The Wild Frontier

by William M. Osborn

  A little more than 2 weeks later, Evans issued a proclamation “calling on all friendly Indians to quit the company of those at war and report to designated military posts, ‘places of safety’ where they would be fed and protected.” Few Indians responded.72 He then issued a second proclamation on August 10, authorizing whites “to seek out and kill on sight all hostile Indians, defined as anyone who had not come in for protection.” In addition, the public “could take or destroy all property of the hostiles.”73

  Black Kettle and other Cheyenne peace chiefs sent a letter to 2 Indian agents stating that the Cheyenne council had met and would make peace if the government would also make peace with the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, Apache, and Sioux. He offered to exchange 7 Cheyenne prisoners for Indian prisoners held by the government in Denver. The letter was delivered to Major Edward Wynkoop, commander at Fort Lyon.

  Wynkoop had strong feelings about Indians, and later admitted he “belonged to the exterminators.” Wynkoop believed Indians were universally treacherous and had “nothing but instincts of a wild beast.” He announced that as barriers to civilization, they “had no rights that we were bound to respect.”74

  Wynkoop took 127 troops and went to Black Kettle. He was met by 800 warriors with arrows at the ready. He noticed many of them had rifles and pistols as well. Black Kettle agreed to talk. Wynkoop proposed taking any delegation of chiefs they chose to talk peace with Evans and said he would do his best to procure peace for them. He suggested that the chiefs take their families to Fort Lyon, where they could wait “in safety” for the chiefs’ return from the meeting with the governor in Denver. The next day the Cheyenne released 4 young female prisoners, stating the other 3 had been sold to the Sioux. They said they would go the 400 miles to Denver to see Evans to make peace.75

  Just as soon as he arrived in Denver with the chiefs, Wynkoop immediately went to the Evans home. The governor couldn’t see him. The next morning, Governor Evans came to Wynkoop’s room and said he would not meet with the chiefs because they had declared war, and, more important, the Colorado Third had been formed to kill Indians, “and they must kill Indians.” Wynkoop convinced the reluctant Evans to meet the chiefs. Colonel Chivington, as commander of the military district, wired the developments to General Curtis. Curtis replied, “I want no peace until the Indians suffer more.”76

  The meeting between Evans and the chiefs at Camp Weld on September 28, 1864, was tense. Black Kettle reminded the governor of the first proclamation he made, which promised that Cheyenne and Arapaho who went to Fort Lyon would receive protection. Black Kettle was not told it might no longer be applicable. Evans accused Black Kettle of being allied with the Sioux, who were at war with the settlers. Black Kettle and other chiefs denied that they had joined forces with the Sioux.77

  At the end, Chivington, who had said nothing up to then, announced, “My rule of fighting white men or Indians is to fight them until they lay down their arms and submit to military authority. You [Indians] are nearer to Major Wynkoop [at Fort Lyon] than anyone else, and you can go with him when you get ready to do that.”78

  The Indians were pleased with the meeting. They thought they had ended the war and had made peace, but Evans and Chivington thought not. The next day Evans wrote to Sam Colley, the Indian agent for the Cheyenne and Arapaho, that he had not made peace with them, and that they must make peace with the military authorities. His annual report to the commissioner of Indian affairs characterized most of the Indians as hostile. They would have to be conquered by force. In a return message, the commissioner criticized Evans. He had the duty to encourage peace, he said, and a spirit of conciliation should have been shown.79

  Wynkoop reported the situation to his commanding officer, Major General Samuel R. Curtis. Among other things, he suggested that “if peace terms were to be offered to the Indians, he could guarantee their fidelity by having all the Indian villages located near the fort where they would be subject to his control.”80 When Wynkoop’s report was received, Curtis was away from Fort Riley, so his aide, Major B. S. Henning, read it and wired Chivington on the day of the meeting with Black Kettle that Wynkoop had somehow acted against policy. Henning relieved Wynkoop of command of Fort Lyon and put Major Scott J. Anthony in charge. No Indians were to be allowed in the vicinity of the fort for any reason. Anthony arrived and took command.81 (Wynkoop learned after the battle that he had been relieved because he “left his district without orders to escort the chiefs to Governor Evans in Denver instead of to Curtis.”)82

