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Post by bc on Jun 17, 2009 23:05:22 GMT -6
Saheyala: The last NA raids in Kansas occured in September 1878 when 300 northern cheyenne under Dull Knife and Little Wolf left the res in Indian Territory/Oklahoma (can't say I blame them for leaving) to go to Montana. Troops from Fort Dodge caught them at Punished Woman's Creek (now called Ladder CreeK)(the second to the last fight) by Scott City, KS. Col. Lewis, commander at Fort Dodge was killed. I've been told that at that battle, a fair skinned young NA boy was killed and rumor was that it was Monaseetah & Custer's son. If he was, he would have just barely been 9 years old. What do you know of this?
bc
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Post by varyag on Jun 18, 2009 15:09:45 GMT -6
Thank you for the story. My immediate reaction to your photo, his high cheekbones, his moustache and dark hair. I'ts most possible that you are right, but i'm not an expert on this, just a mere reflection.
I also seem to remember that GKC had asked the decendants of Nevin Custer, GAC's elder brother, to leave bloodsamples for a DNA test, but they refused. Strange decission, it would have settled it.
She also attended The Little Big Horn Associaton Symposium in 06 or 07, were she presented documents that confirmed what she claimed to be true.
Orjan
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Post by saheyala on Jun 19, 2009 7:56:12 GMT -6
I know little of GAC's survivors, but I do remember my Great Aunt telling us that some of his people came to the reservation to meet some of our family. If I recall I believe some of my relatives were accomidating.. while others I am not so certain - this happened when I was much younger. I believe that it was a younger male and he must have believed the story to go so far out of his way as to venture into Pine Ridge.
I will definately get into contact with Gail, I am curious which side of the family she comes from. To be honest I am also curious who gave her the stories that she tells because they are quite different from what I know of the relationship between Cheyenne Woman and GAC.
My grandmother gave me the impression that Cheyenne Woman felt abandoned by GAC when he left her pregnant and alone to birth their child. There was no warm and fuzzy friendship once he abandoned her. I know her to have lived a lonely and somewhat secluded life with her son.
John ended up having a much larger family than anticipated too. He was married and had two sons. John's wife's sister's (that's a mouthfull) husband had died. John took her in, from my understanding, as a second wife and helped raise her three young children. That would make five children that I know of, that John raised.
As far as John getting killed when he was nine, that is not possible. I asked my mother about her recently and she said she remembers Grandma saying that she had another son before John, but we have no history of him. It seems to fit that he was killed at some point because there is nothing left of him but the story of him once existing.
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Post by gary on Jun 19, 2009 8:58:22 GMT -6
Hi Saheyala
Do you have any information about where Monasetah lived from 1869 and the name of your great great grandfather? (Is it Yellow Bird? I was not sure from your postings.) What name did your family say that she used? Do you have details of her husband(s)?
I ask these questions because some of your information appears to be similar to comments made by the writer David Humpheys Miller. His information is generally considered to be less than reliable, but it is possible that there is some link here but not perhaps directly with Custer and Monasetah.
Your family account seems to place Monasetah in South Dakota, whilst Gail Kelly Custer has her living in Oklahoma.
With regard to GKC, it is worth noting that GAC's family was not the only one with that surname. I understand that there were settlers in Oklahoma with that surname. I have seen reproductions of the land records that she relies upon in support of her case, but they do not seem to me to be primary documents. I suspect that GKC is not directly related to GAC, at least not through Monasetah.
I ought to say that I believe that GAC and Monasetah had a relationship and that she gave birth to his son. I am not convinced however that the son left any descendants. I am however willing to listen and I am always ready to reconsider my views.
Gary
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Post by saheyala on Jun 19, 2009 10:26:26 GMT -6
After a refreshed interest in the topic of my ancestors I do find it ironic that the man (GAC) everyone believed to be incapable of having such a long line of decendants did produce just that.
I will have to be at home and check the dates that I do have on my ancestors and get back to you, if there are any available. I should be able to find out where they settled. I know my great grandfather, Yellowbirds son, lived in Rocky Ford on the Pine Ridge indian reservation. Yellowbirds wife was named Annie Long Horn. There may be a way to trace where the Long Horns originated and that would offer an idea of where they lived. I know them to have lived on or close to the Pine Ridge indian reservation. I don't see them having moved far from there as natives were not well taken outside of the res.
