The Sand Creek Massacre
November 29, 1864
Ralph Nelson's controversial film "Soldier Blue" - a little over 100 years later in 1970 - gave an exceedingly graphic and ultra-violent depiction of the Sand Creek Massacre. It shows U.S. Cavalry troops raze the native Indian Cheyenne village of Chief Black Eagle, and depicts U.S. Cavalry troops committing one of the most atrocious, inhuman, and most brutal acts of murder and ethnic genocide ever to be earmarked by U.S. history. Actor Peter Strauss played the part of Private Honus Gent, or "Soldier Blue" as he was named by Black Eagle's character. As far as I can remember, the film was as quick to be withdrawn from cinemas as it had been released. Film critics called it "the most savage film in history", but its content was nonetheless real. It showed the horrifying realistic account in graphic detail, of the appalling events which took place that day at Sand Creek which stands as one of the most shameful days in U.S. history. Yet even after the Cheyenne people had suffered this massacre of their young braves and over 200 of their women and children, and such unspeakable violence had been perpetrated against the innocent and peaceful Cheyenne people, Chief Black Eagle still sought peace with the blue soldiers and "white people". He said, "Although the troops have struck us, we throw it all behind and are glad to meet you in peace and friendship. What you have come here for, and what the President has sent you for, I don't object to, but say yes to it. The white people can go wherever they please and they will not be disturbed by us, and I want you to let them know. We are different nations, but it seems as if we were but one people, whites and all. Again, I take you by the hand, and I feel happy. These people that are with us are glad to think that we can have peace once more, and can sleep soundly, and that we can live." - Motavato (Black Kettle), October, 1865. Chief Black Eagle is the third seated person from the left, in the above photograph which was taken only 8 weeks earlier at Camp Weld where he'd made "peace" with the U.S. Army.
Spurred by the Colorado gold and silver rushes during the 1850's and 60's, Colorado Territory was a place of phenomenal growth. Miners by the tens of thousands had elbowed their way into mineral fields, dislocating and angering the native Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples. The Pike's Peak Gold Rush in 1858 brought the tension to a boiling point. Tribesmen attacked wagon trains, mining camps, and stagecoach lines during the Civil War, when the military garrisons out west were reduced by the war. One white family died within 20 miles of Denver. This outbreak of violence is sometimes referred to as the Cheyenne-Arapaho War or the Colorado War of 1864-65. Governor John Evans of Colorado Territory sought to open up the Cheyenne and Arapaho hunting grounds to white development. The tribes, however, refused to sell their lands and settle on reservations. Evans decided to call out volunteer militiamen under Colonel John Chivington to quell the mounting violence. Evans used isolated incidents of violence as a pretext to order troops into the field under the ambitious, Indian-hating territory military commander Colonel Chivington. Though John Chivington had once belonged to the clergy, his compassion for his fellow man didn't extend to the Indians.
Sand Creek Massacre
In the spring of 1864, while the Civil War of 1861 - 1865 raged in the east, Chivington launched a campaign of violence against the Cheyenne and their allies, his troops attacking any and all Indians and razing their villages. The Cheyennes, joined by neighboring Arapahos, Sioux, Comanches, and Kiowas in both Colorado and Kansas, went on the defensive warpath. Evans and Chivington reinforced their militia, raising the Third Colorado Cavalry of short-term volunteers who referred to themselves as "Hundred Dazers". After a summer of scattered small raids and clashes, white and Indian representatives met at Camp Weld outside of Denver on September 28. No treaties were signed, but the Indians believed that by reporting and camping near army posts, they would be declaring peace and accepting sanctuary. Black Kettle was a peace-seeking chief of a band of some 600 Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos that followed the buffalo along the Arkansas River of Colorado and Kansas. They reported to Fort Lyon and then camped on Sand Creek about 40 miles north.
Shortly afterward, Chivington led a force of about 700 men into Fort Lyon, and gave the garrison notice of his plans for an attack on the Indian encampment. Although he was informed that Black Kettle had already surrendered, Chivington pressed on with what he considered the perfect opportunity to further the cause for Indian extinction. On the morning of November 29, he led his troops, many of them drinking heavily, to Sand Creek and positioned them, along with their four howitzers around the defenceless Indian village.
