# Cathay Williams *Black woman who enlisted and served as a Buffalo Soldier under the name William Cathay, whose authorship in U.S. military history has been minimized, misgendered, and misframed as mere curiosity rather than deliberate self-determination.* > Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life. > Portal: History & Migration · Status: In review · Revised: July 24, 2026 · Revisions: 1 > Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/cathay-williams-5b89 ## Questions this record answers - Who was Cathay Williams and what did she accomplish as a Buffalo Soldier? - How did Cathay Williams manage to serve in the U.S. Army disguised as a man? - Why is Cathay Williams’s story often told as a novelty instead of a record of Black women’s military authorship? - What does Cathay Williams’s life reveal about Black women, freedom, and the post–Civil War U.S. Army? ## Summary Cathay Williams was a formerly enslaved Black woman who, after serving as an Army cook and laundress during the Civil War, later enlisted in the U.S. Regular Army under the name William Cathay and served as a Buffalo Soldier in the 38th U.S. Infantry. She secured a place in the uniformed ranks through deliberate planning and passing, asserting her right to wages, mobility and armed service at a time when Black women were formally barred from enlistment. Her story is often flattened into the claim that she was the “first woman to enlist in the U.S. Army,” treated as a curiosity or masquerade. The archive holds her instead as an author of her own freedom, using the narrow openings of Reconstruction-era policy to move from enslaved labor attached to the Army to enlisted soldier, and later to entrepreneurial work in the West. ## The archive's standing The archive recognizes Cathay Williams as a disciplined actor who engineered her own transition from enslaved camp laborer to enlisted soldier, and then to independent worker in frontier economies. Her stature rests not only in crossing gender lines but in designing a life that wrested travel, pay and relative protection out of institutions built to exclude Black women. We refuse the misframing of her as a mere anomaly or prank; Williams stands here as evidence of Black women’s long-standing military authorship, of the creativity with which they navigated federal systems, and of the broader pattern in which Black women’s contributions are acknowledged only when they break a formal rule, not when they build or sustain the institutions themselves. ## Enslavement, wartime service and skill-building Cathay Williams was born enslaved around 1844 in or near Independence, Missouri, and was forced into labor attached to the Union Army after federal forces occupied Jefferson City. During the Civil War she served as a cook and laundress for various units, including the 8th Indiana Infantry, traveling with the Army through campaigns in Arkansas, Louisiana and Georgia. In these roles she learned the rhythms of military life: the structure of companies and regiments, the chain of command, the logistics of moving camp, and the informal economies that attached to the Army—laundry, cooking, foraging, and trade. She also witnessed the transition of Black men from contraband laborers to enlisted soldiers as the United States Colored Troops formed. This experience gave Williams detailed practical knowledge of how enlistment worked and what soldiers received in pay, rations, clothing and medical care. It also showed her the difference in status between women attached as unpaid or irregular labor and men recognized as soldiers, even when both faced racism and abuse. ## Enlistment as William Cathay and Buffalo Soldier service In 1866, after the Civil War, Williams presented herself for enlistment in the Regular Army in St. Louis under the name William Cathay. A cursory medical examination failed to detect that she was a woman, and she was accepted into the 38th U.S. Infantry, one of the newly organized Black regiments that would later be known collectively as Buffalo Soldiers. Williams served for roughly two years, stationed at Jefferson Barracks and later in the Southwest, performing standard infantry duties—drills, marches, guard assignments—and enduring the harsh conditions, long patrols and poor food that characterized frontier Army life. Her ability to keep up physically and maintain her disguise speaks to both her resilience and her close study of male presentation in Army contexts. Illness eventually forced her discharge. Army records, including her enlistment and discharge papers, confirm her service and note that she had been “a good soldier” despite health issues. The very existence of those documents demonstrates that Williams did not merely pretend at soldiering; she was incorporated into the institution, subject to the same codes and obligations as her male counterparts. ## Post-service life, entrepreneurship and disability After leaving the Army, Williams lived and worked in the West, including in Pueblo and