Sand Creek Massacre

“ THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE.
The following letters were printed in the New York Tribune in the winter of 1879. They are of interest, not only as giving a minute account of one of the most atrocious massacres ever perpetrated, but also as showing the sense of justice which is to be found in the frontiersman's mind to-day. That men, exasperated by atrocities and outrages, should have avenged themselves with hot haste and cruelty was, perhaps, only human but that men should be found, fifteen years later, apologizing for, nay, justifying the cruel deed, is indeed a matter of marvel. ”

“ The army, with greater honesty and better administration than the Indian Bureau, overdid its work, being unable to think of the Indians as anything but public enemies and treating them with an arbitrary curtness that would have been dangerous even among intelligent whites. The history of the southwest Indians, after the Sand Creek massacre, illustrates well how tribes, not specially ill-disposed, became the victims of circumstances which led to their destruction. ”

“ You read in the books about the way Indians massacre white women and children when they’re on the warpath, but I reckon Indians never did anything worse than this killing at the Baker massacre. The way the white men killed and cut up the Cheyenne and Arapahoe women and children at Sand Creek down in Colorado, and the way they killed women and children up here on the Marias, no Indians could ever beat. ”

“ It is said that the phantoms of the murdered emigrants still flit around the cairn that marks their grave, and nightly reënact in ghastly pantomime the scene of this hideous tragedy.
About ten o'clock on the morning of the 23d a party of armed men, alighting from their wagons, approached the site of the massacre. Among them were the United States marshal, William Nelson, the district attorney, a military guard, and a score of private citizens. In their midst was John Doyle Lee. Blankets were placed over the wheels of one of the wagons, to serve as a screen for the firing party. ”

“ More than forty people were killed by them. The most severe fight was at Liberty Farm, east of Fort Kearney near where you crossed the Little Blue River. There was a small train of wagons loaded with goods for George Tritch of Denver. The entire party of whites were killed, including a stage driver and the station keeper, and there was a young woman there named Mrs. Eubanks, and her child, whom they did not then kill, and the Indians run them off, and that is really what brought on the Sand Creek Battle. The Indians were Arapahoes. ”

“ In a few minutes two hundred Indian men and women and children, with sixty soldiers, were lying dead and wounded on the ground. The tepees had been torn down by the shells and some of them were burning above the helpless wounded, and the surviving handful of Indians were flying in wild panic, pursued by hundreds of maddened soldiers. The pursuit was simply a massacre, in which fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground. ”

“ One of the first deeds in this campaign, and the one that certainly first turned the tide and caused the pro-slavery ruffians to feel that they had need to look to their own safety, and would not be suffered with impunity to murder whom they chose and fire honest men's houses like fiends let loose, was the midnight massacre at Pottawatomie. Along a certain creek there lived five of these incendiaries and outrage-mongers who were specially notorious. ”

“ Aged Negro mammies, afraid to come out of their homes, had been burned to death by the mob which set fire to them. Black men had been thrown into Cahokia Creek and stormed with bricks each time they rose to the surface until drowned. A crowd of whites had torn a colored woman's baby from her arms, thrown it into the fire of a blazing dwelling, held the mother from its rescue until she, herself, was shot nigh unto death, and then allowed her to plunge into the fire to rescue her little one. ”

“ From Deerfield and Schenectady to the Little Bighorn, our devoted bands have perished at the hands of the American Indian; and each dark day is suffered to rest as a mere tradition, buried in the half-forgotten folk-lore of its time and place. Why does the Fort Dearborn massacre, involving only a few score souls, hold a different rank in our hearts?
It is because the footsteps of millions are passing over the spot where it all happened; steamers are churning its peaceful waters; bells and steam-whistles are rending the air that bore away the sound of gun-shots, war-whoops and dying cries ”

“ To uphold this peculiarly constituted church, various crimes have been committed, varying in hue, but the Mountain Meadow Massacre, when one hundred and nineteen men, women and children were butchered in cold blood under a flag of truce, surpasses in atrocity any act of the savage tribes by whom they are surrounded, and has stained indelibly the Mormon church. ”

“ On the day that the girls passed a few miles to the east, the United States troops found on the Sycamore, articles belonging to the Indians 53 who committed the massacre at Davis Settlement, among which were three scalps. Perhaps it was fortunate for the girls that Gen. Whiteside had not discovered and attacked the Indians, because under such circumstances the Indians might have murdered them. ”

“ One little girl hid in the grass and escaped, and one little boy, terribly wounded and left for dead, recovered. The murderers then plundered the camp of every article of value and left the mutilated bodies of their victims to be devoured by wolves. Returning to their own cabin, they burnt it, to throw suspicion on the Indians, loaded a wagon with plunder and fled down the river. Ink-pa-du-tah, a brother of the murdered chief, was encamped with another band of Sioux Indians a few miles from the scene of the massacre. ”

“ Unfortunately the counsel of Davis prevailed, and the settlers refused to heed the warning of Shabbona, and, strange to say, made no preparation for defense.
On the fatal day of the Indian Creek massacre, about four o'clock in the afternoon of May 20, 1832, the red fiends made their attack under the leadership of Girty, the infamous half-breed. Most of the men were at work in the blacksmith shop, and the women busy with their household affairs. The whites were completely surprised and shot down before they could make an effectual resistance. ”

“ The writer, in describing the massacre of the natives by the black police, says:⁠—“I have seen two large pits, covered with branches and brush, secured by a few stones; the pits filled with dead bodies of blacks, of all ages and both sexes.” Again, he says, “Whilst travelling along the road, for more than a quarter of a mile the air was tainted with the putrefaction of corpses, which lay all along the ridges, just as they had fallen. This was in retaliation for the murder of five shepherds. Each detachment of four or five troopers is officered by a European, domiciled in barracks or camps. ”