John was Yellow Bird at birth.. but if you understand Native history the Native usually bore a single name and did not have surnames in relation to family. Once white settlers came into the Dakotas and began converting the "savages" into a more civilized race it was forced upon them to begin describing their families by assigning a recognizable name. Yellow Bird became John Yellow Bird.
I understand my great grandfather, Yellow Birds son, was sent to a boarding school. This was also typical of the whites, they took Native children from their parents to educate them in white ways. That school, from my understanding, is where the Steele name came from. At that school, my very Sioux/Cheyenne great grandfather became Harold (Harry) Steele. He was beaten if he spoke in indian and became a dovout Catholic - most of our Native culture was washed away because of this.
Harry's wife, my great grandmother, also attended a boarding school (the same boarding school I believe) and shared a similar experience and that experience was past on to their children. None of their six children spoke any native language and all worshiped a new God. Corporal punishment became the method to use for disciplining children as they were no longer sacred...
Monaseetah was Cheyenne Woman to everyone who talked about her when I was growing up. My grandmother told me her name was Monaseetah, but GAC called her Cheyenne Woman and that is what everyone in my family called her. My great aunt, who is dead now, walked me to her grave when I was a small child and told me that this is where "Cheyenne Woman" is buried. SHe is buried at the family gravesite which is in Rocky Ford on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation.
I believe her name is spelled how it sounds and my hunch is that it is actually two words, but I don't speak Cheyenne.
I apologize if I offend anyone by using the word white/s, or the way I told the story of my relatives. I do not mean to offend anyone, I only mean to tell the story as it was told to me.
I also want to add that I believe Cheyenne Woman had nothing to gain and everything to lose from this portion of her life.
I know none of my relatives have ever tried to make a profit or any type of gain from our history. My grandmother gave everything she had on this story to the author of "Lost bird of Wounded Knee" in an attempt to have the story told. That story was never told from the Yellowbird/Steele family outside of verbally, that I am aware. I want to tell people the story the way it was told to me, whether you choose to believe it or not is not my burden. I shared with all of you a photo of my great great grandfather and I told the story to those who care to know.
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Post by Melani on Jul 2, 2009 22:45:40 GMT -6
Saheyala, thank you for sharing your photo and your story. There is so much oral tradition regarding Custer's child with Monaseetah/Meotzi that I think it can't be entirely without merit.
I have read Gail Kelly Custer's book and found it a bit odd, to say the least. She maintains that Crazy Horse was Cheyenne (though I have always understood that he was Lakota), that he was Monaseetah's first cousin, and that both their mothers were white. She also maintains that his daughter was called Red Geranium (I thought it was They Are Afraid of Her), and that he and Custer were close friends. There is one rather strange scene in the book where Custer sneaks away from his Kentucky posting for a quick trip to the Plains, visits a Cheyenne village, and teaches the Cheyenne children to read while Tom, Boston and Crazy Horse look on approvingly. Then at LBH, Monaseetah visits the battlefield just before the action starts, intercepts Custer, and trims his long flowing locks with her knife. Just before he dies, he and Crazy Horse have a long philosophical discussion, and then, with apologies, Crazy Horse shoots him. Later he and Monaseetah give an interview to an English-speaking reporter from back East on the subject of Custer's son.
Now I don't want to discount anybody's family stories, but most of that seems pretty far-fetched to me. Among other things, I'm pretty sure Crazy Horse hated whites, and that he and Custer didn't meet until the day Custer died, and probably not even then.
