Sand Creek Massacre

The Sand Creek Massacre (also known as the Chivington Massacre or the Battle of Sand Creek) was an incident in the Indian Wars of the United States that occurred on November 29, 1864 when Colorado Militia troops in the Colorado Territory attacked a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped on the territory's eastern plains.

The attack was initially reported in the press as a victory against a brave opponent. Within weeks, however, a controversy was raised about a possible massacre. Several investigations were conducted, two by the military; and one by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, who declared:

"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 [sic] 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 inapprehension and defenceless [sic] condition to gratify the worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man.

"Whatever influence this may have had upon Colonel Chivington, the truth is that he surprised and murdered, in cold blood, the unsuspecting men, women, and children on Sand creek, who had every reason to believe they were under the protection of the United States authorities, and then returned to Denver and boasted of the brave deed he and the men under his command had performed.

"In conclusion, your committee are of the opinion that for the purpose of vindicating the cause of justice and upholding the honor of the nation, prompt and energetic measures should be at once taken to remove from office those who have thus disgraced the government by whom they are employed, and to punish, as their crimes deserve, those who have been guilty of these brutal and cowardly acts."

Statements were taken by Major Edward Wynkoop and his adjutant, which substantiated the later accounts of survivors. These statements were filed with his reports and can be found in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, and copies of which were submitted as evidence in the Joint Committee of the Conduct of the War, and in separate hearings conducted by the military in Denver.

Numerous witnesses came forward during these investigations, offering damning testimony, almost all of which was substantiated by other witnesses. At least one of those witnesses was murdered in Denver just weeks after offering his testimony.

Despite the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the Wars' recommendation, justice was never served on those responsible for the massacre. The site became a National Historic Site on August 2, 2005.

Starting in the late 1850s, the gold rush in the Rocky Mountains (then part of the western Kansas Territory) had brought a flood of white settlers into the mountains and the surrounding foothills. The sudden immigration came into conflict with the Cheyenne and the Arapaho who inhabited the area, eventually leading to the Colorado War in 1864.

Conflict between the Native Americans and the miners spread, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes made wagon travel extremely dangerous across Colorado's eastern plains. Territorial governor John Evans sent Colonel John Chivington to quiet the Indians at the head of a locally-raised militia. After a few skirmishes and an effective warpath on the part of the Indians, many of the Cheyennes and Arapahos were ready for peace and camped near Fort Lyon on the eastern plains.

Some of the chiefs of both of the tribes had recently signed the Fort Wise Treaty of 1861 with the United States, in which they ceded their lands to the United States and agreed to move to the Indian reservation to the south of Sand Creek in Oklahoma, demarcated by a line to be run due north from a point on the northern boundary of New Mexico, fifteen miles west of Purgatory River, and extending to the Sandy Fork of the Arkansas River.

Black Kettle, one chief of a group of mostly Southern Cheyennes and some Arapahoes, some 800 in number, reported to Fort Lyon in an effort to declare peace. After having done so, he and his band camped out at nearby Sand Creek, less than 40 miles north. Assured by the U.S. Government's promises of peace, he sent out most of his warriors to hunt.

Native Americans are not a homogeneous group, and their current-day recollection of this history says the hostile Indians who made life miserable for miners and settlers in the Colorado Territory were the Dog Soldiers, a group of Cheyenne who realised there could be no successful negotiations with the colonists and went on the warpath against them. Those warriors were not part of this encampment.

Colonel John Chivington and his 800 troops of the First Colorado Cavalry, Third Colorado Cavalry and a company of First New Mexico Volunteers marched to their campsite in order to attack the Indians. On the morning of November 29, 1864, the army attacked the village and massacred most of its inhabitants. Chivington proclaimed before the attack "Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice." Only 9 or 10 soldiers were killed and three dozen wounded. Between 150 and 184 Cheyennes were reported dead, and some were reportedly mutilated, and most were women, children, and elderly men. Chivington and his men later displayed scalp and other body parts, including human fetuses and genitalia in the Apollo Theater in Denver.

After this event, many more Indian men joined the Dog Soldiers, and massacred settlers throughout the Platte valley, killing as many as 200 civilians.

The area is now preserved by the National Park Service in the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. As of 2005, the park is not open yet.

[edit] Depiction in fiction

A stone marker commemorates the Sand Creek Massacre.

The Sand Creek Massacre is the subject of the 1970 movie Soldier Blue.
The massacre of an Indian village in Little Big Man was based on the massacre of Black Kettle's village on the Washita in November 1868 (the battle of Washita River).
The Italian songwriter Fabrizio De André wrote a song about the massacre, entitled Fiume Sand Creek.
The massacre is mentioned (along with Black Kettle's death in Oklahoma) in Christian band Five Iron Frenzy's song Banner Year.
The massacre is portrayed in Steven Spielberg's mini-series Into the West.
The American novelist James Michener included a fictionalized account of the massacre and its aftermath in his book Centennial, moving the incident further north, near the South Platte River and making the victims primarily Arapaho.
The Italian writer Emilio Salgari references the Sand Creek massacre several times in his short adventure novel La scotennatrice.
The Massacre and Chivington's involvement within it are included in the 2000AD Comic Series and Graphic Novel collection, "Nemesis The Warlock Book VI - Torquemurder", by Pat Mills, Kevin O'Neill and Bryan Talbot. The events are portrayed historically, but he is fictionalised as one of many previous lives of the Series' protagonist, the Grand Master Tomas De Torquemada; "Indeed, anyone who thought Torquemada was unbelievable only had to look at (Matthew) Hopkins, or Chivington... or...? ... and realise that the Grand Master was not impossible, but inevitable, the ultimate incarnation of human evil." Chivington is eventually destroyed by Nemesis The Warlock's son Thoth, and his pet Satanus, in order to make Torquemada pay in every one of his lives for being responsible for his mother's death.

Countless books in Native American literature make allusion to and take inspiration from the Sand Creek massacre. Simon J. Ortiz uses the Sand Creek massacre as inspiration for his 1981 collection of poems From Sand Creek, which focuses on tropes such as memory and story, nature and (dis)connection and the conflicts between the new scientism of the European conquerers and the more spiritualistic pantheism of the Arapaho and the Cheyenne. Margaret Coel, in her book The Story Teller, uses Sand Creek as a background for her fictional account of the murder of several young Arapahos.

[edit] Further reading

Sand Creek Massacre, Senate Executive Document No. 26, 39th Congress, Second Session. Report of the Secretary of War Communicating…a Copy of the Evidence Taken at Denver and Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory, by a Military Commission Ordered to Inquire into the Sand Creek Massacre, November, 1864. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867.
Massacre of the Cheyenne Indians, Senate Report No. 142, 38th Congress, Second Session. Report of the Joint Committee on The Conduct of the War. (3 vols.) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1865.)
Condition of the Indian Tribes, Report of the Joint Special Committee Appointed Under Joint Resolution of March 3, 1865, with an Appendix. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867.)
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion.
Gregory Michno, "Battle at Sand Creek, the Military Perspectives". Upton and Sons, 2004 ISBN 0-912783-37-0