Buffalo Soldiers (after 1877) (Cathay Williams)
This is a formal essay and you need an introduction (with a thesis statement), body, and conclusion paragraphs. You must also use at least one academic source.
ANSWER
Buffalo Soldiers
Cathay Williams or William Cathay as was referred to as in the army was the first black woman to enlist in the army and the only one known to have served in the United States disguised as a man. This was at the time Civil War was raging on and at the same time war with the Indians in the West. By the end of the Civil War 186,000 black soldiers had participated with 38,000 killed in action (BuffaloSoldier.org). Before the 1948 law that allowed women service in the military, only Cathay was known to have served in the military. In 1875, a journalist discovered her story and published it on the St Louis Daily Times on 2nd January 1876. In the story, using her own words, Cathay says that “I want to get along and not be a burden to my friends or relatives” (BuffaloSoldier.org), a sincere view of courage and feminism. This essay studies Cathay Williams courageous story and how it exemplifies a myriad of ways in which oppressed people, shunned and referred to as contraband found ways to survive and remain in the history books as legends we look up to till date.
After the military, Cathay resumed her woman status but her struggles with the United States was not yet over even though she had moved to Trinidad. In 1889 she was hospitalised for about one and a half years but her condition was not documented. In 1891, she applied for a pension based on her military services which shed light on the fact that women indeed did serve as soldiers. The application was sworn before the County Clerk at the age of 41 where she stated that she had taken the alias William Cathay to serve in the military, Company A of the 38th United States Infantry for two years (BuffaloSoldier.org). In the claim, she revealed that she suffered from deafness and also neuralgia and rheumatism, all contracted in the army. She declared that she was eligible for a pension having served in the army and having no means to sustain herself any longer. In another declaration, a month later, she cited the contraction of smallpox in the army which eventually led to her inability to hear after swimming in the Rio Grande River marching to New Mexico. This led to push and pull situation between Cathay’s lawyers and the clerks at the Pension Bureau in charge. It did not help that her claim had date discrepancies and that she was illiterate and could not account to the details herself. Researchers have suggested that it was also possible she could have been ailing from memory loss and thus could not account for everything that happened during her tenure with extreme accuracy (Sheldon 1995). A doctor assigned to her case in 1891 observed that she did not suffer deafness and similarly, no physical changes in her joints, muscles or tendon to indicate neuralgia or rheumatism. However, neuralgia is a problem of the nerves and not the muscles so his competence has been questioned (Sheldon 1995). The doctor also noticed amputation on all her toes but did not bother to ask or document the reason. This led to the eventual dismissal of her claim and her story came to an ultimate end where she supposedly died by 1893.
While a lot of information has been left to speculation, it is clear that Cathay Williams was a pioneer on a lot of things. First, she dared to join the army not only as a woman but a black woman, then she went ahead and served for two years doing the things that men did and keeping her secret. Later after her service, she also had the courage to go head to head with a department of the government claiming what she deserved. All this, at a time when black women were considered powerless and uneducated. Her story is a story of a pioneer and perhaps, feminism in it most basic and survival form.
Works Cited
Buffalo Soldier Organisation. Female Buffalo Soldier- With Documents. Retrieved on 2nd August 2020 from http://www.buffalosoldier.org/CathayWilliamsFemaleBuffaloSoldierWithDocuments.htm
Sheldon, K. (1995). A Brief History of Black Women In The Military. Minerva’s Bulletin Board, 3(4), 6.