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Post by wolfgang911 on Aug 31, 2009 13:21:51 GMT -6
Hi Mel Just read the whole topic as I could not follow your argument elsewhere on this board about breastfeeding and Monatesah. It is amazing to have a direct descendant, Saheyala, responding on the internet to such an old affair relating her family's oral history. Those whose preferr oral history handed down above written accounts can chose here! This board is great for having such interruptions, hopes she will be back with more. That she is the gr. gr. gr great greanddaughter is undisputed. The story can only be proven by DNA testing but I'm not an expert in that field either, surely need to find some 'longhair' first, then well, here teeth seem to be here, rather bad taste at display the-insurgency-class.blogspot.com/2007/04/monasetah-sambo-and-newt-gingrich.htmlAs I red the whole topic I don't understand nobody tilted about this figure : 1857.It is said monatesah (or meetsih i believe) is born that year. What year was she taken prisoner... . So we now admit that she was 11 when presented to Custer and slept with him untill she was 13 something. The mistress role seems to be undisputed here except for the fathering part of GAC. I red many above writing that she was a comfort woman by choice... For status or for material benefits. That there was no rape. Yeah right. 11. Please reconsider. Surely women mature much earlier living in vivid air on the plains but any white could see that he was going under his civilisation standards and that of the cheyenne's known for their chastity and extended courtship and marriage customs. So i don't know if this confirms she was handed over (or captured by the 7th) and not cheyenne to start with, it does confirm my views of GAC one again. Concerning DC's claim that she was breast feeding thus infertile do you do breast feeding when you're eleven year's old? As I know nothing about breast feeding no doubt you can explain. thank you merci always learning a lot on this board wolf
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Post by Melani on Sept 2, 2009 11:36:37 GMT -6
wolfgang, I think the date 1857 must be an error, and I am surprised nobody commented on it, but then I didn't notice it either. I seriously doubt that Monaseetah was only 11 when she was captured at Washita. If she was born in 1847, she would have been 21, which is more like it. It is pretty easy to make that sort of error. Plus the story is that she had been married previously--she would not have been married at 11. It is also well-documented that she was pregnant when captured, and that her baby was born around early January, 1869, when she had been with the Seventh for about a month or a little longer. Surely there would have been some comment about a pregnant 11-year-old, but while the pregnancy and the baby were much discussed, nobody seemed to find it odd. Therefore I would assume the date is an error.
So obviously the first baby couldn't have been Custer's, but she was with the Seventh for several months afterwards, and no, breast-feeding is not a totally dependable method of birth control. I'm afraid dc doesn't really know what he is talking about there, even though he managed to find some info on it. There are too many variables among individuals and their circumstances for him to say that it was absolutely impossible for Monaseetah to become pregnant while breastfeeding. Any woman who depends on breastfeeding for birth control is likely to end up with a lot of kids. There were often prohibitions against husbands sleeping with breastfeeding wives, which is a much better way to prevent pregnancy. And I'm not real sure dc is an expert on Cheyenne child-rearing practices while being held captive by the cavalry; I know I'm not.
In Touched By Fire, Louise Barnett goes into some detail about Monaseetah, commenting on Custer's glowing description of her and the fact that when sent on a mission to her tribe, she returned to her captors voluntarily, but her aunt Mahwissa did not, as well as the story about shooting her husband in the knee (p. 194-197). She just doesn't come off sounding like a poor cowering victim, but rather a strong personality who was determined to make the best of her situation. She was described as an interpreter, but apparently didn't speak English, and she was the woman (wife?) of the soldier chief, which gave her some status. Not sure if you could call that "Stockholm Syndrome" or not.
In Washita, Jerome Greene says that the captive women and children "fully expected to be executed by the soldiers" and were relieved to find that that was not the case (p.169). He quotes Benteen as saying that Custer cohabited with Monaseetah until the summer of 1869, which is plenty of time for her to have become pregnant, breast-feeding or not.
According to Greg Michno in A Fate Worse Than Death, white women captured by the Cheyenne were often gang-raped and killed, sometimes kept as slaves, and sometimes taken as wives by a particular warrior, who may have been kind or not, and whose other wives may have been kind or not. If that was what the captive women expected, the opportunity to form liaisons with individual officers in return for improved conditions may not have seemed like a bad idea. It was certainly a coercive situation, and might be described as rape, but that word has a violent connotation that I don't think entirely applies to this case.
