Amanda “Anna” Belle Brewster was born December 10, 1844, at Atlantic City, New Jersey. She went to live with her brother Daniel A. Brewster, who lived near Delphos, Kansas. She married a man named James Simeon Morgan on September 13, 1868.
June Namias, author of White Captives, described the young woman as “being tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion.”
On October 3, 1868, Anna Morgan was working in the field with her husband, James. A raiding band of Sioux attacked, wounded James, and carried Anna away. They tied her to her horse after brutally raping her. The Sioux, traveling back to their village, met a band of Cheyenne who already had a white captive, Sarah White. Anna was traded to the Cheyenne for horses, and remained captive with Sarah.
On November 27, 1868, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer attacked Chief Black Kettle’s village while Anna and Sarah were in Chief Whirlwind’s village downstream. They were taken away farther down river, as soon as the fighting began. June Namias noted, “When an ‘Indian chief’ proposed to Anna, she ‘married him, choosing the lesser of two evils.” Kansas historian, E.F. Hollibaugh stated, “Mrs. Morgan was of an aggressive nature and did not readily yield to their indignities, however in some instances the Cheyenne seemed to admire her courage and bravery.”
The Cheyennes released Anna from her captivity near Sweetwater Creek, Texas, to Lieutenant Colonel Custer’s 7th US Cavalry, and the 19th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry on March 22, 1869. Mrs. Courtenay, the colonel’s cook, took charge of the women by cleaning them up and gave them dresses to wear.
James, her husband, and her brother, Daniel, who had followed the Indians days and nights since her capture were there at her release. She returned with James Morgan back to Delphos, and she gave birth to a half-Indian son, Ira Arthur. Within two years the little boy took ill and died on April 30, 1871, just ten days after the birth of the Morgans' daughter, Mary.
Anna bore James two more sons, Claud and Glen, but their marriage was not a happy one; Anna is quoted as saying, "There were many things that I not spoken of. After I came back, the road seemed rough, and I often wished they had never found me." Eventually Anna with her three children left James, and went to live with her brother Daniel. James divorced her, and moved to Fruita, Colorado.
Anna lived under a lifelong stigma and became a recluse because of what happened to her, she was committed into Home of the Feeble Minded in Topeka, Kansas, later in life where she died at the age of 57 on July 11, 1902. Anna was buried next to her son Ira at Delphos, Kansas.
Bibliography:
Jeff Broome. Dog Soldier Justice.
Fort Collins, CO: Citizen Printing Company, 2003.
Jerome A. Greene. Washita: The U.S. Army and the Southern Cheyenne, 1867-1869.
Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Richard G. Hardorff. Washita Memories: Eyewitness Views of Custer's Attack on Black Kettle's Village.
Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.
E.F. Hollibaugh. Biographical History of Cloud County, Kansas.
Gloucester, UK: Andesite Press, 2015.
June Namias. White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
David L. Spotts. Campaigning with Custer 1868-69.
Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.
Joanna Stratton. Pioneer Women.
New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1981.