Black Kettle, ever trusting, flew both an American Flag and a "White Flag of Peace" over his tepee.....
In response, Chivington raised his arm for the attack. Chivington wanted a victory, not prisoners, and so men, women and children were hunted down and shot.
With cannons and rifles pounding them, the Indians scattered in panic. Then the crazed soldiers charged and killed anything that moved. A few warriors managed to fight back to allow some of the tribe to escape across the stream, including Black Kettle.
"The colonel was as thorough as he was heartless"
At the end of the battle which could only be described as the slaughter of innocents, an interpreter living in the village testified: "THEY WERE SCALPED, THEIR BRAINS KNOCKED OUT; THE MEN USED THEIR KNIVES, RIPPED OPEN WOMEN, CLUBBED LITTLE CHILDREN, KNOCKED THEM IN THE HEAD WITH THEIR RIFLE BUTTS, BEAT THEIR BRAINS OUT, MUTILATED THEIR BODIES IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD".
By the end of the one-sided battle as many as 200 Indians, more than half women and children, had been killed and mutilated. While the Sand Creek Massacre outraged easterners, it seemed to please many people in Colorado Territory. Chivington later appeared on a Denver Stage where he regaled delighted audiences with his war stories and displayed 100 Indian scalps, including the pubic hairs of women. Chivington was down as a war hero and the poor murdered indians and their families were down as "savages".
Such is the way of political influence to stereotype people through history, for despite Chivington had placed 4 Howitzers and 700 rifles around the defenceless Cheyenne camp and had blasted the innocent families to hell and back, had sent his drunken murdering troops to finish them off, and despite he knew Chief Black Kettle had made peace 2 weeks earlier and saw a white flag alongside the Stars and Stripes displayed above his tepee, Chivington saw fit to display his ruthless slaughter which included women and children, as heroism when on board the Denver Stage.
Chivington was later denounced in a congressional investigation and forced to resign. When asked at the military inquiry why children had been killed, one of the soldiers quoted Chivington as saying, "NITS MAKE LICE." Yet the after-the-fact reprimand of the colonel meant nothing to the Indians. As word of the massacre spread among them via refugees, Indians of the southern and northern plains stiffened in their resolve to resist white encroachment. An avenging wildfire swept the land and peace returned only after a quarter of a century.
Indian Chiefs "Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo. Their names ring down through history as symbols of noble defiance against overwhelming odds. These great warrior chiefs challenged the might of the U.S. Army in desperate and doomed attempts to end white encroachment on their land and preserve their traditional ways of life. We honor their memories not for their success, but for their courage".
The chiefs present at the meeting on the Little Arkansas, signed away all claims of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho to the Territory of Colorado and agreed to 'perpetual peace'. As agreed, they moved south of the Arkansas River where they enjoyed a few good seasons, able to resume some semblance of their former lives and attempt to raise their families on the grassy plains. "These were happy days for us," recalled George Bent, a half-breed who married Black Kettle's niece. But there were soon problems. The government did not hold up their part of the bargain and failed to supply the Indians with arms and ammunition as promised. Game was becoming scarcer every day; and unable to procure subsistence for their families, with no means to acquire the absolute necessities of life, some became desperate. According to Major Wynkoop, "Some of the wilder spirits, incensed at treatment which they supposed to be most unjust, started on the war-path against the whites, but they were the outlaws of their tribe, and were so declared by those chiefs whom I saw after they had committed their depredations. Their whole race should not have been made responsible for the evil doings of a few, for the head men of their tribe, with whom I held council, considered that those outlaws had done more injury to their own people than to mine, and were willing and anxious to deliver them up to us to be handed over to justice; but the troops were in the field and the Indians in flight before the same could be consummated."