There are also stories that Monaseetah considered herself Custer's wife and felt abandoned by him, and did not marry again until after his death, and that she was somewhat shunned by the Cheyenne for having his child. She may have had a half-white child, but whether it was Custer's is pretty hard to say--he was treated for gonorrhea at West Point, as observed above, and he never had any children with Libbie, though not for want of trying! However, that also is not conclusive evidence that he couldn't father children.
So in the absence of DNA testing, I doubt we're going to find out for sure, but endless speculation on all kinds of topics is what keeps us all coming back here.
I don't think Custer knocked Monaseetah's teeth out--surely Benteen would have mentioned that with relish! And I certainly hope those are not really Monaseetah's teeth--I doubt they are.
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Post by bc on Sept 2, 2009 12:02:13 GMT -6
Now we can add Monaseetah's child to the list of exhumations. Better have the DNA lab reserved for a while. Might as well exhume Keogh to make sure he is Irish and not Scotch.
bc
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Post by wolfgang911 on Sept 3, 2009 5:19:49 GMT -6
Mel I agree with you totally with what you've written above except I still doubt the age of monaseetah; I came up with the number as while you were fighting with DC I saw it written on a more lively indian board and on you tube. Comments by Rez Indians saying custer raped a 13 year old. well now we find numbers from 11 to 21. I bet saheyala has a clue to it, hopes she checks back.
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Post by Melani on Sept 3, 2009 8:18:00 GMT -6
She was described as being about 17, and I'd say that was a good guess--I doubt she would have been married at 13, either--that seems a little young even for those times. Her cousin Magpie was married to George Bent, and there was a wedding photo taken; let me check the dates and get back. Magpie was definitely an adult in the picture; of course, that doesn't mean much of anything in regard to her cousin's age, but they might have been fairly close.
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Post by Melani on Sept 4, 2009 12:20:03 GMT -6
The picture of Magpie and George Bent is dated c. 1867. Maybe the date given for Monaseetah was a misreading of 1851; that would have made her the "about 17" mentioned.
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Post by Diane Merkel on Mar 27, 2011 11:33:58 GMT -6
. . . I downloaded "The West Breaks in General Custer" this morning and am, so far, quite enjoying it. GAC's behaviour is really striking in that period of 1866-67 ... was it all comedown from being a "lofty" major general to lieutenant colonel? The author also makes another point that I found interesting is that as a general, and even as a staff captain, GAC had little to do with the common soldier and never actually learned to work with them, whereas as an LTC, he had to kind of learn on the fly ... with much less dedicated troopers. Interesting stuff, indeed! Leyton McLean "Leyton McLean" was the name Tricia first used on these boards. The article she sites can be found here: www.kancoll.org/khq/1970/70_2_millbrook.htm
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Post by Diane Merkel on Mar 27, 2011 12:40:36 GMT -6
Hi Saheyala Do you have any information about where Monasetah lived from 1869? . . . Gary It is interesting that a simple, direct question was never answered: Where was Monahsetah after 1869? Someone else has just asked. I would appreciate any information available (fact, not romanticized fiction, please) and would be interested to know if anyone has attempted to visit her grave as described in saheyala's post of June 19, 2009.
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Post by "Hunk" Papa on Mar 28, 2011 9:18:56 GMT -6
Hi Saheyala Do you have any information about where Monasetah lived from 1869? . . . Gary It is interesting that a simple, direct question was never answered: Where was Monahsetah after 1869? Someone else has just asked. I would appreciate any information available (fact, not romanticized fiction, please) and would be interested to know if anyone has attempted to visit her grave as described in saheyala's post of June 19, 2009. Diane, I don't have anything concrete, but in her paper "Mo-Nah-Se-Tah: Fact or Fiction" in the CBHMA Symposium of June 22, 1990, Barbara Zimmerman states that after the Washita, the Cheyenne girl acted as an interpreter for Custer on the rest of the 1868-69 winter campaign. She was with him until June 13 1869 when she was 'returned to her people' from Fort Hays. When Stone Forehead fled north in 1874/5 she was with his band, so is likely to have been with him since 1869. She married a white man named Isaac in 1877 and they had several children. She died in Oklahoma in January 1921. This can all be found in "Custer and the Cheyenne" by Louis Kraft though there are references in other publications. "Hunk"
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