Overview of the Sand Creek Massacre

After the Camp Weld Conference (on the outskirts of Denver) in September 1864, Arapaho chiefs Little Raven and Spotted Wolf, with about 550 Arapahos (and a few lodges of Cheyennes) who had moved to within a couple miles of Fort Lyon, were in dire circumstances. The two or three issues of "prisoners' rations" from the military and their annual annuity goods did not begin to make up for the lack of fuel, game, and forage on the barren stretches north of Fort Lyon. After councils with Major Scott Anthony and Major Edward Wynkoop in mid-November, most of the Arapahos under Chief Little Raven left Fort Lyon to move about 60 miles downstream on the Arkansas River. They hoped to find game nearer the buffalo range and forage for their starving animals. Other bands moved north to Sand Creek camp on Sand Creek to camp at a traditional spot on the lodgepole trail that led from the Big Timbers north to the Smoky Hill River. This camping ground was within the reservation defined in the Camp Wise treaty. The Indians trusted Major Wynkoop, whom they called the "Tall Chief." He had proved himself a brave man when he went to the Smoky Hill River in September, as Chief Black Kettle said, "as if through a strong fire," to meet with the tribes when they requested a council. The Cheyenne and Arapaho people respected courage, and Wynkoop had kept his word when he took the chiefs to Denver for the unsettling talks at Camp Weld.

The people on Sand Creek and those with Little Raven were under no illusion that a lasting peace was imminent, but they had been assured that, until a decision was made for war or peace by Major General Samuel Curtis, Commander of the Department of Kansas, they would be under the protection of the military. They were hopeful of Governor John Evans's guarantee that they would have peace if they obeyed the soldier chiefs at Fort Lyon. As the territory's ex-officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Evans's authority exerted substantial influence on all matters related to Indian policy in the territory. The tribe's chiefs followed the instructions that Governor Evans and Colonel John M. Chivington had given them at the Camp Weld Conference in September.

On November 26, 1864, Major Wynkoop departed Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory, for his new command at Fort Riley, Kansas. He left with some assurance that a truce had been secured, at least temporarily, along the Arkansas River. The officers, who until recently had served under his command, and over two dozen Arkansas Valley ranchers and farmers commended the major for his achievements in quieting tensions on the Colorado plains. Wynkoop left his former post confident that he had established some level of equilibrium between Colorado officials and Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders and that peace could be maintained for the foreseeable future. He trusted that his former commanding officer and mentor, Colonel John M. Chivington, would be an advocate for his policies.

Two days later, Captain Silas Soule led a company of the 1st Colorado on patrol from Fort Lyon to investigate the source of campfires that Captain Soule and another officer had spotted the night before. Soule was told by a man on the trail that a column of soldiers was not far behind him. Captain Soule was shocked to discover that the column included nearly 700 troops led by Colonel Chivington. The troops were equipped for a major engagement, including two pieces of artillery. The colonel brusquely turned aside questions from Captain Soule and instead questioned the captain about whether word of his column's advance had reached Fort Lyon. He seemed pleased to hear that his arrival was unknown among the fort's personnel. Soule was caught off balance by the colonel's tone and wondered why Chivington was so intent on maintaining secrecy about the march.

Several companies in the column belonged to the 3rd Colorado Cavalry Regiment, 100-day volunteers recruited for service during the perceived emergency of an Indian war in the summer. The recruits were drawn from Denver and nearly two dozen towns and mining camps along the Front Range. The men were farmers, miners, laborers, teamsters, merchants, craftsmen, and professionals who represented the territory's diverse population. Many residents of Denver who watched their half-hearted training at Camp Evans mocked them as "the Bloodless Third." As the end of their enlistments grew nearer, the troops hoped for an opportunity to establish a new identity in the territory.

Soule learned the answer to Chivington's secret march at Fort Lyon shortly after the colonel met with Major Scott Anthony, Major Wynkoop's successor at Fort Lyon. Colonel Chivington announced his plans for a sharp, vigorous action against the Indians in the vicinity, which included the camp at Sand Creek. According to later testimony, Major Anthony exhibited all the resolve of driftwood, first resisting, then endorsing an attack at Sand Creek. He eventually caught up with the current generated by Chivington's large force and shortly announced to some officers of the 3rd Regiment that he, too, had planned to move against the people on Sand Creek and "clean them out."

The officers at the fort, veterans of the 1st Colorado, had other ideas about the march. Many of them had been members of the Smoky Hill expedition in September and firmly believed that Black Kettle had prevented a bloody battle with the Dog Soldiers and probably saved their lives in the bargain. They had all come to know the people who had camped around the fort that autumn. They wanted no part of an expedition to Sand Creek that in their minds was nothing more than premeditated murder. One officer presented his discharge papers rather than participate. When Lieutenant Joe Cramer expressed the concerns of the officers to Colonel Chivington and Major Jacob Downing, Chivington became enraged and proclaimed that it was "right and honorable to use any means to kill Indians that would kill women and children," and concluded by saying, "damn any man who is in sympathy with Indians."

