November 29, 1864---The Sand Creek Massacre

NOVEMBER 29, 1864:      

The Sand Creek Massacre:     

In one of the defining atrocities of the frontier war against Native Americans, Colonel John Chivington of the U.S. Army, an ordained Methodist minister, ardent abolitionist, and Freemason, took a 700-man force against a village of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians encamped along Big Sandy Creek in southeastern Colorado. 

Chivington’s ostensible motive was to punish the Dog Soldiers of the Cheyenne for depredations against miners and settlers in the Colorado Territory. However, just two months before, the Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle had signed a peace treaty with the United States government in which the Dog Soldiers had agreed to lay down their arms. Chivington was well aware of the treaty and well aware that there had been no violence in the region since the September 28^th signing ceremony. Thus, the attack was completely unprovoked.

Chivington was also very well aware (having been advised by scouts) that there were no combatant braves in the village on Big Sandy Creek, the Indian men having gone on a late season buffalo hunt to stock up on meat and materiel for the coming winter. There were definitely, despite his subsequent report, no Dog Soldiers in camp. Only a few younger and older men, and a number of chiefs, were standing watch over the camp, which was filled with women, children and senior citizens. 

When the Indians saw Chivington’s charging column, they raised both a white flag and an American flag. Both flags were ignored as the troops thundered down into the encampment, hacking, slashing and firing point-blank at running, screaming women and children and hobbling old women.

The brutality of the attack made strong men sick. When a trooper asked Chivington what should be done with the toddlers and infants, Chivington responded, “Nits breed lice,” and ordered the babies killed. Of 200 Indians in camp, at least 170 were killed outright, the remainder wounded. Many of the women and female children were brutally raped, some, reportedly, post-mortem. 

 

When it became clear that there were no resisting warriors in camp, Captain Silas Soule refused to order his men to fire. This enraged Chivington, and led to a hot dispute between the two men. (Soule subsequently swore out a complaint against his Commanding Officer, but was murdered in cold blood by “persons unknown” on a Denver street not long after he testified against Chivington). 

Major Edward Wynkoop, who had negotiated the treaty with Chief Black Kettle also testified against Chivington. 

The general testimony against the Colonel was damning:

I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any 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 suckling infants up to warriors . . . By whom were they mutilated? By the United States troops . . . --- John S. Smith

Fingers and ears were cut off the bodies for the jewelry they carried. The body of White Antelope, lying solitarily in the creek bed, was a prime target. Besides scalping him the soldiers cut off his nose, ears, and testicles-the last for a tobacco pouch . . .  --- Stan Hoig

Just to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds, up there at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children. You call such soldiers Christians, do you? And Indians savages? What do you suppose 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 are hostile, I've fought them, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would --- Kit Carson

The Joint Committee on The Conduct of The War held:

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; holding the important position of commander of a military district, and therefore having the honor of the government to that extent in his keeping, he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the verist savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty. Having full knowledge of their friendly character, having himself been instrumental to some extent in placing them in their position of fancied security, he took advantage of their in-apprehension and defenceless condition to gratify the worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man.

Chivington’s force later decorated their horse bridles with the mutilated fingers, toes, penises, and unborn fetuses  of the Indians as trophies. Despite these reported grotesqueries, Chivington was not even censured, though he was passed over for future promotions.  

The Massacre was devastating to the Cheyenne, who lost many tribal elders, and thus much of their social organization. The Sand Creek Massacre led to the rejuvenation of the Dog Soldiers and continuing violence in the Colorado Territory.