The Battle of Sand Creek, also known as the Chivington Massacre, was a battle of the American Civil War.
Scattered Indian raids had caused much ill-will between the white settlers and the Native Americans. In the autumn, Territorial (Colorado) officers had offered a vague amnesty if Indians reported to army forts. Black Kettle with many Cheyennes and a few Arapahos, believing themselves to be protected, established a winter camp about 40 miles from Fort Lyon. On November 29, Col. John Chivington, who advocated Indian extermination, arrived near the camp, having marched there from Fort Lyon. In spite of the American flag and a white flag flying over the camp, the troops attacked, killing and mutilating about 200 of the Indians, two-thirds of whom were women and children.
References
CWSAC web site (http://www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/battles/co001.htm)
Today, SandCreek is a peaceful quiet place where the meadowlark sing, the prairie dogs scamper playfully, a small herd of deer in the creek bed curiously observe their surroundings, while an eagle soars overhead.
By the next year what had happened at SandCreek had been condemned in the East as a massacre, while many in Colorado Territory believed that it was a justifiable battle.
The Sand Hills camp (the Arapahoe camp with Chief Left Hand) and the military camp we believe to be a short distance downstream of our family ranch.
The SandCreek Massacre (also known as the Chivington Massacre or the Battle of SandCreek) was an incident in the Indian Wars of the United States that occurred on November 29, 1864 when Colorado Militia troops in the Colorado Territory attacked a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped on the territory's eastern plains.
The SandCreek Massacre is the subject of the 1970 movie Soldier Blue.
Simon J. Ortiz uses the SandCreek massacre as inspiration for his 1981 collection of poems From SandCreek, which focuses on tropes such as memory and story, nature and (dis)connection and the conflicts between the new scientism of the European conquerers and the more spiritualistic pantheism of the Arapaho and the Cheyenne.
Feeds |
Contact