Silas Soule was so outraged that other officers made sure he and Chivington did not meet face to face. When Chivington heard of Soul e's criticism of the plan, he threatened his arrest. Major Anthony eventually persuaded Captain Soule that the real intent of the campaign was an attack on the Dog Soldier camps farther north and an offensive against the Kiowas and Comanches. With this assurance, Soule reluctantly agreed to participate.

A few hours after nightfall, the imposing force of about 675 United States Volunteers, made up of detachments of the 1st Colorado Cavalry (nearly 250 men) and 425 troops of the newly formed 3rd Colorado Cavalry Regiment commanded by Colonel George Laird Shoup, moved out from Fort Lyon heading northeast toward the big southern bend on Sand Creek. They were guided by former mountain man James Beckwourth, a living legend in the West, and about a dozen other scouts. Robert Bent, the mixed blood oldest son of William Bent whom Chivington had compelled into service, either as a guide or to enable the troops to keep an eye on his whereabouts. Bent was likely unaware that be was escorting an armed force to attack his mother's people at Sand Creek. After a wearying ride through a frigid November night, the troops arrived just before sunrise about a mile south of the big camp of about 140 to 150 lodges in a bend of Sand Creek. In the camp were an estimated 700 to 750 people led by 20 chiefs or headmen. As many as 2,000 horses ranged in herds outside the camp.

As Tuesday morning approached, the people in the camps began rising and going about their chores in the dark just before dawn. Women revived fires with the diminishing supply of driftwood and buffalo chips and prepared meals, while the teenagers, including Tomahawk, Little Bear, and Kingfisher, started out to tend their horse herds. Some women carried fresh water in from springs north and east of their camps. George Bent and Ed Guerrier remained covered up under their blankets and buffalo robes.

As the column prepared to deploy, Chivington called an officers' council. He admonished them not to forget the "women and children killed on the Platte River that year," an emotional appeal to soldiers who had feared that the conflicts in Kansas and Nebraska would spill over into Colorado. According to testimony, Colonel Chivington instructed the troops to take no prisoners. From here, the cavalry split almost in half, either going up the creek valley or west to the left flank after the horse herds. Two howitzer batteries briefly followed the 1st Regiment up the stream's floodplain, but lagged behind. Several detachments of the less disciplined and poorly mounted 3rd Regiment were detailed to capture pony herds on the rolling plains a mile or two west of the village, above the low bluffs. It appeared that they would remain "bloodless" even after the day's events.

In and near the village, the women and some teenage boys out with the herds noticed the clamor raised by over 600 horses and four artillery pieces. At first, the light was so dim that the troops were mistaken as buffalo. But horse herd tenders and women gathering fuel issued a new alarm. Soldiers were coming. Black Kettle raised an American flag given to him by the U.S. Indian agent to the Cheyennes a few years before and a small white flag on a lodge pole as instructed. The men in the camp, conditioned by training and instinct, went for their weapons and horses. Some women and children with the same lifetime of experience began moving upstream, away from the camps. Others in the village gathered around Black Kettle's lodge and his flags. As the troops came closer, a delegation of chiefs including the Cheyennes' Black Kettle, White Antelope, Stands-in-the-Water ( or Standing Water), and Arapaho Left Hand proceeded out to meet the oncoming cavalrymen. They had been waiting for terms from General Curtis. Perhaps these were the general's messengers.

For Cheyenne warrior Big Head, a cavalry column approaching a sleeping village conveyed all the messages he needed. He mustered 20 to 30 men west of the bluffs in an attempt to capture ponies but was unable to do so. They then moved to disrupt the deployment of troops on the soldiers' left flank. Cheyenne warriors were at least as good fighting on foot as mounted. George Bent and his party of "middle-aged men" ran into overwhelming forces, turned, and fled upstream.

Black Kettle drew fire at the beginning of the attack and throughout the day, but was not hit. He turned and retreated from the firing. Left Hand was mortally wounded and reportedly died about three days later in the camps on the Smoky Hill River. George Bent reported years later that White Antelope began singing his death song, "Nothing Lives long only the earth and the mountains," and continued until he was shot down. The artillery began firing over the village, increasing the level of terror. The Indians panicked and ran faster up the creekbed. Some soldiers recalled that the creekbed appeared to "crawl with humanity."

The 1st Colorado veterans under Captain Soule and Lieutenant Cramer did their best to keep clear of the slaughter. Some of them later claimed that they fired high deliberately and the artillerymen for 1st Lieutenant Baldwin's Battery apparently fired their howitzers with "little or no effect" and it may have been their shells that prematurely exploded in the air. For these men and their officers, it was clear that their honor and word to these Indians had been broken by those in command that day. The troops declared the village cleared an hour or so after the attack began. The action now moved upstream to the sand pits that the retreating Cheyennes had dug in desperation. Soldiers surrounded the dug pits, then fired into them with pistols, rifles, muskets, and carbines.

