Massacre Site Open to the Public
Cheyenne senator finally wins his Sand Creek battle.
Categories: Old West Saviors
By: Jana Bommersbach 11/01/2007
Almost every single casualty was a child, a woman or an old man. Chief Black Kettle had felt secure enough by the military promises of safety to send his warriors hunting while their families camped there. Hardly anyone was left behind to fight back. Over the next eight hours, the soldiers unloaded bullets and cannonballs.
Virtually every corpse was scalped; “private parts” were cut off both men and women, and soldiers later showed off these profane “trophies” in Denver. Fleeing Indians were hunted down and slaughtered over a killing field that covered more than a quarter mile. Witnesses stated the creek ran red with blood by the time the massacre was over.
Back in Denver, still just a dusty cowtown, Chivington claimed to have killed some “500 warriors” at the camp, making this “battle” a retaliation, he said, for the Indian wars that had made 1864 such a living hell in Colorado.
To be fair, Cheyennes were among those natives who killed and plundered white settlers in Colorado and Kansas earlier that year, but these were attacks by roving bands of Dog Soldiers, not Black Kettle’s people.
Three separate Congressional investigations exposed Chivington’s lies and labeled his attack a “gross and wanton” outrage. Yet, he and his men never suffered a punishment for the massacre.
The Cheyenne and Arapaho murdered at Sand Creek were never properly buried; their spilled blood having long seeped into the land. That graveyard is now a National Park Service site, dedicated last April near Eads, Colorado.
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