Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Kahoton Make Noise by Striking John Mooers was the son of Hazen P. Mooers and Wakanditaniwiŋ, a Mdewakanton Dakota known as Lightning Appears Woman. Kahoton, also known as John, was born in 1822. He was born near Red Wing’s village at the mouth of the Cannon River, and lived there with his mother and their Dakota relatives until he was about fifteen years old.

Kahoton then joined his father and learned about the fur trade. One place that Kahoton lived while learning about the fur trade was Tínṫa Otuŋwe, which was also called Prairieville by Samuel Pond, and later was part of East Shakopee.

Kahoton’s parents, Hazen and Wakanditaniwiŋ, may or not been married in the Christian or cultural way.

A few years after Kahoton was born, Hazen married Maḣpiya-ḣota Wiŋ, also known as Grey Cloud Woman II, in 1825. Although Kahoton was Maḣpiya-ḣota Wiŋ’s stepson, he made close ties to both of his parents and their extended families. Kahoton was raised among his mother’s family and community. He was a member of the Sacred Lodge (Waken wacipi), an organization whose members were sworn to secrecy. According to Thomas Robertson, the Wakenwacipi “had been handed down from time unknown.”

On June 30, 1845 Kahoton married Mazasnawiŋ Iron Woman Rosalie Ferniere. Starting in 1846, Kahoton lived with his parents in a house not far from the Samuel and Cordelia Eggleston Pond’s cabin. The cabin was north of the mission house, between there and the Rivière Saint Pierre. When Hazen and Maḣpiya-ḣota Wiŋ moved out in the spring of 1849, Rosalie and Kahoton continued to live in Tínṫa Otuŋwe, and he was an Indian farmer for the government until the spring of 1853.

By 1853, Kahoton and Hazen, who was the Indian farmer at Black Dog’s Village, were on board with a large load of lumber and other supplies for the new fort and agencies. They headed for the Lower Sioux Agency to help build the two new agencies on the reservation.

At some point, Kahoton and Rosalie separated, and later Rosalie married Pierre Felix. Pierre died on November 22, 1876. They had a child, Henriette Felix.

Kahoton was a clerk for James W. Lynd in 1855.

A transcript of Kahoton (John) Mooers’s affidavit which was written that year noted:

No. 183 Affidavit of John Mooers [year was 1855].

I, John Mooers, on oath say that I reside at Red Wood in Minn. Ter. I am 34 years of age. I am a half blood of the Mdewakanton band. My father being a white man & my mother a full blood of said band. Twelve years ago I married Rosalia Freniere who is three fourths Indian & one fourth white. Her mother being a full blood Mdewakanton & her father half white & Yankton. We have four children, now living, Moses, age 7 yrs., Mary Ann & Jane Ann, twins, age 5 years; James H., age one month. These children are five eights blood of said band & live with me.

In May 1858 the probate court of Brown County took up the matter of appointing a guardian for the three children, James, Mary, and Moses Mooers. Jane had already died. A guardian was needed, according to the Brown County Journal, to clear the title to property owned by the Mooers children, “half breeds residing at the lower agency.”

In 1862, Kahoton lived in the Redwood Valley near the Redwood Crossing. He was active in the war protecting the captives and spent the winter of 1862-63 in the Dakota camp at Fort Snelling. Kahoton became a scout for the army from 1863 to 1867, then settled near Lake Benton in Lincoln County, Minnesota.

Kahoton Make Noise by Striking John Mooers married a second wife, Mary, sister of Thomas Robinson. Kahoton farmed, and his “mode of dress and manner of living were very similar to those of the white people.”

Kahoton’s mother “lived in a tepee placed just a short distance” from his son’s house. When his mother died, she was buried in a “sheltered place among the trees.”

Kahoton Make Noise by Striking John Mooers died on January 1, 1899. He was survived by his second wife, Mary, and his three children, who, according to her own obituary, moved back to Minnesota after her husband’s death to “spend the rest of her days near her childhood home” and died “at the reservation” in November 1905.

Maggie, Mary, and Kahoton

Kahoton was active in the U.S.-Dakota War, protecting the captives. When he heard what was happening on August 18, 1862, Kahoton sent a messenger to the nearby house of the Reynolds family. The family, however, did not believe the messenger’s story about the attack on the Lower Agency, so Kahoton came himself and reiterated his message, telling everyone to leave as soon as possible.

A servant, Mary Emilia Schwandt, was one of the people caught in the action. Mary was born in the district of Brandenburg, Germany, in March 1848. In 1862 they came to Minnesota in two wagons drawn by oxen, journeying up the beautiful Minnesota valley and settling above the mouth of Beaver Creek, near Middle Creek in what is now the town of Flora.

According to Mary, “We had just had our breakfast at the Reynolds’s and Mary Anderson was just putting on the wash boiler preparing to do the week’s washing. Suddenly John Mooers, a half-breed, came running in and said we should all get away as fast as we could, for the Indians had broken out and were killing all the settlers as fast as they could.”

Mary and Dakota woman, Maggie Good Thunder (later Maggie Brass), who when she was young was called Snásna (Tinkling or Ringing Sound) ended up together.

Maggie Brass was a 23-year-old Mdewakanton Dakota woman. Maggie could read and write, and she became a Christian. For Mary, this made her more acceptable, according to Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola in The War in Words: Reading the Dakota Conflict through the Captivity Literature. Maggie later separated from Wakinyanwaste Andrew Good Thunder, and she then married Charles Brass (Maza-ze-ze-dan).

During the war in 1862, Maggie heard what happened. She came and looked over Mary, who was a 14-year-old German American. Then Maggie went and returned with an Indian pony, which she gave to the captor and then took Mary by the hand and brought her to Maggie’s tioti. Mary noted “I was adopted into the tribe and had to call her mamma, and she dressed me in Indian clothing and made pretty moccasins for me.”

Mary said, “I always tried to do all she told me and to please her in all things. There was a bond of sympathy between us because she had just lost her oldest daughter.” Maggie’s seven-year-old daughter, Lydia, had died six weeks earlier. Maggie arranged to have Mary released from her captors and then protected her from harm for the remainder of the war by hiding her and dressing her in Dakota clothing.

After seven weeks of captivity Mary was released at Camp Release.

Mary remembered, “My Indian mother parted from me at Camp Release and we did not meet again for thirty-two years, but have met many times later, and I received many nice letters from her.

“She loved me very much, and I have always felt a gratitude towards her which I could not express in words, for she saved me from a terrible fate when she bought me from my captor with her only pony.”

Bibliography

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle. The War in Words: Reading the Dakota Conflict through the Captivity Literature. University of Nebraska Press, 2009.