The Sand Creek Massacre Worse than Las Vegas

On November 29, 1864, a brutal massacre of women, children and the elderly occurred in eastern Colorado, near a sometimes dry river bed called Sand Creek. People are calling Sunday night's horrible massacre in Las Vegas the worst gun massacre in modern American history.

The Sand Creek Massacre is worse than Las Vegas.

The Sand Creek Massacre exceeds Las Vegas in brutality, horror and the number of innocents killed, including women and children. The United States government believes we should be aware of Sand Creek.  That's why President George W. Bush authorized the opening of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Park on April 27, 2007.

Alexa Roberts, the site superintendent for Sand Creek, says, “We’re the only unit in the National Park Service that has ‘massacre’ in its name."  Usually, she notes, signs for national historic sites lead to a presidential birthplace or patriotic monument. “So a lot of people are startled by what they find here.

The United States Park Service manages 412 properties. Each park tells a story of America’s past. Some are memorials to the discovery and preservation of natural landmarks and landscape.  Others commemorate lives and national moments that have shaped American identity. No park, however, tells a story as dark as Sand Creek.  

Today, less than one person per square mile inhabits this arid region of eastern Colorado. But in November of 1864, there were over 1,000 Cheyenne and Arapaho Native Americans who lived in tepees along Sand Creek.

When hundreds of United States cavalrymen suddenly appeared at the Cheyenne camp on a  frosty November morning, the massacre of the women, children and the elderly began.

Before departing, the American men burned the village and mutilated the dead, carrying off body parts as trophies. It mattered not that the Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle had raised the Stars and Stripes above his lodge. It mattered not that the women and children were waving peace flags. The American troops replied with heavy volleys of carbine and cannon fire, killing nearly 200 Native Americans, mostly women, children and the elderly. What the American men then did to mutilate the bodies of the women and children and elderly is a nauseating piece of American history that we ought never forget. It will humble us.

U.S. Army Colonel John Chivington led 425 men from the 3rd Colorado Cavalry, 250 men from the 1st Colorado Cavalry, and a dozen men from the 1st Regiment New Mexico Volunteer Infantry in the massacre of the Cheyennes. The Sand Creek Massacre is sometimes referred to as the Chivington Massacre.

The Cheyennes looked to the peaceful Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle as their leader that November morning.  Most of the Cheyenne men were out hunting for food. Chief Black Kettle considered the United States his friend.  Black Kettle told his people the American soldiers were coming in peace.

When Colonel Chivington gave the order to attack the camp, two officers, Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, commanding Companies D and  K of the First Colorado Cavalry, refused to obey the Colonel's order. These courageous officers told their men to hold their fire. There was nothing to attack but "women and children." 

Mochi

Captain Soule is the one who would later estimate that 200 peaceful Cheyennes were massacred, all but 60 of them women and children. He would later testify before Congress how the soldiers not only scalped the dead but cut off the “ears and privates” of some and that  “Squaws snatches were cut out for trophies.”

Squaws' snatches taken as trophies. Think about that for a moment, and let me introduce you to one of the squaws who resisted her snatch being taken.

Her name was Mochi. She hid in her tent after witnessing her unarmed mother being shot and killed with a pistol shot to the forehead. Mochi was hiding when an American man entered her tent and attempted to rape her. Mochi killed her attacker. She managed to escape the tent and run for her life.

According to Mochi's later testimony, it was the massacre which turned her against the United States. Mochi became a warrior. To this day she is the only Native American woman ever incarcerated by the United States Army as a prisoner of war (in Fort Marion, Florida). The Sand Creek Massacre turned Black Kettle, Mochi, and the rest of the Cheyenne tribe against the United States.

What happened at Sand Creek is a revelation to all Americans as to why massacres occur.  It's about what's in the human heart. Let that sink in.

Consider the testimony of some Americans who witnessed the Sand Creek Massacre.

I saw the bodies of those shot cut all to pieces, worsely mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women cut all to pieces ... With knives; scalped; their brains knocked out; children two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors ... By whom were they mutilated? By the United States troops ...— John S. Smith, Congressional Testimony of Mr. John S. Smith, 1865

I saw one squaw lying on the bank, whose leg had been broken. A soldier came up to her with a drawn sabre. She raised her arm to protect herself; he struck, breaking her arm. She rolled over, and raised her other arm; he struck, breaking that, and then left her with out killing her. I saw one squaw cut open, with an unborn child lying by her side.— Robert Bent, New York Tribune, 1879

There was one little child, probably three years old, just big enough to walk through the sand. The Indians had gone ahead, and this little child was behind, following after them. The little fellow was perfectly naked, travelling in the sand. I saw one man get off his horse at a distance of about seventy-five yards and draw up his rifle and fire. He missed the child. Another man came up and said, 'let me try the son of a b-. I can hit him.' He got down off his horse, kneeled down, and fired at the little child, but he missed him. A third man came up, and made a similar remark, and fired, and the little fellow dropped.— Major Anthony, New York Tribune, 1879

Oklahoma historian Stan Hoig, a man for whom exaggeration had no place in his superb historical writing, tells what the American soldiers did with a few of the body parts.

Fingers and ears were cut off the bodies for the jewelry they carried. The body of White Antelope, lying solitarily in the creek bed, was a prime target. Besides scalping him the soldiers cut off his nose, ears, and testicles-the last for a tobacco pouch ...— Stan Hoig

Kit Carson

Kit Carson, a frontiersman, U.S. army officer, and Indian agent - known for being one of the fiercest soldiers in American history - had this to say about the Americans who massacred the women and children on that day in 1864. Pay close attention to Kit's words:

Jis' to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds, up thar at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children. You call sich soldiers Christians, do ye? And Indians savages? What der yer s'pose our Heavenly Father, who made both them and us, thinks of these things? I tell you what, I don't like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I've fought 'em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would.— Kit Carson to Col. James Rusling

Silas Soule, the young American officer who refused to participate in the massacre of the women and children by ordering his men to stand down, in direct contradiction to Chivington's order to attack, paid the price for his courage. After making the rest of America aware of the Sand Creek massacre by his testimony before Congress, Silas Soule was shot and killed by assassins in downtown Denver. Silas was walking with his wife to their home when he was shot in the back of the head just 80 days after his testimony before Congress.

Did you not know about Sand Creek?  Of course not. Those who do not know history are destined to repeat it. 

1. Guns don't murder people. People murder people.
2. The heart of the problem is the problem of the human heart.
3. There is nothing new under the sun.
4. There will come a day of judgment for the evil perpetrated.
5. You can't legislate human goodness.

Sand Creek and Las Vegas are lessons about the evil which resides within man.

Thank God for those of His creation whose hearts have been rescued from this evil.