“My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish;
and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it;
for what is one man that he should make much of his winters,
even when they bend him like a heavy snow?
So many other men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills.”
-Black Elk
Here in Mount Vernon, we are culturally, historically, and geographically removed from a story that remains mostly unknown.
Traveling to New Mexico last April 30, my first-hand understanding happened during a visit to the site.
Located in southeast Colorado, 731 miles southwest of our town, is the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.
Set in a windswept flatter-than-a-pancake nowhere, Sand Creek lacks descriptive landform, vegetation, and trees.
Southeast of Denver by 170 miles, the site is considered sacred.
At dawn on November 29, 1864, Col. John Chivington (who was also a Methodist pastor), led an unprovoked attack on a peaceful encampment of 750 Cheyanne and Arapaho Indians at Sand Creek. Over 230 women, children and elderly were brutally massacred while most of the male warriors were away on a hunting trip.
This attack by the Third Colorado Cavalry on Chief Black Kettle’s encampment became known as the Sand Creek Massacre.
Black Kettle flew an American flag and a white flag from his tipi. This peace signal, advised by Indian agents, was ignored by the charging soldiers.
Most victims were shot or stabbed. The cavalry also burned down the Indian encampment, destroying shelter with the onset of winter.
Afterward, soldiers displayed trophies of their “great victory,” including body parts taken for souvenirs.
Unfathomable! What on earth compels a human being to have such anger or hatred in one’s heart to kill someone who simply looks different, or who has a way of life that isn’t accepted?
Equally, I try to imagine the terror, the helplessness, and the chaos of being under such attack. Where does one find refuge in this flatland? As a mother, how do you protect children?
Grizzly details abound of this bloody attack.
Silas Soule commanded the 1st Colorado Cavalry, Company D that was present at Sand Creek. Soule ordered his company to “stand down.”
Three months later, in February 1865, Soule testified at a military hearing that investigated the slaughter. Soule recounted watching children begging for their lives and having “their brains beat out like dogs” and peoples’ body parts being cut off.
Soule’s and others’ testimonies about the massacre led to Chivington’s resignation and Colorado’s Territorial Governor, John Evans’ dismissal.
Two months later, in retaliation for testifying, Soule was murdered. Dying at age 26, Soule is honored as having led a heroic life of “moral courage” at great personal risk to himself.
Charles Squier, the assassin, fled the scene but was eventually caught. However, the officer who captured Squier was soon found dead in a Denver hotel.
A nationwide outrage ensued. Congress created a committee to investigate the Sand Creek Massacre. Eventually, the Federal Government condemned the massacre.
Descendants of Cheyanne and Arapaho helped establish the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in April 2007, over 140 years since the carnage.
The 1864 Sand Creek Massacre is now viewed as the beginning of three decades of war, broken treaties, and military subjugation of the Plains Indians. The more familiar Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 marked the end of large-scale bloody conflict.
Today these stories may sound eerily familiar, just another era with different people.
Our history should not remain hidden or whitewashed.
An NPS ranger spoke to us gathered, detailing the Sand Creek tragedy. I asked him why, after telling this story many times, that he isn’t personally angry about this history.
His reply: “telling the story, making it known, is to honor those who died.”
The deceased great spirits of Sand Creek, Wounded Knee and other conflicts remain alive in our hearts, in the soil beneath our feet, and in the air we breathe.
Bob Campagna is a local photographer and writer. His email is [email protected].
The Lesser-Known Beginning
June 22, 2023