“ A pamphlet published by an agent from Europe, connected with the Hudson's Bay Company, who was on the ground during the bloody tragedy, and walked unharmed amid the slaughter, which lasted eight days, encouraging the savages, in which he says, “The massacre of Waiilatpu has not been committed by the Indians in hatred of the heretics. If Americans only have been killed, it is because the war has been declared by the Indians against the Americans only, and not against foreigners; and it was in their quality as American citizens and not as Protestants that the Indians killed them.” ”

“ On their way from the Kishwaukee to Ottawa the militiamen stopped at a farm on Indian creek where a few days before a terrible massacre of Whites had taken place. The mutilated bodies of fifteen men, women and children lay unburied upon the ground. This frightful scene instead of inspiring the troops to renewed action against the Indians, still further discouraged them. They were more eager than ever to give up the fight. ”

“ They can only say that the work of massacre was pursued with a cowardly ferocity unsurpassed in the annals of crime. Escaping negroes were mercilessly pursued, shot, stabbed, and beaten to death by the mob and police. Wounded men on the ground begging for mercy were savagely despatched by mob, police, firemen, and, incredible as it may seem, in two instances by women; but, in two or three most honorable and exceptionable cases, white men and members of the Convention were protected by members of the police, both against the mob, and against other policemen. ”

“ We may here interrupt the narrative of events subsequent to the restoration of peace in the territory, with the story of the most horrible massacre of white people by religious fanatics of their own race that has been recorded since that famous St. Bartholemew's night in Paris—the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Committed on Friday, September 11, 1857,—four days before the date of Young's proclamation forbidding the United States troops to enter the territory—it was a considerable time before more than vague rumors of the crime reached the Eastern states. ”

“ In new districts taken up by the whites, almost invariably by way of retaliation, either from the whites destroying their camps or possibly firing on them, the black meditates revenge, and spears or kills the first defenceless shepherd or traveller. Then the Europeans turn out to disperse them—to shoot them down—men, women, and children. The native police, being blacks trained to arms, delight in shooting their fellow-men. For every white man murdered, six blacks are made to bite the dust. ”

“ The Mountain Meadow massacre, the Parish, Potter, and Forbes murders, the assassination of Sergeant Pike on the main street of Salt Lake City, in broad daylight, were all committed with an impunity and immunity from punishment having no parallel elsewhere in the country. ”

“ The destined victims were assembled in a public square, where they were slaughtered by the negroes with the most unexampled cruelty. One brave man, who had often distinguished himself in the defence of the Cape, and who had been weak enough to stay in it, seized with desperate fury the sword of one of the negroes, and killing several, at length fell, [Pg 145] overpowered by numbers. A few were preserved from this day's massacre by their slaves. Some were concealed by the American merchants, though it was very dangerous to venture on such benevolent actions. ”

“ The whites rushed for their guns, but unfortunately not one weapon was ready capped, and it was some time before any of them could be discharged, when a volley caused the blacks to scamper off. It is most astonishing that the whole of the members of the party were not cut down in one dreadful massacre.
The body of the murdered naturalist was buried at the fatal camp, but the grave was left unmarked, and a large fire built and consumed above it to hide all traces of it from the natives. The river where this sad mishap occurred now bears the name of Gilbert. ”

“ The United States flag was floating over the lodge of Black Kettle, the head chief of the tribe; below it was tied also a small white flag as additional security—a precaution Black Kettle had been advised by United States officers to take if he met troops on the Plains. In Major Wynkoop's testimony, given before the committee appointed by Congress to investigate this massacre, is the following passage:
“Women and children were killed and scalped, children shot at their mothers' breasts, and all the bodies mutilated in the most horrible manner. ”

“ The bullets rattled against the logs, but none chanced to pass through the wide apertures between them, and enter our apartment. Sixteen prisoners were killed and sixty wounded, of whom not one in ten had participated in the outbreak; while most were ignorant of it until they heard the guns.
Cold-Blooded Murders Frequent.
After this massacre, cold-blooded murders were very frequent. Any guard, standing upon the fence, at any hour of the day or night, could deliberately raise his musket and shoot into any group of prisoners, black or white, without the slightest rebuke from the authorities. ”

“ When the English had recovered from the first shock of the massacre, they planned four expeditions against the tribes living on the river above Jamestown. Mr. George Sandys attacked the Tappahatomaks, Sir George Yeardley the Wyanokes, Captain William Powell the Chickahominies and the Appomatocks, and Captain John West the Tanx-Powhatans. The savages, without attempting to make a stand, deserted their villages and their crops and fled at the approach of the English. Few were killed, for they were "so light and swift" that the white men, laden with their heavy armor, could not overtake them. ”

“ Many of the unpleasant incidents in frontier life from 1836 to 1857 in Minnesota and Iowa were directly chargeable to these Bedouins of the prairies who tarried at a “trading house but a few minutes and in seeming fear and dread hurried away.” The first exploit officially credited to the band was the massacre of Wamundiyakapi, a Wahpekuta chief, along with seventeen warriors on the headwaters of the Des Moines in Murray County, Minnesota, in 1849. Prior to 1850 they had broken up, plundered, and driven away two parties of United States surveyors. ”

“ A compassionate Mexican at last closed the tragic scene by shooting him. Stephen Lee, brother to the general, was killed on his own housetop. Narcisse Beaubien, son of the presiding judge of the district, hid in an outhouse with his Indian slave, at the commencement of the massacre, under a straw-covered trough. The insurgents on the search, thinking that they had escaped, were leaving, but a woman servant of the family, going to the housetop, called to them, "Kill the young ones, and they will never be men to trouble us." ”