At dawn on November 29, 1864, a volunteer Colorado militia swept down on a sleeping Cheyenne and Arapaho village camped on the Big Sandy River in southeastern Colorado, exacting brutal revenge for a year-long campaign of terror waged by tribal warrior societies on the Kansas and Colorado plains.
When the smoke cleared, Colonel John M. Chivington’s troops returned to Denver, waving Indian scalps and body parts to an adoring crowd that hailed the conquering heroes as saviors of the territory. Chivington claimed his militia decimated the entire Cheyenne and Arapaho nations – some five to six hundred warriors among them, including the fearsome Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. His actions prompted the Rocky Mountain News to hoist Chivington among the greatest American military leaders of the time, an endorsement that would surely catapult the former Methodist preacher to lofty political office.
But the Dog Soldiers were still alive. In fact, few of the warriors guilty of the violent summer depredations on the Plains were anywhere near Sand Creek when the civilian militia attacked. Union soldiers accused Chivington of conducting a wholesale massacre of peaceably inclined Indian prisoners camped under the protection of the U.S. Army, claiming the majority of the estimated 230 killed were women, children and elderly.
Within months, Chivington’s renowned “Battle of Sand Creek” descended into a broiling kettle of accusation and recrimination, turning soldier against soldier, and Indian against Indian.
Explore this site for information on John Chivington, Black Kettle, Edward Wynkoop, Silas Soule, White Antelope, Left Hand, John Evans, John Smith, Bull Bear, Little Raven, and the extraordinary circumstances leading up to, and following the massacre at Sand Creek.
