Site Search

Black Kettle with many Cheyennes and a few Arapahos, believing themselves to be protected, established a winter camp about 40 miles from Fort Lyon.

On November 29, Col. John Chivington, who advocated Indian extermination, arrived near the camp, having marched there from Fort Lyon. In spite of the American flag and a white flag flying over the camp, the troops attacked, killing and mutilating about 200 of the Indians, two-thirds of whom were women and children.

      At dawn, Colonel John M. Chivington's 700 Colorado volunteers, along with Major Scot Anthony's command of 125 regular army troops, attacked the unsuspecting villagers.

     These Plains Indian peoples thought themselves under U.S. Army protection, but the deaths of over 70 Indians, and the horrible mutilation of many of their bodies, proved otherwise. This unwarranted attack came after mounting numbers of freighters, overlanders, and military personnel had, with their thousands of stock animals, destroyed the bison economy of the Plains Indians.

      Recently arrived farmers and ranchers had little regard for the Indians' plight. Retaliatory raids launched by a few Plains warriors inflamed the settlers' irrational fears and sparked demands for the eradication of all Indian peoples in the region. 

      After the Sand Creek Massacre, Black Kettle and his people abandoned the Colorado plains, and white Coloradans hailed Chivington as a hero. But when detailed news of the attack reached the East, many reacted with disgust. Both an army and a congressional commission investigated Chivington's actions, but no official censure resulted.

    In the summer of 1993, as a result of federal legislation passed in 1989 directing the Smithsonian Institution to repatriate its Indian remains, a delegation of Southern Cheyenne traveled to Washington, D.C., and retrieved the remains of six Sand Creek victims for a ceremonial burial at Concho, Oklahoma.

     The Pike's Peak Gold Rush in 1858 brought the 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.

     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 Indian village.

     Black Kettle ever trusting raised both an American 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.

       Many of the corpses were grotesquely mutilated, in a massacre that shocked the nation. However the most heinous part of this massive slaughter was the fact that the Indians were under the impression that they were residing in the protective custody of the US Government, under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.

      Their unjust eviction was a result of the 1861 gold rush in Colorado, which generated a massive population boom, forcing the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes into the desolate Sand Creek reservation in Southeastern Colorado.

      Even the U.S. Indian Commissioner admitted that "We have substantially taken possession of the country and deprived the Indians of their accustomed means of support."

      Evicting the white settlers was not considered a viable option, yet the government needed to resolve the situation. Its solution was to demand that the Southern Cheyenne sign a new treaty relinquishing all of their lands except for the undersized Sand Creek reservation in southeastern Colorado.

      Black Kettle, afraid that overpowering U.S. military command might result in an even less equitable settlement, agreed to the treaty in 1861 and did what he could to see that the Cheyenne complied with its provisions. Unfortunately, the Sand Creek reservation was not adequate to sustain the Indians who were forced to reside there.

     The land was in poor condition for agriculture, yet was a virtual breeding ground for epidemic diseases which swept like wildfire through the Cheyenne encampments.

      By 1862 there was not a herd of buffalo within two hundred miles. Many Cheyenne, especially young men, began to depart the reservation to prey upon the livestock and goods of nearby settlers and passing wagon trains.

      One such raid in the spring of 1864 incensed white Coloradoans so strongly that they dispatched their militia, which opened fire on the first band of Cheyenne they happened to meet. None of the Indians in this band had participated in the raids.

     When the white settlers continued to infiltrate the Sand Creek territory, the Indians became unrelenting in their attacks on the stage coach lines to Denver, as well as other reprehensible acts, all in the name of “self-defense”.

     Regardless, the US Government officially wanted peace with these tribes and had ordered the military to take no action against them.

     As Colonel Chivington approached the peaceful ridge on the morning of November 29th, adhering to this request was the last thing on his mind.

     Chivington and his troops had been unsuccessful in finding a Cheyenne band to fight, so when he learned that Black Kettle had returned to Sand Creek, he made plans to attack the unsuspecting encampment.

     As he surveyed the situation below him, trying to determine the best method in which to dispatch his 750 Colorado Volunteers, he spotted scores of tepees of Southern Cheyenne and their Arapaho allies, which spread across nearly a mile of land stretching along the bend of Big Sandy Creek in southeastern Colorado.

     Once the slaughter was complete, Chivington's men sexually desecrated, physically mutilated and scalped many of the dead, later exhibiting their trophies to cheering crowds in Denver.

     Miraculously, Black Kettle managed to escape the Sand Creek Massacre physically unharmed, even after returning to the scene to rescue his critically injured wife. Also under the heading of miraculous was that Black Kettle continued to advocate peace when the Cheyenne attempted to strike back.

      By October 1865, he and other Indian leaders had approved a rough truce on the plains, signing a new treaty that exchanged the Sand Creek reservation for reservations in southwestern Kansas, but ultimately dispossessed the Cheyenne of access to the majority of their coveted Kansas hunting grounds.

      The era of the Indian trader in Colorado came to an end with the Sand Creek Massacre. The dominance of the Cheyenne and Arapaho to the land east of the mountains was broken, and years of bloody battles with the plains tribes ensued.

Below are Links to Wolf's Corner Articles- [ Contents---Register and Vote! ] [ Remembering The Great Chiefs ] [ Native American Legends & Stories ] [ Anglos Once Were Immigrants ] [ Handbook of American Indians, 1906 -Contents ] [ Native American Indians and the Eagle ] [ NA Names & Meanings ] [ Past Notable Native Americans-Pg 1 ] [ Past Notable Native Americans- Pg 2 ] [ Hill & Holler Thanksgiving Column ] [ A Thanksgiving Teaching ] [ On Being an Indian ] [ Where is Goyathlay's (Geronimo) Skull? ] [ Cochise ] [ Goyathlay (Geronimo) ] [ Mangas Coloradas ] [ Nana ]

Below are Links to the Main Pages which are also on the Side Menu
[ Home ] [ Contents of SnowwOwl's Website ] [ Flash News!-NA Current Issues ] [ Music Options ] [ NA Information Contents Page ] [ Native American People/Tribes-Contents ] [ Native American History-Contents ] [ Native Leaders Contents Page ] [ Powwow Information Contents Page ] [ Native American Life Living Art-Contents ] [ Hear the Voices of the People-Native American Testimony ] [ The Natural World ] [ SnowwOwl's Writings-Contents ] [ The Outraged Owl ] [ Spotted Wolf's  Corner ] [ Hill & Holler Column ] [ Wotanging Ikche ] [ So Says, Spirit Hawk ^i^ ] [ Student Projects ] [ Guest Contributions Contents ] [ Dedicated People Contents ] [ SnowwOwl-A Few SnowwOwl Feathers ] [ Featured Websites Contents ] [ Featured Artists Contents Page ] [ Guest Log Archives Contents Page ] [ Credits and Links ] [ Email Information ] [ Snowwowl's Website Awards ]

Created January 16, 2006