The next council was at Fort Larned, Kansas in the fall of 1866, General Winfield Scott Hancock presiding. The Indians called him Old Man of the Thunder, and he was intent on getting something done. Maybe it was the shadow of defeat hanging over him from the Civil War, the repeated insults to his warrior's pride suffered under Confederate clout, but Hancock was not a good man to have sent west. Back in '62, the press had dubbed him Hancock the Superb for his military exploits. This was the man who wasted Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. But by the fall of 1864 he left his field command because of discouragement and burn out. His men had been severely butchered, his guns had been overrun, the glory had faded in a series of defeats during the Virginia campaign. Grant had sent Hancock's men to the slaughter in a futile charge at Cold Harbor. Discouraged with the quality of the new troops under his command, Hancock was no longer in the mood to rebuild and chose to move on. Having come west, he was intent on a no-nonsense session that would produce results. He had presidential ambitions and actually ran against Garfield in 1880, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, he must enact the heroic deeds which would make his name a household word. The General especially wanted to meet with the leaders of the Dog Soldiers. He was angry and insulted that the great warrior Roman Nose had not come to the council. In response, Hancock marched his troops out toward the Indian camp. The Indians, many of whom had been at Sand Creek, could quickly see where this was leading and sent most of the women and children away on ponies. Hancock told the remaining young men to bring the others back. The warriors rode off, but did not return. Hancock waited a few days, then inventoried and burnt over 300 lodges, turning everything these people possessed to ashes. Now whole families were destitute, in a starving condition, and without shelter on the open prairie. The enraged Dog Soldiers struck back with renewed vigor. General J.B. Sanborn, one of the Indian Commissioners wrote, "For a mighty nation like us to be carrying on a war with a few straggling nomads, under such circumstances, is a spectacle most humiliating, an injustice unparalleled, a national crime most revolting, that must, sooner or later, bring down upon us or our posterity the judgment of heaven."
Hancock was recalled and his troops were sent elsewhere. General Sherman arranged the council next fall. The government wanted the Indians to share a reservation south of the Arkansas and would provide land and cattle to assist in their assimilation. Over four thousand Indians were present for the discussions at Medicine Creek Lodge, although the lack of Cheyennes at this gathering disturbed the US commissioners. Their main goal was to convince the Dog Soldiers to accept the land south of the Arkansas as a move in the direction of peaceful co-existence. Roman Nose was not interested in accepting these limits and his band moved north. Still, many leaders of the Dog Soldiers were coaxed into attending;
"We were once friends with the whites but you nudged us out of the way by your intrigues, and now when we are in council you keep nudging each other. Why don't you talk, and go straight, and let all be well?" - Motavato (Black Kettle) to the Indians gathered at Medicine Creek Lodge, October, 1867.
Abraham Lincoln had commented that Sheridan was, "One of those long-armed fellows with short legs, that can scratch his shins without having to stoop over." The Indians thought the stocky commander looked like a little bear with a bad attitude. A Comanche who had surrendered walked up to Sheridan, and smiling, pointed to himself, and said; "Tosawi, good Indian." Sheridan is then reported to have said ,"The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Sheridan would one day become Commander in Chief of the entire US army (1884-1888).
<- Battle of Washita -<<<
Before dawn, the cavalry stormed the 51 lodges, killing men, women, and children. Hard Backside Custer reported over 100 killed, although only 11 of these were warriors. This was Custer's first major engagement with the Indians. According to Bent, Black Kettle and his wife Medicine Woman, both rushed out of the lodge at the first booming of the guns. Black Kettle mounted a horse and helped his wife up behind him and started to cross the Washita River, but both the chief and his wife fell at the river bank riddled with bullets; the horse was also killed at the same time. Red Shin tells me that the soldiers rode right over Black Kettle and his wife and their horse as they lay dead on the ground, and that their bodies were all splashed with mud by the charging soldiers...
Following Sheridan's plan to cripple resistance, Hard Backside ordered the slaughter of the Indian pony and mule herd estimated at near 900 animals. The lodges of Black Kettle's people, with all their winter supply of food and clothing, were torched. The loss of winter supplies, and the loss of heart through sheer misery, convinced many bands to accept reservation life.
One such tribe is the Blackfoot tribe and here they are on their reservation in 2007.
Note: In April 1996, some twenty six years after screening of the film "Soldier Blue" and over a hundred and thirty years after the massacre, the United Methodist Church, at its national convention in Denver, formally apologized to the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indian tribes for the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. On May 6th 2004, U.S. Congress made an historic "Resolution of Apology to Native American Peoples, and carefully disclaimed "any right to claim against the United States" by the native American Indian peoples.
Now Read: The Ideological struggles of Men to see others who struggle against so called "progress".
