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Sand Creek Massacre
Submitted to Genealogy Trails by
Christina Anthony
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Photo Source: Western
History Department of the Denver Public Library and may
be copyrighted. Use that does not fall
under fair use may require the permission of the Denver
Public Library.
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While the
Minnesota outrages were a count in the long indictment
against the Indians, the Sand Creek affair, two years
later, brought dishonor to the white man. This barbarity
was the culmination of a movement to avenge fearful
atrocities committed by the Cheyenne and Arapahoes.
Property and life were no-where secure. Cattle and horse
were run off by the savages, emigrants were ambushed and
killed, ranch houses were attacked, prisoners were
tortured, the bodies of the slain were mutilated, women
and children were carried away to an awful captivity.
For weeks, in the summer of 1864, no stages could pass
out or in upon the overland road. Such outrages, the
Colorado people said, were not longer to be borne, and,
if they could not have the protection of the military
forces of the United States, they would take matters
into their own hands, meet the foe with his own warfare
and deliver him a blow that he might not soon forget.
John Evans, of Pennsylvania-Quaker ancestry, for some
years a prominent citizen of Chicago, was appointed by
President Lincoln governor of the territory. In August,
1864, he issued a proclamation directing such friendly
Indians as were scattered over the plains to come into
the forts; others, he said, would be "pursued and
destroyed." All the citizens of Colorado, acting either
individually or in parties, were authorized to kill, as
enemies of the country, Indians wherever they might be
found remaining outside the places of rendezvous.
Property captured should belong to the captors. "All
good citizens" were urged "to do their duty for the
defense of their homes and families." |
A body of Cheyennes with
some Arapahoes, under White Antelope, Black Kettle and
other chiefs, were gathered together at Fort Lyon in
Colorado and had been assured, it was said, of the
protection of the troops. This for a time they enjoyed,
but he post passed to the command of another officer and
the Indians were told to go out upon the plains. They
formed a camp at the Bend of the Big Sandy, or Sand
Creek, about forty miles north of the fort, where they
were surprised at sunrise on November 29, 1864, by
Colonel Chivington advancing at the head of a force of
Colorado volunteers. He was a native of Ohio and had
been a man of peace. Indeed he had been a presiding
elder of the Methodist church and a missionary to the
Indians. But, enlisting with the territorial militia, he
led a body of "Pike's Peakers," who had fought like
demons against the Texas Rangers in New Mexico in 1862.
For these exploits he had been thanked by the
legislature, and by this time had become a true son of
Mars. Whatever his earlier sympathies, he was moved no
longer by any sentimental considerations in reference to
the aboriginal inhabitants of America. He called them
"red scoundrels." He "damned" any man who dared to wish
them well, and had been heard to say in a public speech
that it was a duty "to kill and scalp all, big and
little, for nits made lice." Various accounts of the
event have been given, but the truth seems to be that
Chivington knew that the Indians at Sand Creek had
expressed a desire for peace and that from one-half to
two-thirds of them were women and children. It is said
that some 1200 were in the camp at the time of the
attack, which was conducted by about 750 men, armed with
muskets and carbines, some of them mounted. The troops
were supported by four 12-pound mountain howitzers. One
of the chiefs ran up an American flag, but
indiscriminate slaughter continued until the middle of
the afternoon. Witnesses appeared to say that Chivington
forbade the taking of prisoners, that even sucking babes
were not spared, that men and women alike were scalped,
that the corpses were otherwise mutilated. Chivington
himself boasted that his troops had killed 500 or 600
Indians (though others declared his estimate much too
high) for a loss of 7 men slain and 47 wounded. It was
"one of the most bloody Indian battles ever fought on
these plains," he continued. He had nearly annihilated
the entire tribe. Six hundred horses, mules and ponies
were captured, together with many buffalo skins and
other property. Chivington warmly complimented his men.
"All did nobly," said he in his official report of the
event to General Curtis at Fort Leavenworth. In a
similar spirit the second in command of the expedition,
Colonel Shoup, said that it was "the severest
chastisement ever given to Indians in battle on the
American continent." The historian would "search in vain
for braver deeds than were committed on that field of
battle."
In Colorado, the soldiers returning from the bloody
scene received enthusiastic praise. They had "covered
themselves with glory," said the Rocky Mountain News of
Denver. The engagement would stand among the most
brillian feats of arms in Indian warfare. Chivington
believed that he would be made a brigadier-general as a
reward for his gallantry.
But men who lived with their wives and children in safe
places in the East, and who knew only the Indians of the
Leatherstocking Tales and the Metamora of Edwin Forrest,
saw what had taken place through other eyes. They were
filled with indignation. The subject appeared in
Congress. It was referred to the Joint Committee on the
Conduct of teh War, of which Senator B. F. Wade was the
chairman. He and his colleagues found it "difficult to
believe that beings in the form of men" could commit or
countenance "the commission of such acts of barbarity."
