Sand Creek Massacre Acknowledged

Tribal elders swear they can hear the murdered children crying.

No signs mark the U.S. cavalry massacre that took place here 136 years ago on the banks of Sand Creek, amid the gently rolling hills dotted with sagebrush and yucca. But some historians consider it a pivot point of Western history.

It was here that a unit led by Col. John M. Chivington--fresh from a victory over Confederates and hoping to boost a congressional bid--led an unprovoked early-morning raid Nov. 29, 1864, on an Indian village, killing more than 150 Cheyennes and Arapahoes, mostly women, children and elderly men.

To Indians it is the My Lai of the 19th century. Most Americans have never heard of it.

That’s a disgrace, said Steve Brady, president of the Northern Cheyenne Descendants of Sand Creek.

“More than 135 years later, they’re still fumbling around trying to decide what to do about Sand Creek,” he said. “The remains of my people are scattered over that area. The killing fields of Colorado must be preserved.”

“This tragedy affected every Cheyenne clan,” said Laird Cometsevah, president of Southern Cheyenne Descendants of Sand Creek. “A memorial would leave an everlasting memory and show that it should never happen again to any certain tribe or even the non-Indian.”

Legislation recently passed in Congress that will make the location, about 160 miles southeast of Denver, a national historic site. The measure was introduced by Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), a Northern Cheyenne whose great-grandfather’s second wife survived the attack.

Approval of the measure, Campbell said, was an “overwhelming acknowledgment by Americans that we are better than our past.”

Chilling eyewitness accounts contained in letters by two cavalry officers were read at a hearing on the bill in September.

“A squaw ripped open and a child taken from her. Little children shot while begging for their lives,” wrote Lt. Joseph Cranmer.

“Hundreds of women and children were coming toward us and getting on their knees for mercy. Most of the Indians yielded four or five scalps,” wrote Capt. Silas Soule.

“It was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized,” wrote Soule, who was assassinated in Denver by a friend of Chivington’s shortly after testifying at a congressional inquiry.

At the time of the Civil War-era raid, a panic was moving among settlers and Union supporters who were fearful that Confederate soldiers might use Indians as surrogates. The scalps of a settler family killed near Denver were put on display to fan sentiment against the Indians.

Settlers made fun of Chivington’s 3rd Colorado Cavalry, calling its members “the bloodless 3rd” because none had fought Indians.

The Cheyenne band of about 700 had sought peace, camping at the Sand Creek site designated by the Army.

When Chivington and his force of nearly 1,000 began the attack, senior Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle waved a U.S. flag to signify his band’s peaceful intent, but he had to flee for his life.

Nearly all the Cheyenne chiefs who favored peace were killed--White Antelope, One Eye, Yellow Wolf, Big Man, Bear Man, War Bonnet, Spotted Crow, Bear Robe and Little Robe. Left Hand, the Arapaho chief who led a small band camped with the Cheyenne, also died.

“The Army didn’t know the difference between the tribes. Chivington wanted to go to Congress, and he knew Americans rewarded the war heroes,” said Colorado state historian David Halaas.

Chivington expressed no remorse. “I have come to kill Indians, and I believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians,” he was quoted as saying.

A joint congressional committee reported that Chivington “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.”

Chivington’s tour of duty ended a few days after the attack. He was never punished, although his church disavowed him. Territorial Gov. John Evans was removed, and Congress promised reparations in the 1865 Treaty of the Little Arkansas. None has been paid.

Although there were other Indian massacres, Halaas said Sand Creek was notable because it defined the relationship the tribes had with the federal government.

“The Army was out to kill them all. The Army committed genocide, and it started in motion 12 years of uninterrupted war,” Halaas said.

Black Kettle continued to counsel peace, but his voice was drowned out. Later he and his wife were killed in a raid led by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on the Washita River in Oklahoma.

In 1998, Congress began taking steps toward recognizing the Sand Creek tragedy by funding a study to verify the site of the massacre and recommend management options.

Shrapnel from 12-pound howitzers and other artifacts were uncovered in the soil of Big Sandy Creek, helping to pinpoint the site last year.

Campbell, a member of the Council of 44 Chiefs of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, proposed a 12,480-acre historic site if area landowners are willing to sell.

Rancher Bill Dawson, on whose land much of the killing ground lies, says he didn’t think much about it while growing up.

It wasn’t talked about much locally, even after Hollywood made the film “Soldier Blue,” a graphic account of the attack, starring Candice Bergen.

“I knew it was there and that people sometimes came. But there were no Indians left, and the history books made it seem like white people were benevolent,” the former judge said.

Then, while his wife visited relatives in Mississippi, Dawson killed time by touring Civil War battlefields. One day it dawned on him that he had one in his own background.

“It was only when I realized what had happened to them that it kind of got personal.”

He began spending more and more time cleaning up after visitors who littered the land with beer cans or removed artifacts. He also became an expert on the raid, visiting national archives in Washington and writing a report for the National Park Service.

After a confrontation with trespassers that landed him in jail, Dawson closed the area to the public. The state removed a roadside marker leading to the dirt access road.

He allows the tribes to hold traditional ceremonies there, and they defend his stewardship.

“You can’t just have people traipsing around there. It’s really important to us. He is to be commended for that,” Brady said.

The federal designation will help protect the site from artifact poachers and allow Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal members to create a burial ground there and to reclaim victims’ remains.

Said Campbell’s spokesman, Christophe Changery: “There is a desire among many of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe just to be able to come to the site.”

*Documents on the Sand Creek massacre:

https://www.coloradocollege.edu/Library/SpecialCollections/Manuscripts.html

Some of the testimony at the 1865 congressional inquiry is reprinted at: https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest

Sen. Campbell: https://www.senate.gov/~campbell/index.htm

Park Service links: https://www.nps.gov