November 8, 1874
On this day two kidnapped immigrant girls, Julia and Addie German, were found by soldiers near McClellen Creek, Texas. They’d been kidnapped by a small band of Cheyenne 28 days earlier in September.
The German family (sometimes spelled Germain) had been attacked by Chief Medicine Water and 17 members of the Kicking Horse “Dog Soldiers” while camped along the stage route just 20 miles from Fort Wallace in southwestern Kansas.
Bare bones Fort Wallace in the 1860s
John and Julia German and three of their seven children were killed. The four younger German girls, Catherine, 17; Sophie, 12, Julia, 7 and Nancy Adelaide (Addie), 5, were taken captive. Held together for a time in Chief Medicine Water’s camp, the two youngest girls were eventually traded to Cheyenne medicine man, Grey Beard.
Many historians believe the brutal attack on the Germans was in retaliation for the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, fought 225 miles away that past June. Part of a larger struggle over the wholesale slaughter of the bison, it had pitted an alliance of plains tribes against several dozen buffalo hunters and freighters.
The week-long siege of the Texas Panhandle trading post featured a number of famous protagonists including legendary scout 
and buffalo hunter, Billy Dixon, a young Bat Masterson, (above) Comanche medicine man Isa-tai and Quanah Parker, (right) whose mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was captured by the Comanches at the age of 10.
In early November, Lt. Frank D. Baldwin was accompanying a caravan of empty wagons to the Army supply camp at Washita River. When scouts spotted Grey Beard’s camp, however, Baldwin planned a daring assault, hiding a majority of his forces in the empty wagons.
The 300 or so Cheyenne retreated in the face of the surprise attack. According to most accounts, the two youngest German girls, Julia and 
Addie, were left behind while the older girls, Catherine and Sophie were taken by the escaping warriors. Fortunately along came Dixon, (right) veteran scout from Adobe Walls, and discovered the children in the abandoned camp.
Suffering from malnutrition and exposure, Julia and Addie were initially taken to Camp Washita and later moved to Fort Leavenworth to recover.
Sorting out the several versions of their ordeal, apparently the four young captives were together for the first two weeks of captivity. Fearing they were being pursued by soldiers, their captors, for reasons known only to them, abandoned the two older girls out on the prairie. The same band, however, picked up the starving pair some days later, perhaps discovering they had outrun the soldiers. The four were again briefly reunited before the younger two girls were turned over to Grey Beard.
By January of 1875, principals in the Red River War, General Thomas Neill and then Colonel Nelson Miles, were seeking a peace deal with the southern plains tribes. Enlisting the help of Chief Stone Calf, (right, with his wife in 1871) returning from exile in Mexico, they convinced him the deal depended on the return of the two older German sisters. Stone Calf apparently then put the girls under his protection.
Finally released in March, the sisters were asked to identify those responsible for killing their family and abusing them in captivity. Among 
those named were Medicine Water (left) and his 33-year-old wife Mochi (Buffalo Calf). The pair had also been involved in what became known as the Kansas “Lone Tree Massecre,” involving the killing of six members of a survey team that same summer.
A total of 35 Cheyenne, along with 39 other Native Americans, were imprisoned following the surrender. Medicine Water and Mochi were held at Florida’s Fort Marion until 1878. Mocha (below) was the only Native American woman held as a prisoner of war.
A survivor of Colorado’s Sand Creek Massacre, described in detail in Dee Brown’s epic “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” Mochi’s first husband, Standing Bear, and her father were killed, along with 75 Southern Cheyenne. Mostly old men, women and children, the peaceful Black Kettle camp was flying a white flag at the time of the attack.
Following their release Mochi and Medicine Water went to Clinton, Oklahoma. Mochi died just three years later of tuberculosis contracted while in prison. Medicine Water outlived his wife by nearly half a century. He died in 1926, at age 90 while living on a land grant in Watonga, Oklahoma.
Grey Beard, considered a leader of the insurrection and another survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, was also sent to Fort Marion. After attempting suicide in transit, he was shot and killed while trying to escape.
Sophie, left, was 12 when kidnapped, and Addie, was 5.
The four German sisters were finally reunited at Fort Leavenworth. 
Congress set aside $10,000. about $230,000 today, for their care and education. They lived with a Kansas family until each reached 21 when they received a fourth share. All the girls married, settling in Kansas, Colorado and Texas.
Lt. Baldwin (left) was awarded a second Congressional Medal of Honor for their rescue, only one of 20 recipients awarded the medal twice. Retiring in 1906 as a Major General, he died in 1923 at the age of 80 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Fort Wallace Museum, Wallace, Kansas, an assembly of four vintage buildings is two miles from the actual location of the historic fort. Little remains at the original site except the post cemetery. Buildings of the period at the museum include the Sunderland-Poe building which houses larger exhibits include a restored Conestoga wagons, sleighs and farm implements, Weskan Depot and Pond Creek Stage Station as well a modern exhibit building.
A donation of $7 per person is suggested for admission. Open summers April through October, 9 to 5 Monday through Saturday and 1 to 5 Sunday. Winter hours are November through March, 10 to 4 Monday through Saturday, weather permitting. For more information go to ftwallace.com, e-mail museum@ftwallace.com or call (785) 891-3564.
© Text Only – 2019 – Headin’ West LLC – All photos – public domain or fair use.
Head On West strives for historic accuracy and uses a number of sources considered reliable. When research differs on significant facts, the various points of view will be cited.