As for Chivington himself, though he wore the uniform of
a United States soldier, he had "deliberately planned
and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would
have disgraced the veriest savage among those who were
the victims of his cruelty," and so on. He and such
others as might be responsible for this crime against
civilization should suffer appropriate punishment.
A military commission was appointed and sat for
seventy-six days at Fort Lyon and in Denver, taking the
testimony of witnesses of the massacre. It was labor in
vain. The sympathy of the Colorado pioneers for
Chivington was general. He had espoused thier cause. For
long it had been a dangerous thing in Denver, in Central
City, or along the line of any of the overland roads,
travellers observed, to say aught that was favorable of
the Indian. He would not scruple to break the finger
joints of his prisoners, to kindle fires under their
bare feet, to rack and mutilate their bodies in a
thousand fiendish ways. If squaws had been killed at
Sand Creek let it be so. The Indian women no less than
the men were torturers of white captives. They had
fought furiously beside the "braves" on the bloody
ground on the banks of the Big Sandy. Chivington had
struck the savages with their own weapons in their own
way; now there might be safety and peace.
Possibly the lesson so barbarously administered might
have been salutary but for the knowledge, soon spread
among the Indians, that the act was disavowed by the
government and condemned by opionion generally in the
East. The relations between the "Great Father" at
Washington and the various tribes were controlled by a
commissioner at the head of a bureau, attached to the
Department of Interior. The whole country, for
administrative purposes, was divided into fourteen
superintendencies. Immediately west of the frontiers of
settlement in the Mississippi Valley were the Northern
Superintendency, with headquarters earlier at St. Paul
but now removed to Omaha; the Central, with offices at
Atchison; and the Southern, covering the Indian country
south of Kansas, inhabited by the Cherokees, Creeks,
Seminoles, Choctaws, Chickasaws and some other tribes.
Farther west there were superintendencies for each state
and territory -- in Dakota, Montana, Colorado, New
Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon
and Washington. Serving under each superintendent were a
number of agents who were supposed to live upon the
reservations in proximity to the Indians assigned to
their care, when these Indians were settled upon
reservations. Some of the agents were at the same time
traders, licensed by the government to traffic in goods
with the savages. A few were missionaries and teachers.
In the north, near the Canadian line, French priests
were aiming to bring the tribes to Christianity. Father
Chirouse had labored with the greatest devotion for many
years among the Tulalips in Washington Territory. The
Society of Friends and other religious denominations
still strove to uplift and civilize the American
aborigne, a work which had been uninterrupted almost
from the day white men had first established settlements
upon the continent. The tribes had been set here and
there on reservations, and were to be taught to farm, as
the wards of a charitable state. Connected with some of
the agencies were agricultural and industrial schools;
flour and saw mills were built. The government bought
seeds and implements, paid the wages of teachers,
plough-makers, farriers, gunsmiths, millers, sawyers,
farmers, carpenters, physicians and other men who were
to raise the red people out of savagery and make them
fit in due time to take their place as American
citizens.
In all it was computed that there were 300,000 Indians
in the United States -- about 26,000 in California,
34,000 in Arizona, 20,000 in Utah, 20,000 in New Mexico,
24,000 in Dakota, 18,000 in the Northern, 13,000 in the
Central and 54,000 in the Southern Superintendencies. It
was commonly said, and as commonly believed, that the
whole number of them in the country was diminishing.
They soon would be extinct, but for the intercessions of
philanthropists. The Abolitionist sentiment which had
triumphed in the war, and had made the black man the
equal of his white brother, would demand not less for
these remnants of the red race scattered over the West.
The influence of the Indian Bureau, from the
commissioner at Washington down to the agent on a
reservation, was on the side of the aborigine. His
wrongs had been many and his burdens were heavy to bear.
Likewise the traders were his apologists. By pretending
to friendship they drove many a good bargain. So it was
that the Indians, cozened and cajoled as they long had
been, were told again by the traders, the half-breeds
and other intermediaries around the agencies that there
would be atonement for the day of blood at Sand Creek.
[Source: A History of the United States Since the Civil
War by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, 1917]
Note: Also known as the Chivington Massacre or the
Battle of Sand Creek or the Massacre of Cheyenne
Indians. The Sand Creek Massacre was an incident in the
Indian Wars of the United States that occurred on
November 29, 1864, when Colorado Territory militia
attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho
encamped in Southeastern Colorado Territory. According
to Southern Cheyenne Chief Laird Cometsevah, based on
his oral history, over 400 hundre Cheyenne/Arapaho
children, women, physically and mentally challenged, and
elders were brutally murdered at Sand Creek. [Source:
Wikipedia]
The site of the Sand Creek Massacre was dedicated as a
National Historic Site with a public event held on
Saturday, April 28, 2007. For more information visit
the
U. S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
.
Photo Source: Western History Department of the Denver
Public Library and may be copyrighted.
Use that does not fall under fair use may require the
permission of the Denver Public Library. [Transcribed by
C. Anthony] |
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Submitted by Christina
Anthony
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