercession of Susan, who, when the Ute men held council to decide whether or not to give up the three women, stormed the assembly to demand that the women be freed.

Chief Ouray was the token Indian representative on the gov ernment commission that investigated the White River Massacre. When the white women's testimony regarding their outrage was read to him, he replied, "The oath of a woman is almost worthless among the Indians."

Every Indian who came forward to testify at Ouray's urging, including Chiefs Douglas and Johnson, denied any firsthand knowledge of the events at White River. Ouray patiently told the commission, "Show me any act of law by which a man is com pelled to 'criminate himself ." Nevertheless, Douglas was sent off to Fort Leavenworth and soon af ter that the Utes were driven from their home to a small, unprofitable corner of Colorado.

It was land the government was af ter, and the government got it.

And what of the rape of Indian women by white men? Dee

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Brown wrote of the American West, "Only occasionally was the voice of an Indian heard, and then more of ten than not it was recorded by the pen of a white man. The Indian was the dark menace of the myths, and even if he had known how to write in English, where would he have found a printer or a publisher?"

Where would she have found . . .
?

Commission reports, massacre investigations and records of treaty meetings between white men and Indian men offer a rich source of material on American Indian history, but as Chief Ouray said, the oath of an Indian woman was "almost worthless" to all concerned.
If
the white woman suffered rape at the hands of the Indian, the treatment of a "squaw" at the hands of a white man was far worse-but if she lived to tell the story it was not recorded. In April, 1871, a vigilante group of Americans, Mexicans and Papago Indians assaulted an enclave of Aripava Apaches near Camp Grant, Arizona. The Apaches had been on friendly terms with the neighboring ranchmen and were even flying the American flag. Dispatched to the scene, Dr.
C.
B. Briesly, Camp Grant's surgeon, reported, "The dead bodies of some twenty-one women and children were lying scattered over the ground; those who had been wounded in the first instance had their brains beaten out with stones. Two of the best-looking squaws were lying in such a posi· tion, and from the appearance of the genital organs and of their wounds, there can be no doubt that they were first ravished and then shot. Nearly all of the dead were mutilated . . . . While going over the ground we came upon a squaw who was unhurt, but were unable to get her to come in and talk, she not feeling very

sure of our good intentions."

Lieutenant Royal Whitman, commander of the post at Camp Grant, reported that the vigilantes had taken several Apache chil dren as captives. The survivors pleaded with him, "Get them back for us. Our little boys will grow up slaves and our girls, as soon as they are large enough, will be diseased prostitutes to get money for whoever owns them."

What occurred at Camp Grant was not very different from the Sand Creek Massacre of November
29,
1864, except that Sand Creek was an official U.S. Cavalry operation. Members of the 1st and 3rd Colorado Volunteers, under the direction of Colonel John

M. Chivington, whose rallying cry was "Boys, remember our

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slaughtered women and children," descended on a village of Cheyenne. The boys remembered by practicing sexual mutilation. In the investigation that followed the Sand Creek disgrace, Corporal Amos C. Miksch of Company E, 1st Colorado Cavalry, testified, 'Next morning, af ter they were dead and stiff, these men pulled out the bodies of the squaws and pulled them open in an indecent manner. I heard men say they had cut out the privates, but did not see it myself.
It
was the Third Colorado men who did

these things."

Lieutenant James Connor added, "In going over the battle ground the next day I did not see a body of man, woman or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner-men, women and children's privates cut out,
etc.
I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman's private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick. . . . I also heard of numerous instances in which men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the saddle-bows and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks.''

In the tragic history of the Nez Perce, hounded into oblivion, we can glimpse through indirect reference the special fate of Nez Perce women.
L.
V.
McWhorter, who was adopted into the tribe, wrote down the oral history of the Nez Perce as he heard it. He concluded that the Nez Perce story was full of "ghastly, unprint able disclosures" regarding "the stalking spectre of rape."

So distasteful to him were these stories of rape by white men that McWhorter could not bring himself to deal with them in his book. From the blind centenarian and tribal historian Wottolen, he recorded one edited fragment: "A Nez Perce woman known as Mrs. Jim was found dead one morning somewhere around White Bird [the Nez Perce winter camp]. Three known white men had done this, murdering her in a very brutal manner not printable. Nobody was punished for this crime."

Thus does "unprintability" erase the record.

A short statement regarding the rape of Indian women by United States soldiers is contained in the testament of Young Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. In a narrative recorded af ter he and his dwindling band were in captive exile, Joseph described from his own perspective the ambush of some tourist campers in Yellow stone National Park as the faltering Nez Perce were running from General 0. 0. Howard's cavalry units.