Mo-nah-se-tah or Mo-nah-see-tah (c. 1851 - 1922), aka Me-o-tzi, was the daughter of the Cheyenne

Cheyenne

Cheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...

 chief

Council of Forty-four

The Council of Forty-four was one of the two central institutions of traditional Cheyenne Indian tribal governance, the other being the military societies such as the Dog Soldiers...

 Little Rock

Little Rock (Cheyenne chief)

Little Rock was a council chief of the Wutapiu band of Southern Cheyennes. He was the only council chief who remained with Black Kettle following the Sand Creek massacre of 1864....

, who was killed on November 28, 1868 in the Battle of Washita River

Battle of Washita River

The Battle of Washita River occurred on November 27, 1868 when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th U.S...

 when the camp of Chief Black Kettle

Black Kettle

Chief Black Kettle was a leader of the Southern Cheyenne after 1854, who led efforts to resist American settlement from Kansas and Colorado territories. He was a peacemaker who accepted treaties to protect his people. He survived the Third Colorado Cavalry's Sand Creek Massacre on the Cheyenne...

, of which Little Rock was a member, was attacked by the 7th U.S. Cavalry under the command of Lt. Colonel (brevet Major General) George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1858, where he graduated last in his class...

. Mo-nah-se-tah was among the 53 Cheyenne women and children taken captive by the 7th Cavalry after the battle.

Allegedly, according to Captain Frederick Benteen

Frederick Benteen

Frederick William Benteen was a military officer during the American Civil War and then during the Black Hills War against the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne. He is notable for being in command of a battalion of the 7th U. S...

, chief of scouts Ben Clark, and Cheyenne oral history, Custer had a sexual relationship with Mo-nah-se-tah during the winter and early spring of 1868-1869. Mo-nah-se-tah gave birth to a child in January 1869, two months after the Washita battle; Cheyenne oral history alleges that she later bore a second child, fathered by Custer, in late 1869.

Battle of the Washita

At daybreak on November 27, 1868, the 7th U.S. Cavalry under the command of Lt. Colonel George Custer attacked a Cheyenne camp of 51 lodges on the Washita River in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Custer's troops were able to take control of the village quickly, but it took longer to quell all remaining resistance. Although some women and children were killed, as Custer acknowledged in his report of the battle, some measures were taken to protect noncombatants, with troops directed to take women and children who had been captured to a designated lodge in the village to be held under guard as the battle continued. One of the scouts, Raphael Romero, was sent to assure those women and children who had remained in their lodges during the attack that they would not be harmed. A total of fifty-three women and children were taken captive.

Account by White Cow Bull (Lakota)

In 1938, Joseph White Cow Bull, an Oglala Lakota veteran of the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Battle of the Little Bighorn

The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand and, by the Indians involved, as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, was an armed engagement between combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho people against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army...

, went with David Humphreys Miller to the Little Bighorn battlefield and recounted to him his recollections of the battle. Among his recollections:

While we were together in this village [on the Little Bighorn River

Little Bighorn River

The Little Bighorn River is a tributary of the Bighorn River in the United States in the states of Wyoming and Montana. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was fought on its banks in 1876, as well as the Battle of Crow Agency in 1887....

], I spent most of my time with the Shahiyela [Cheyenne] since I knew their tongue and their ways almost as well as my own. In all those years I had never taken a wife, although I had had many women. One woman I wanted was a pretty young Shahiyela named Monahseetah, or Meotxi as I called her. She was in her middle twenties but had never married any man of her tribe. Some of my Shahiyela friends said she was from the southern branch of their tribe, just visiting up north, and they said no Shahiyela could marry her because she had a seven-year-old son born out of wedlock and that tribal law forbade her getting married. They said the boy’s father had been a white soldier chief named Long Hair; he had killed her father, Chief Black Kettle [sic], in a battle in the south [Battle of the Washita] eight winters before, they said, and captured her. He had told her he wanted to make her his second wife, and so he had her. But after a while his first wife, a white woman, found her out and made him let her go.

Miller asked White Cow Bull, "Was this boy still with her here?" and White Cow Bull answered:

Yes, I saw him often around the Shahiyela camp. He was named Yellow Bird and he had light streaks in his hair. He was always with his mother in the daytime, so I would have to wait until night to try to talk to her alone. She knew I wanted to walk with her under a courting blanket and make her my wife. But she would only talk with me through the tepee cover and never came outside.