  The Arapaho, 652 strong, made a camp near Fort Lyon. Anthony demanded to know why they were there. The Arapaho told him that although other tribes were at war, they came to the fort to show they wanted peace, to be where the public wouldn’t be frightened of them and where they wouldn’t be harmed by travelers or soldiers. Anthony was surprised because Henning had told him the Indians near the fort were hostile. Anthony told the Arapaho they could stay if they would surrender their weapons and stolen stock. They agreed. Anthony noticed they were hungry and gave them food, contrary to his orders. Ten days later, he changed his mind. He returned their weapons and recommended they kill game to live on.83 He wrote to General Curtis, “I told them … that no war would be waged against them until your pleasure was heard.”84

  Shortly, Black Kettle and about 70 Cheyenne arrived. Anthony said he didn’t have instructions to make peace with them, but he would let them know at once if and when he got such instructions. He said the Cheyenne should camp on Sand Creek, which was 40 miles away. Wynkoop had told them Anthony was now in charge and would treat the Cheyenne the same as he had done, and Anthony encouraged the Indians to believe this. But Anthony was acting with duplicity. Two weeks after arriving at the fort, he reported to Curtis that he intended to wait until he got reinforcements, then he would take to the field against all Indians. He specifically mentioned Black Kettle’s Cheyenne village at Sand Creek. Chivington had decided to attack them also.85

  Five days before the Sand Creek Massacre, on November 29, 1864, Chivington had supper with trader James Combs. Chivington inquired about the Indians. Were they well fed? Where were they located? Were they armed? Chivington then stated the purpose of his mission. He told Combs, “Scalps are what we are after.”86 As Combs was leaving, he heard Chivington say to his officers, “Well, I long to be wading in gore.”87

  Chivington wanted to take the Cheyenne at Sand Creek by surprise and made elaborate preparations. He did not tell General Curtis about the planned attack on Sand Creek.88

  The night before the troops were to leave for Sand Creek, several officers and some civilians objected to what was about to happen because of the promises that had been made to the Cheyenne. They included Lieutenant James Cannon, Lieutenant W. P. Minton, Lieutenant C. M. Cossitt, Captain Silas S. Soule, and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, who protested first to Anthony and then to Chivington that under the circumstances the attack would be murder. Chivington exploded. Cheyenne were evil and “damn any man who is in sympathy with them.” As he left the room, he remarked loudly that Cramer should get out of the service. A last effort to call off the attack was made by Lieutenants Cossitt, Minton, and Maynard, Indian agent Sam Colley, and some other civilians. Chivington said again, “Damn any man who is in sympathy with an Indian.”89

  There were about 750 men in the attack, including Anthony with 125 from the Colorado First.90 They were drunk, according to Carl Waldman and James Wilson.91

  An elderly guide named Jim Beckwourth, a black trapper, became so stiff and cold he couldn’t continue. Robert Bent, the half-Cheyenne son of William Bent, the founder of the first American settlement in Colorado, was ordered to take Beckwourth’s place. Bent had 3 sisters and a brother in the camp at Sand Creek. Near daybreak, Bent suggested he might run off. Chivington tapped his revolver, looked at Bent, and said, “I haven’t had an Indian to eat in a long time. If you fool with me, and don’t lead us to that camp, I’ll have you for breakfast.”92

  When they reached the villa
ge, Chivington first ordered 2 groups to run off the Indian horses. He addressed the troops, telling them to remove their coats so they could fight better, and in effect told them to take no prisoners. In the Indian camp, the 700 galloping horses awakened the Indians. Black Kettle hoisted an American flag that had been given to him by a commissioner of Indian affairs with the advice that it would protect the Cheyenne when approached by soldiers. He also raised a small white flag. He told his people not to be afraid because the camp was under the protection of the American flag.93

  Then the troops opened fire, beginning the Sand Creek Massacre. The Colorado Third Hundred Dazers, led by Chivington, dismounted and began firing right through Anthony’s men. Chivington shouted, “Remember the murdered women and children on the Platte.”94 Anthony’s troops fled to a creek to avoid the gunfire from the Third. All control was lost and never regained.95

