On November 29th, 1864, 150 to 200 natives were butchered by a Colorado regiment. Also known as the Chivington Massacre, the killings lend to a dark chapter of Colorado history. The Cheyenne and Arapaho people was given lands that stretched throughout the state of Colorado, the southeastern part of Wyoming and the even as far east as Kansas and Nebraska by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. All went well until the discovery of gold in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado six years later. The gold brought thousands of people to the area and the Fort Laramie treaty was abandoned.
In 1860, the treaty of Fort Wise was created with less land for the natives and more rights and lands for whites. The new land was less than ten percent of the original land set up in the Treaty of Laramie, but six powerful chiefs signed the treaty and began to move their people to a small parcel of dry land in what is now Eastern Colorado near the Kansas border. Small bands of natives held out and argued that the treaty was only signed by a few of the tribes and not all of them. They continued to roam Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas at will, hunting and living as before the treaty was signed. They became belligerent and were seen by the white authorities as hostile and it was perceived they were gathering for war.
In 1861, the Civil War brought military forces into the Colorado Territory and after defeating a southern advance by Texas Confederates, the Colorado militia returned to Denver to be stationed as home guard for the territory under the command of Col. John Chivington. Governor John Evans and Chivington took a hard lined stance against the natives that were in the settler’s words, “causing trouble.”
There were several skirmishes between settlers and the natives and the native’s attempts at making peace were literally shot down. A small force in 1864 went into Western Kansas to confront the natives at their summer buffalo grounds. Two native chiefs approached the troops to show peaceful intentions. They were shot down in cold blood in front of their people fueling anger and hatred for the white man. Peaceful Cheyenne Chiefs Black Kettle and White Antelope were told to move to the lands around Ft. Lyons and they would be considered friendly and would not feel the wrath of the Colorado militia. The chiefs did what they were told thinking they were at peace with the whites.
The Chiefs reported to Ft. Lyons along with a small band of Arapaho and around 800 Cheyenne people. They checked in with the fort and then set camp along the banks of the sand creek. Assured that peace was happening, Black Kettle sent all his warriors out to hunt and gather food for the encampment. About 90 people were left, mostly old men, women, and children. He then put an American flag outside his door because in the past, this practice had let white soldiers know that he and his people wanted peace.
The problem with the Treaty of Fort Wise was twofold: only some of the chiefs had signed the treaty and the chiefs that didn’t were more inclined to stay and hunt in eastern Colorado because the buffalo was plentiful. They were Cheyenne and Lakota’s that had started a more aggressive band of Indians in the 1830’s. They wanted to keep fighting for their land and could be likened to Indian revolutionaries. The chiefs that had signed the treaty were Black Kettle, Little Wolf, Lean Bear, Tall Bear, and White Antelope of the Cheyenne and Storm, Little Raven, Big Mouth, Shave-Head, and Left Hand of the Lakota tribe.
The Indian bands against the treaty included the Dog Soldiers, also called the Dog Men. The Cheyenne had six military societies. They also had two main governing bodies: the Cheyenne Military Societies and the Council of Forty-four. The council chiefs ruled and made decisions for the tribe on a broad basis and governed individual tribes and the Cheyenne Military chiefs oversaw tribal hunts and ceremonies, maintained disciple, and they were the military leaders. One of the six military societies would be picked by the council chiefs for a time period and then they picked another one. They kept it rotating.
The Cheyenne that opposed the treaty stated that besides being signed by a minority, those chefs didn’t realize what they signed, and that their approval had been bribed with gifts. The settlers, miners, and American soldiers said that the treat was an obligation that it was a solemn matter, and any Indians that didn’t conform to its demands were hostile.
The white people were quite busy immigrating across the Colorado and Kansas, and new trails to the gold fields had been struck through the Smoky Hill River country of Kansas.
This area was particularly wealthy in bison and the Dog Soldiers and others were growing extremely angry over this flood of settlers and miners.
