Strong Women: Cathay Williams

Sometimes the title "warrior woman" is more than just a metaphor.

I mentioned Cathay Williams in passing in my piece on New Mexico's Buffalo Soldiers a few weeks ago (and a couple of years ago). Her story is so unique that she deserves her own post.

Her father was a free man, but her mother was enslaved, and so she was born enslaved — in 1844, as nearly as anyone can tell — in Independence, Missouri. It appears she took the name of her birthplace seriously.

She spent her childhood as a "house slave" on a plantation owned by a man named Johnson, in the area of Jefferson City. In 1861, however, when she was seventeen, Union forces arrived in Missouri and took control of Jefferson City. Young Ms. Williams saw an opportunity, and she took it.

The U.S. military was busily pressing young Black men, slaves and former slaves, into service on behalf of the Union. In the U.S., some definitions of "freedom" never change. But freedwomen were regarded as suitable cannon fodder, as well, even though they were relegated to supporting, rather than combat, roles. And seventeen-year-old Cathay Williams was no exception: Because, as a slave, she was property rather than a person, she was now classified as "contraband," giving Union forces the right to seize and dispose of her as they saw fit. That "disposition" turned out the be service in the 8th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

That service was the catalyst by which Cathay Williams became William Cathay, Buffalo Soldier.

On November 15, 1866, one William Cathay reported for a three-year enlistment in the United States Regular Army in St. Louis, Missouri identifying himself as a cook, aged 22. Save two notable exceptions, the unit — indeed, the entire machinery of the U.S. Army — accepted William Cathay as a free Black man, and as a soldier. Two members of the regiment, one Cathay Williams's cousin and the other a friend, knew the truth. They kept her secret.

Historical accounts of her service have not been kind, focusing on her struggles with illness and various unidentified medical conditions. Interestingly, nothing is known of the illnesses and medical conditions of the other soldiers in her regiment, all of whom were men, yet even contemporary accounts of her service carry more than a whiff of gender bias, as though her health problems somehow invalidate her contributions because they vindicate the notion that women are unsuited for combat. Nonetheless, those health problems ultimately brought her to New Mexico, making her a part of the state's history. 

Shortly after enlisting, "William Cathay" contracted smallpox. It appears that there is no conclusive breakdown of the rate of smallpox among his fellow enlistees in the 38th U.S. Infantry, nor of death rates by cause. What is known is that, of 1,307 enlistees, there were 237 deaths, mostly from disease — a mortality rate of more than 18%. Since "William Cathay" was not among those 237, we know that every one of the dead was male, which raises questions about assumptions then and now about who was really the weaker sex. At any rate, William Cathay was hospitalized and treated, and ultimately recovered enough to return to active duty with his unit, which had been sent to New Mexico.

In New Mexico, the 38th U.S. Infantry, one of the "colored" regiments, played its role as government proxies, one-half of a conflict between "expendables" in the genocidal campaigns of the Indian Wars (declared and otherwise). For the federal government, it was win/win: Exterminate Indians, while suffering minimal loss of white (i.e., American) life. For the Indians and Black soldiers involved, it was a much more existential experience, and both sides developed what was probably an initially-grudging but eventually full-throated respect for their opponents' skill as warriors, great hearts, and brave spirits. It was our Indian ancestors, after all, who gave the all-Black regiments the name by which they are now known: Buffalo Soldiers.

While crossing the Midwest and Mountain West, William Cathay would develop additional medical problems requiring periodic hospitalization and treatment. There are reports that he contracted smallpox a second time; it has been established that Cathay Williams had diabetes later in life, and may well have already had it during that three-year tour of enlistment. Nonetheless, William Cathay made the arduous trek to the southwest corner of New Mexico, where he was stationed at Fort Bayard (about which I've written here and here).

Fort Bayard's campus included a military hospital. While stationed there, William Cathay fell ill once again (with what may have been the alleged second bout of smallpox). When he was admitted to the facility, he was finally discovered to be not William Cathay at all, but Cathay Williams. Nonetheless, military doctors treated her there, mustering her out on a disability discharge once she was well enough to be released. 

In New Mexico, a 25-year-old single Black woman suddenly had to make a life for herself, far from home, and far from the at least minimal resources and the warrior camaraderie that had been her life for the last three years. She found work as a cook in nearby Fort Union. Eventually, she moved to Colorado, where her mother, Martha Williams (now herself a freedwoman) ran an orphanage in Pueblo. She eventually married; her husband stole her life savings and her horses, and she had him arrested for it.  

In 1872, she moved to Trinidad, Colorado. She reportedly spent the rest of her life working again as a cook, and taking jobs as a nurse and a seamstress. She was finally diagnosed with diabetes, and her toes were amputated as a result of the circulatory damage it caused. Despite the disabilities, despite her true combat service, and despite the fact that white women were afforded military pensions, the U.S. Army denied Cathay Williams her pension. 

Ultimately, Cathay Williams returned to New Mexico, settling in Raton, just over the New Mexico/Colorado border. She ran a boarding house there until her death in 1924, the year of my father's birth. She was buried in an unmarked grave, and its location is reportedly still unknown.

Raton is not that far. Someday, we may need to make a trip up that way. You never know what we might find.




Copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.