  Cheyenne chief White Antelope was a noted warrior who fought Comanche and Kiowa in the 1830s. He was one of the few Dog Soldiers (an Indian military society) to counsel peace with the settlers.96 As the Sand Creek Massacre began, White Antelope ran toward the soldiers wearing his presidential medal and shouting in English for them to stop killing his people. Black Kettle called for him to run away. White Antelope halted in the creek, folded his arms, and chanted his death song:

  Nothing lives long

  Except the earth and the mountains

  and waited to die. Bullets hit his chest, he fell, and the troops scalped him and cut off his ears and nose. Chief Left Hand said he would not fight his friends, the white men, and was killed. Others made no effort to fight or flee. Many walked toward the soldiers with raised hands, but all were killed. Every soldier was engaged except the troops of Captain Soule, who had pledged the Indians safety. He ordered his men not to fire. About 100 Indians fled for a mile along the creek bed to where the banks had gulleys and ravines. They dug in there with knives and bare hands. Soldiers fired at them from both banks. Soldiers then went into the banks and killed the wounded and the women and children who had not been hurt. The killing went on for almost 4 hours, then the troops left.97 There were many additional atrocities. A dismounted soldier standing near Chivington tried to scalp a dead woman. A naked 3-year-old was walking in the sand trying to reach the Indians ahead of him. A soldier shot at him and missed, another missed, but a third killed him. Five women crouched under a bank for shelter. When they were discovered, they showed the soldiers they were females, begged for mercy, but all were killed anyhow. An Indian woman with a broken leg was lying on the bank. A soldier came up with drawn saber, she raised her arm for protection, he broke it with his saber, she rolled over, raising her other arm, and he broke it as well. Some other women huddled in a hole for protection. They sent a girl about 6 out with a white flag. She was killed. A 5-year-old girl tried to hide in the sand. Two soldiers found her, killed her, and pulled her out by the arm. Several babies were killed along with their mothers in their mothers’ arms.98

  An old woman wandered around blinded because her entire scalp had been taken and the skin of her forehead had fallen over her eyes. Several soldiers quarreled over who should scalp a body. They all took part of the scalp. Soldiers took turns “profaning the body of a comely young squaw” who was dead. Fingers were cut off to get Indian rings. One soldier carried a heart impaled on a stick. Soldiers collected male genitals. The breasts of Indian women were sliced off; one was worn as a cap, another stretched over the bow of a saddle. A little boy was buried alive in a trench. A major blew off the top of the boy’s head with a pistol. Three adult females and 5 children were being conducted down a road by soldiers when Lieutenant Harry Richmond of the Third appeared and killed and scalped all 8 while they were screaming for mercy. The soldiers shrank back, apparently disapproving.99

  One soldier wrote, “They were scalped, their brains knocked out. The men used their knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked them in the head with their guns, beat their brains out, [and] mutilated their bodies in every sense of the word.”100

  More than 100 Indians were killed.101 Robert Bent stayed at the site of the massacre for a time. He said that 163 were killed, of which 110 were women and children.102 Wilson estimated the Indian dead at between 105 and 200,103 and West believed there were around 150 dead.104 Many estimates were higher, including Chivington’s of 400 to 500.105 Probably there were fewer than 70 armed warriors in the camp. They held off the 700 soldiers long enough to permit most of the Indians, about 500, to escape, including Black Kettle.106 Afterward, Major Anthony wrote to his brother praising the bravery of the Indians, but adding that “we, of course, took no prisoners.”107 Nine soldiers were killed outright, and 4 more died later.108

  What could have motivated Chivington and Evans? Both had run for Congress and lost. Schultz believed both thought they could get favorable publicity by fighting the Indians, thereby winning Chivington a seat in the House and Evans a seat in the Senate.109 Although this belief may have been true, the only hard evidence as to either hoping an Indian fight would advance his career is congressional testimony about Chivington that “he thought he had done a brilliant thing which would make him a brigadier general. I think the expression was ‘that he thought that would put a star on his shoulder.’ “110