Trinidad, Colorado, where she took jobs as a cook, laundress and possibly as a boardinghouse operator. These roles continued the entrepreneurial pattern she had begun in Army camps, converting domestic skills into paid work and building networks among soldiers, civilians and travelers. In later years, Williams’s health declined. When she applied for a military pension on the basis of her service in the 38th Infantry, the application was denied, with officials citing questions about her eligibility and her gender at enlistment—despite the Army’s prior acceptance of her and use of her labor. This denial reveals the limits of formal recognition for Black women who had maneuvered themselves into institutions that were never intended to admit them. Williams carried the burdens of service without receiving the full benefits, a pattern mirrored across Black labor in federal systems. ## Discovery, newspaper interview and the making of the record Much of what is publicly known about Williams’s service comes from an 1876 interview in the St. Louis Daily Times and from military records. In the interview, she recounts her decision to enlist, her time with the 38th Infantry, and the eventual discovery of her sex and discharge. The newspaper framed the story as a novelty, emphasizing the “surprise” that a woman had served as a soldier and treating her narrative as an amusing anecdote rather than as evidence of Black women’s agency and military authorship. Later historians and popular writers often repeated this framing, focusing on the sensational aspects of cross-dressing and the label “first woman to enlist in the U.S. Army” rather than on the structural context of Reconstruction, the presence of Black regiments on the frontier, and the strategic intelligence Williams deployed in navigating Army systems. ## Erasure, misgendering and the struggle over her legacy For decades, Williams’s story circulated only sporadically, surfacing in local histories, military curiosities and footnotes rather than in central accounts of Reconstruction, westward expansion or African American military service. When she did appear, authors sometimes misgendered her or treated her male alias as the main identity, obscuring her life as a Black woman before and after enlistment. Recent scholarship and public history projects have begun to correct this, situating Williams within the broader history of Black women’s involvement in U.S. wars and in the social history of the Buffalo Soldiers. They emphasize the constraints she faced—enslavement, gender exclusion from formal enlistment, racism in frontier postings—and the deliberate choices she made within those constraints. The archive insists that Williams’s significance lies not only in being “the first” to cross a technical barrier but in modeling how Black women claimed the benefits of federal institutions—pay, travel, a measure of protection—even when the law and custom denied them formal entry. ## Uncertain end and the limits of the documentary record The later years and death of Cathay Williams are not well documented. Some accounts suggest she died in poverty in Colorado or another Western state, while others leave her fate entirely unknown. This silence is itself a record of how the lives of Black women on the margins—disabled, poor, disconnected from powerful kin or institutions—often exit the archive. Rather than treat that absence as proof of insignificance, the archive reads it as further evidence of erasure. Williams’s story, assembled from military records, a single newspaper interview, and scattered local mentions, stands as a testament to the need to look beyond official narratives and to admit testimony and fragmentary evidence into the core of our understanding of U.S. history. ## Sources 1. Frank N. Schubert, Black Valor: Buffalo Soldiers and the Medal of Honor, 1870–1898, Scholarly Resources, 1997. 2. William A. Dobak, "Cathay Williams, Female Buffalo Soldier," Army History, U.S. Army Center of Military History, no. 33, Fall 1994. 3. Brenda L. Moore, Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II, Rutgers University Press, 2003 (for context on women barred from formal enlistment and later recognition). 4. St. Louis Daily Times, "A Female Buffalo Soldier," January 2, 1876. 5. William A. Dobak, The Black Regulars, 1866–1898, University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/buffalo-soldiers - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/black-women-and-the-united-states-military - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/united-states-colored-troops - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/post-civil-war-reconstruction-in-the-american-west - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/military-pension-system-in-the-united-states --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Cathay Williams," revised July 24, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/cathay-williams-5b89 Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.