Howitzers were brought up and fired into the pits at almost point-blank range in what one soldier later called a "carnival of carnage." Over 100 men, women, and children were killed. ln the vicinity of the village a dozen or more elders had died, including White Antelope, Stands in the Water, Lone Bear, and his wife. Another 20 to 30 had been killed with Big Head in the desperate holding action west of the village. By the time the bloody fight had ended, command and control of the poorly trained and inexperienced 3rd Regiment evaporated. The 3rd Regiment degenerated into a mob, and the attack into a riot. Now, the 3rd Colorado had what they hoped for, the chance to get bloody. ln the chaos soldiers were caught in cross-fire as they pursued fleeing groups and individuals.

George Bent, Black Kettle, Little Bear, and about 100 others had run upstream when the attack began and dug in about 1 to 2 miles farther than the first two groups. There they withstood siege all day from about 200 troops, holding off the attacking soldiers with their few firearms and bows and arrows. They likely survived because the artillery had run out of ammunition. Bent was shot through the hip but kept on fighting. Black Kettle and Little Bear miraculously remained unscathed. Everyone else in the pit was wounded.

Soldiers chased Cheyennes and Arapahos across the prairies to the northeast, up the creek, and to the west well into the afternoon. Captain Jay J. Johnson noticed that warriors and others were hiding in the sand above the village and started looking for disturbed sand and shooting into the buried people as if it were a game. On the plains to the northeast, soldiers chased individual Indians and pony herds for 8 to 10 miles. One warrior killed Private McFarland, Company D, 3rd Regiment, in hand-to-hand combat by stabbing him in the chest with a handful of arrows. The warrior, in turn, was killed immediately by troops coming to McFarland's aid. These troops also found women wounded or feigning death out on the prairie and shot them where they lay.

A group of soldiers gathered up two or three women and their children and were bringing them in as prisoners when they were met by Lieutenant Harry Richmond who stopped them and asked what they were doing. When they explained their actions, the lieutenant said that no prisoners were to be taken, then drew his pistol and shot each of the women and children point blank. The soldiers stood frozen, shellshocked in disbelief.

The mutilations of the Cheyenne and Arapaho bodies stopped with nightfall but resumed the next day. Many of the dead had several "scalplocks" taken from their heads. Ears and sexual body parts of men and women were excised. Jewelry was cut from their .fingers and hair. Officers and soldiers alike committed the atrocities. One scalplock was displayed in Denver City Hall for many years until turned over to the Colorado Historical Society and eventually returned to tribal representatives.

Survivors in the pit with George Bent and Black Kettle began either going back down the creek under cover of darkness to find dead and wounded relatives or trudging to the northeast and camps on Smoky Hill River. Black Kettle found bis wife. She'd been shot or wounded by fragmentation nine times, but survived to reveal her wounds to the Little Arkansas treaty commissioners in 1865.

George Bent, wounded in the hip and without adequate clothing, reported later that it was the most miserable night of his life as they made their way north. As the night wore on, help arrived from the Smoky Hill camps and some of the rescued horses were brought for the survivors to ride.

The next day, Wednesday, November 30, Colonel Chivington assigned several officers and the trader John Smith to identify and count the dead. Chivington later reported hundreds of warriors had been killed among a population of over a thousand in the village. His staff would concur, reporting numbers from 300 to 800 killed. Other soldiers counted only a hundred to as many as 150 bodies. Reports ignored, downplayed, or denied that women, children, and elderly noncombatants had also been killed. Some soldiers rationalized that it was impossible to tell the difference between male and female in the heat of battle. Some further excused killing women as an afterthought, saying they fought the soldiers with firearms or whatever weapon was available. Some witnesses reported that the women exposed their breasts so the soldiers would know they were women, but were killed anyway. The largest number of Cheyenne and Arapaho killed were noncombatants-murdered in the pits upstream from the village.

The number of soldier casualties varies. Records show at least 16 were killed and/or died of their wounds and as many as 78 were wounded. Several of the wounded or killed may have been shot by their own men in the cross-fire that followed the mayhem after the initial attack.

Chivington made a faint gesture of leading the column down the Arkansas to find Little Raven's band before breaking off the march and returning to Denver. The "Bloody Third" rode in triumph through the streets of Denver, displaying scalps and other body parts. A string of scalps was displayed in a Denver theater to thunderous applause. Shortly after, however, whispers reported a different version of the attack that Colonel Chivington claimed had killed 500 warriors and broken the back of the Cheyenne nation. The word "massacre" was uttered guardedly as some veterans reported the horrors they had witnessed. Captain Silas Soule reported in a letter to Edward "Ned" Wynkoop that "the massacre lasted six to eight hours" and predicted that "I expect we will have a hell of a time with Indians this winter." By the end of December, the Black Hawk-Daily Mining Journal reported, "A good many of the Third Regiment boys are returning to their old haunts. Some of them do not scruple to say that the big battle of Sand Creek was a cold-blooded massacre. " ... Many stories are told and incidents related by the actors in the bloody scene, which are too sickening to repeat."

Despite the catastrophe that had befallen the people at Sand Creek, the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations survived. The stunned survivors related the nightmare that occurred along what they called the Little Dry River to their stunned audience in the camps on the Smoky Hill River. All the people in the camps, like Silas Soule, knew something that Chivington, Evans, and most of the white population of Colorado did not. The war on the Colorado plains had not ended that night. It really had just begun on that day of horror in the shallow valley of Sand Creek.