  INDIAN RAIDS intensified greatly after Sand Creek. Axelrod observed that “far from disheartening the Indians, as Chivington had hoped, the Battle of Sand Creek galvanized their resolve to fight, as Southern Sioux, Northern Arapaho, and Cheyenne united in a spasm of savage raids during late 1864 and early 1865 called the Cheyenne-Arapaho War.”111 In January 1865, more than 1,000 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians raided Julesburg, about 190 miles northeast of Denver. War parties as large as 500 warriors burned coach stations and ranches as far as 80 miles west of Julesburg. Eight settlers were killed. For about 150 miles in the South Platte Valley, everything was burned and no settlers were safe. Denver was isolated and threatened with famine. Some 50 settlers died and others were captured. There was burning and violence from the Missouri River in Kansas to Salt Lake City. Chivington’s successor declared martial law in Denver and closed down all businesses until 360 replacements could be found for the Hundred Dazers.112 Debo and Wilson said this Cheyenne-Arapaho War killed more whites than the number of Indians killed at Sand Creek.113

  THE INDIAN raids following Sand Creek could have been predicted. What was less predictable was the government reaction. On January 10, 1865, the U.S. House of Representatives directed the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the [Civil] War to investigate what eastern newspapers were calling a “massacre of friendly Indians.” Curtis requested and received Chivington’s immediate resignation, hoping to prevent an army inquiry. But the next day, Chief of Staff General George Halleck ordered Curtis to investigate charges that the conduct of Chivington toward the friendly Indians “had been a series of outrages calculated to make them all hostile.” Curtis wrote to both Halleck and Evans condemning Chivington. He also ordered Wynkoop to take command of Fort Lyon again and investigate the massacre. Wynkoop collected affidavits and on January 15 sent Curtis a strong condemnation of Chivington. The report labeled him an “inhuman monster” and the attack an “unprecedented atrocity.” It estimated there were from 60 to 70 killed at Sand Creek, two thirds of whom were women and children.114

  A 3-day congressional hearing (the first) began on March 13, 1865. Evans himself testified evasively on the last day. Chivington gave an affidavit and answered questions put in writing by congressmen. He insisted he had attacked because he thought the Indians were hostile.

  The committee’s final report found the attack at Sand Creek to be “an atrocity of the highest order” and condemned it as “the scene of murder and barbarity.” Men, women, and children were “indiscriminately slaughtered.” “From the suckling babe to the old warrior, all who were overtaken were deliberately murdered.” “The soldiers indulged in acts of barbarity of the most revolting character; such, it is to be hoped, as never before d
isgraced the acts of men claiming to be civilized.” The report stated that the dead bodies revealed

  evidence of the fiendish malignity and cruelty of the officers who had so sedulously and carefully plotted the massacre, and of the soldiers who had so faithfully acted out the spirit of their officers. It is difficult to believe that beings in the form of men, and disgracing the uniform of the United States soldiers and officers, could commit or countenance the commission of such acts of cruelty and barbarity.115

  Considerable blame was assigned to Evans. Anthony was chastised. The report dealt most harshly with Chivington. Schultz quoted from the report the assertion that Chivington had “deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre.” He took advantage of the Cheyenne “to gratify the worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man. [He] surprised and murdered, in cold blood, the unsuspecting men, women, and children on Sand Creek.”116

  Congress also made partial reparations to the widows and orphans of the Indians killed there. Each woman who lost a husband and each child who lost a parent was awarded 160 acres of land.117 Another congressional report proclaimed, “To the honor of the government it may be said that a just atonement for this violation of its faith was sought to be made in the late treaty with these tribes.”118

  A second congressional investigation inquiring into plunder allegedly taken from the Indians by soldiers also concluded that Chivington’s men had perpetrated a massacre of the Indians.119 A third 3-man military commission met for 76 days but rendered no conclusions because the commission charter required that it simply find facts.120

  About a month after the final committee report was released, Secretary of State William H. Seward advised Evans that President Andrew Johnson wanted his resignation without delay. Evans resigned.121 Chivington was dismissed from the Methodist Church. Later he married his son’s widow, prompting her parents to publish a letter condemning the marriage.122