#60, Mennonite Library and Archives,
Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas
On that same day, November 15, 1894, he requested two cavalry companies with Hotchkiss guns to be sent from Colorado. He wrote, “The Friendlies must be protected in their rights and encouraged to continue in the Washington way, and being convinced that this can only be done by a display of force and the arrest of the principal men engaged in the disorders.”
And so, on November 25, troops came to Orayvi and arrested 19 Hostiles: Heevi’ima, Polingyawma, Masatiwa, Qotsventiwa, Piphongva, Lomahongewma, Lomayestiwa, Yukiwma, Tuvehoyiwma, Patupha, Qotsyawma, Sikyakeptiwa, Talagayniwa, Talasyawma, Nasingayniwa, Lomayawma, Tawalestiwa, Aqawsi, and Qoiwiso.
Because they were arrested by government troops, these men were taken first to Fort Defiance, and then to Alcatraz, a military installation on a harsh island of rock in San Francisco Harbor. These men spent nearly a year at Alcatraz because the government had once again resorted to its ultimate form of coercion at Hopi: military force.
On January 4, 1895, the San Francisco Call published a story under the headline “A Batch of Apaches.” The article stated, “Nineteen murderous-looking Apache Indians were landed at Alcatraz island yesterday morning.” The article misidentified the 19 Hopi men who had been arrested at Orayvi the previous November. The article is filled with racial stereotypes of murderous and “crafty redskins” who refused to live according to the “civilized ways of the white men.” In February, the same newspaper published another story about the “Moquis on Alcatraz.”
The article claimed:
“Uncle Sam has summarily arrested nineteen Moqui Indians…and taken them to Alcatraz island, all because they would not let their children go to school. But he has not done it unkindly and the life of the burnt-umber natives is one of ease, comparatively speaking. They have not hardship aside from the fact that they have been rudely snatched from the bosom of their families and are prisoners and prisoners they shall stay until they have learned to appreciate the advantage of education.”
In 1995, the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office began a project to record the history of the Alcatraz prisoners. It began with an article in the Tutuveni about the events leading to the arrest of the prisoners. As the San Francisco newspaper suggested, the men were imprisoned because they opposed the government’s program of forced education and assimilation. The Tutuveni article was based upon government records. Subsequent research uncovered these San Francisco newspaper articles. While they shed light onto the story of the Alcatraz prisoners, they are all told from the point of view of the white government and Anglos who supported the forced education program.
These viewpoints often reflected callous disregard for the human suffering of the Hopi prisoners. The San Francisco newspaper article wrote that the prisoners’ days were generally spent sawing large logs into shorter lengths. Occasionally, their work was interrupted by trips into San Francisco to visit the public schools, “so that they can see the harmlessness of the multiplication table in its daily application.” Their accommodations were the same as that of the white military prisoners, and their food was “like that of any ordinary second-class hotel.”
According to the Call, “It is even difficult to find work for them at times. They rise early, breakfast, go to work, if the weather is fine, eat their dinner at noon and then work all afternoon. This is followed by tea or a wholesome equivalent for it and then bed. Their taskmaster is a good-natured, well educated young man with a sympathetic understanding of their condition that makes it easy for him to deal with them and keeps them in even humor.”