The exact place of the massacre has been disputed. But pre-dawn came with a fright on November 29, 1864 as mainly Colorado militia, seven-hundred soldiers in all attacked an undefended Indian camp on Sand Creek. Mountain Howitzers shot 12 pound cannon balls and muskets, pistols, and rifles were fired; their smoke consumed the air. Trying to save their lives scared Indians hurried up the dried bed of the creek, but soldiers ran after them and continued the butchering.
Those slaughtered were babies, old men, women, and children. The majority of the able bodied men were on a hunting trip. Black Kettle and his people had been told they would be safe on this reservation. This massacre erupted more hatred and battles between the settlers and the Indians. About three hundred and fifty Indians survived, ten soldiers were killed, and the army had seventy-five causalities. The discrepancy in the number of dead soldiers and dead Cheyenne is staggering. But consider that most of the weapons of the Indians had previously been confiscated and they were left with bows and arrows for hunting.
One of the worst aspects of this incident is the betrayal of Colonel John M. Chivington to Black Kettle and his people because the treaty was signed at a meeting with Chivington. He even let a picture of himself, Black Kettle, and his men be taken. It was a mere two months after the treaty had been signed that the dishonorable Chivington lead his men in the attack on Black Kettle’s camp. The colonel had already expressed that he thought the Indians should be totally eliminated. One can conclude that like a snake in the grass he never meant a word he said about honoring the treaty.
The reason the location was disputed is because merger evidence, poor historical maps, and the evidence was conflicted. Of course the Cheyenne always knew because of their great oral tradition. They finally decided to use their oral tradition to clear up the matter in the beginning of the 1970’s. Chief Laird Cometsevah continued the effort of the first person to begin trying to get this verified after he died and the chief’s wife helped him.
They requested the help of Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell a republican from Colorado to get an historical site added to the National Park system for Sand Creek. He also heard at a town hall meeting in 1997 that the land owner William Dawson proposed to sell the land wherein the massacre took place. The exact location wasn’t clear, but it had happened on Dawson property. Campbell loathed the idea of the sacred land being developed as it would be a desecration.
The bill that Campbell composed became law in 1998; thus fresh archaeological surveys were begun to find the location of the Sand Creek massacre. The site was found in a part of the river called Dawson’s Bend. According to Doug Scott the field director of the dig, they located the village just a mile from the place oral tradition along with the historical evidence pointed to.
Scott continued that they searched along the river going upstream and found an arrowhead in one spot and a bullet somewhere else. But the defining evidence was the 12-pounder cannonballs because artillery had been fired against the Native Americans in eastern Colorado only at the Sand Creek engagement. The artifacts they retrieved matched perfectly with white man’s goods given to the Indians; they also matched with objects that had been excavated at another camp in that time period.
Ben Nighthorse Campbell said James Doyle in the June 16, 2008 issue of Indian Country Today had insisted that the Sand Creek site be called a massacre, though many such sites are called battles. Mr. Doyle is public affairs specialist working to help the intermountain region. He explained that these are legislated designations and that the National Park Service doesn’t have a voice in whether they are called battles, massacres etc.
Senator Brownback a Republican from Kansas and the United Methodist Church has apologized for what happened at Sand Creek. $50,000 has been authorized by the Methodist Church for research concerning Sand Creek. The memorial was dedicated on April 28, 2007.
It seems like considering that one hundred and sixty-three people (or 150-200 estimates vary) died at Sand Creek the exact spot would never have been confused, but it was. As historians researched the history of Sand Creek, the more peculiar things looked. Reading a Denver Post article of 1908 they found they four veterans of “the battle” wasted more of their reunion time arguing about where the battle took place than anything else. It is also called the Chivington campaign. Here is a quote from the reporter: “Before night, every man had picked a site that pleased him,” …”Before the visit of the veterans, every man between Kit Carson and Chivington knew exactly where the fight took place. Now, nobody is sure. The site of the famous Indian fight is left to the prairie dog, the billy owl, the rattlesnake, the road lizard and the cottontail rabbit.”
