Massacre at Sand Creek
On the morning of the 29th, they arrived close to Black Kettle’s camp and Chivington ordered his men to attack. To their credit and seeing the camp contained women and children, Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, both of the First Colorado Cavalry, refused to follow his orders and ordered their men to hold fire. The remaining troops immediately attacked the village despite the American flag and a white flag that was raised and began to massacre the inhabitants.
Some of the Indians managed to cut free some horses from the herd and escape up Sand Creek to a nearby Cheyenne camp on the Smoky Hill River, but most were killed where they stood. The testimony of eye witnesses and survivors, given at a later Congressional investigation, gives some hint of the horror.
Mr John A Smith, an interpreter working for the Indian agent and living in the camp testified in Washington on March 14th 1865, relating that, “I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than I ever saw before, the women cut all to pieces with knives, scalped, their brains knocked out, children two or three months old, all ages lying there, from sucking infants to warriors. By who were they mutilated? By the United States troops”.
Another witness, Stan Hoig relates, “Fingers and ears were cut off the bodies for the jewellery they carried, the body of White Antelope lying solitarily in the creek was a prime target. Besides scalping him the soldiers cut off his nose, ears and testicles, the last for a tobacco pouch”.
A soldier giving evidence was asked why he thought Chivington so callously killed the children and replied that Chivington had told his men, “Nits make Lice”.
Even veteran Indian fighters were disgusted at the attack. Kit Carson, the famous scout declared, “Jis to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds up thar at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws and blew the brains out of innocent children. You call sich soldiers do ye?. And Indians savages? What do yer spose our heavenly father, who made both them and us, thinks of these things? I tell you what, I don’t like a hostile redskin any more than you do, and when they’re hostile ive fought em hard as any man. But I never yet drew bead on a square or a papoose and I despise the man who would”.
Chivington’s initial report of the incident gave no hint of the savagery, merely noting that during the action, 10 soldiers were killed and 38 wounded. This was later amended to 24 killed and 52 wounded. The writer Dee Brown notes that many of Chivington’s men were drunk and were victims of friendly fire. Chivington also claimed that 500 to 600 Indians were killed, but a more definitive figure was given by the historian Alan Brinkly who reckons Indian losses as 133 killed, 105 of whom were women and children. Other estimates are close to these figures.
Before Chivington’s men left the camp, they plundered the lodges, setting them alight and took the horses. When the smoke cleared, his men returned to kill the wounded. They also scalped the dead regardless of whether they were woman, children or infants. He and his men dresses their weapons, hats and gear with scalps and other body parts including human foetuses and male and female genitalia. They later displayed these trophies in the Apollo Theatre in Denver with Chivington on stage recounting how his brave soldiers had fought the savage warriors.
Ironically, Chivington’s action was to result in yet more bloodshed. The attack had resulted in the deaths of eight chiefs of the Indian Council of Forty Four, most of whom advocated peace with the whites. White Antelope, One Eye, Yellow Wolf, Big Man, Bear Man, War Bonnet, Spotted Crow and Bear Robe were gone and the balance of power moved to the warlike Dog Soldier Societies, who vowed to continue the war against the settlers. They believed that the massacre showed the folly of trying to negotiate peace with the whites through treaties such as those signed at Fort Laramie and Fort Wise.
War against the white man would continue for a further 26 years until the final betrayal at Wounded Knee brought an end to the Indian resistance.
The Rocky Mountain News published articles praising the attack by the soldiers, describing it as a brilliant feat of arms, but little by little the true story emerged and on December 20th 1864, the newspaper reported that Washington intended to investigate the matter and quoting the following government statement, “The affair at Fort Lyon Colorado in which Colonel Chivington destroyed a large Indian village, and all its inhabitants, is to be made the subject of a congressional investigation.
Letters received from high officials in Colorado say that the Indians were killed after surrendering, and that a large proportion of them were women and children”. The Court of Enquiry investigating the massacre declared in its final drafts that, “As to Colonel Chivington, your committee can hardly find fitting terms to describe his conduct. Wearing the uniform of the United States, which should be the emblem of justice and humanity and holding the important position of a commander of a military district, he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the very savages among those who were the victims of his cruelty”.
Captain Silas Soule, who had ordered his men not to fire their weapons, was murdered in Denver just before he was due to give evidence against Chivington and subsequently no charges were brought against the men who committed the massacre.
The only punishment that Chivington suffered was the end of his political aspirations, due to all the bad press he had received.
As the details of the massacre became more widely known, the government sent a special commission to the Indian territories which resulted in The Treaty of the Little Arkansas being signed in 1865. It promised the Indians free access to the land south of the Arkansas River, but barred them from land north of the river and up to the Platte. They also promised land and compensation to the Sand Creek survivors. The treaty was scrapped by the government less than two years later and all the terms ignored. Put in its place was the Medicine Lodge treaty which reduced Indian lands by 90% and pushed them into inferior land in Oklahoma. Later changes reduced further the area of reservation.
Black Kettle himself survived the attack, but was killed four years later by troops under the command of Colonel George Armstrong Custer at the Washita River massacre.
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