Mochi's War: The Tragedy of Sand Creek

Colorado Territory in 1864 wasn't merely the wild west, it was a land in limbo while the Civil War raged in the east and politics swirled around its potential admission to the union. The territorial governor, John Evans, had ambitions on the national stage should statehood occur--and he was joined in those ambitions by a local pastor and erstwhile Colonel in the Colorado militia, John Chivington. The decision was made to take a hard line stance against any Native Americans who refused to settle on reservations--and in the fall of 1864, Chivington set his sights on a small band of Cheyenne under the chief Black Eagle, camped and preparing for the winter at Sand Creek.

When the order to fire on the camp came on November 28, one officer refused, other soldiers in Chivington's force, however, immediately attacked the village, disregarding the American flag, and a white flag of surrender that was run up shortly after the soldiers commenced firing.

In the ensuing "battle" fifteen members of the assembled militias were killed and more than 50 wounded Between 150 and 200 of Black Kettle’s Cheyenne were estimated killed, nearly all elderly men, women and children.

As with many incidents in American history, the victors wrote the first version of history--turning the massacre into a heroic feat by the troops. Soon thereafter, however, Congress began an investigation into Chivington's actions and he was roundly condemned. His name still rings with infamy in Colorado and American history. Mochi’s War explores this story and its repercussions into the last part of the nineteenth Century from the perspective of a Cheyenne woman whose determination swept her into some of the most dramatic and heartbreaking moments in the conflicts that grew through the West in the aftermath of Sand Creek.

About the Author :
Howard Kazanjian is an award-winning producer and entertainment executive who has been producing feature films and television programs for more than twenty-five years. While vice president of production for Lucasfilm Ltd., he produced two of the highest grossing films of all time.

Chris Enss is an award-winning screen writer who has written for television, short subject films, live performances, and for the movies, and is the author or co-author of numerous books, including The Death Row All Stars—soon to be a motion picture— with Howard Kazanjian.

Review :
Historian Enss and Kanzanjian succeed in personalizing one of America’s most troubling memories, the brutal and unprovoked massacre of a sleeping village of Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples at Sand Creek (present-day Colorado) by troops of the Colorado Volunteers in November 1864. This still controversial military engagement sets the background in which Mochi, a Cheyenne woman, lost her entire family and barely survived herself, by killing a soldier and then fleeing her camp. She reinvented herself as a Dog Soldier and member of the Bowstring Society, one of the few females to claim association in these elite Cheyenne warrior groups. She remarried, to Medicine Water, himself a military leader, and they in turn brutally raided and avenged themselves on American soldiers and settlers alike for over a decade. The authors have again collaborated to write Western history in an accurate yet accessible manner for mainstream readers. They provide a graphic account of the Plains Indian Wars from 1864 to 1875. Highly recommended for adult readers of Western and Native American history, this biographical account provides a counterpoint to the many works that have mythologized such women as Pocahontas and Sacajawea.