A reporter in 1923 didn’t have any better luck trying to find the location by questioning local ranchers and the Boy Scouts in 1937 had a hankering for reenactment, but didn’t know where to stage their battle. It was an important turning point in Indian and U.S. history that each side should have remembered. The tribal governing bodies and especially the Cheyenne Military Societies saw the massacre as a call to war, which continued periodically until the Battle of Little Big Horn.
Though Congress hasn’t repudiated many American military campaigns in 1865 they condemned the attack in the Treaty of the Little Arkansas. The language of this treaty describes Chivington’s attack as a “gross and wanton” outrage. Chivington had resigned his commission before the treaty was signed. He couldn’t be punished by the military, but two congressional committees censured him and he still never was punished. John Evans, who was the territorial governor received the brunt of any punished as he was forced out of office as he had sanctioned the atrocity.
Back to the question of how the location of the massacre could be lost…two archeologists, Bill Lees and Doug Scott can tell how it is possible better than anyone else. Scott is a forensic archaeologist and he’s excavated at Little Big Horn, while Lee has worked at the site of the Washita massacre located in Oklahoma. They expound that these attacks happened in lonely isolated areas. They were not areas heavily populated by the whites and white people hardly ever went there. When the railroads came through the trials that lead to the sites were went unused and vanished from erosion and disuse. They concluded their explanation by saying that it isn’t unusual for battle, attack or massacre sites to be lost in the western states.
The Big Sandy was surrounded by huge grasslands, land that was settled very slowly. The majority of the homesteading claims were filed until ten years after the area had been surveyed in the late 1870’s. That was near to twenty-five years after the massacre had occurred. So many early maps never noted the massacre. Those include the maps drawn of the Colorado Territory between 1865 and 1875, the surveys made by the General Land Office between1872 to 1880, and the U.S. Geological Survey maps during the period from 1890 and 1891. No map of Chivingtons has ever surfaced.
Even eye-witness accounts are sketchy concerning the location. The reasons being that many of the soldiers were 100-day volunteers and had only been enlisted for a few months, a lot of them probably hadn’t been in the prairie previously, they weren’t trained to make maps, they had scant training as soldiers, plus they only navigated by the North star and they were traveling at night doing a double-pace march. So though there were plenty of eye-witnesses they couldn’t shed much light on the location. Most thought the location twenty-five to forty miles north of Fort Lyon on the Big South Bend or the South Bend of the Big Sandy etc. Of course, they were able to describe the attack itself.
The Cheyenne and Arapaho did go to the site to pay respects to the dead, but being an area full of death they shied away after initially paying respect. In a few short years they were forcibly displaced from Colorado. Someone who lived at Fort Lyon went to the site within a few months and returned to say that the river bank had slide down and the site was gone with the crash. Creeks do change courses and that could have happened too, perhaps the resident’s report was wrong.
A map was found that was made by Lieutenant Samuel Bonsall; during June of 1868 he led a small military detachment consisting of ten men from Fort Lyon to Cheyenne Wells; this was four years later. Bonsall’s map is detailed giving citations of landmarks like “Three Forks” trail six miles north and the intersection of Sand and Rush creeks eleven miles south.”
( www.santafetrailscenicandhistoricbyway.org/scmasacre.html )
His map has been confirmed by historians to be accurate. General William Tecumseh Sherman accompanied Bonsall on this journey and Bonsall wrote in his journal about the trip. He said that they picked up a full wagonload: arrows, spears, scalps, cooking utensils, knives, and “Indian baby skulls.” ( www.santafetrailscenicandhistoricbyway.org/scmasacre.html )
The items that were found were taken to Washington, D.C. Another map that helped researchers was one made by George Bent; they also found his letters useful. He was the son of a wealthy merchant named William Bent. The elder Bent had built the fort in southeastern Colorado. George was a veteran having served in the Confederate Army and had gotten his education in St. Louis, but he was half Cheyenne. He was visiting and camping with Black Kettle’s tribe when the onslaught began. His hip was badly wounded and he lived through that to tell the tale to historians at a later date providing a good description of the location, the massacre, and strategic movements of the attacking troops.
This was a bloody episode in Colorado history that thankfully has more recently been recognized with a monument that states what the event was “a massacre.”