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Now that the archeologists have finally determined exactly where it happened, Congress is expected to approve a Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site near the town of Eads in Kiowa County.
The Sand Creek Massacre began just before dawn on Nov. 29, 1864 when the Third Colorado Volunteers, under the command of Col. John M. Chivington, attacked Cheyenne and Arapahoe who were encamped along Big Sandy Creek.
Chivington had 750 armed men and four howitzers. The Cheyenne and Arapahoe were mostly women and children, camped in a place where the U.S. Army commander at nearby Ft. Lyon had promised them they would be safe.
The outcome was predictable, since Chivington had
proclaimed, after riding southeast from Denver, that I
have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and
honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill
Indians.
That he and his men did, although the specifics are hard to establish. In his report, Chivington claimed to have killed 400 to 500 Indians, all warriors. A body count on the field came up with 28 men and 105 women and children, and a recent wire-service story reported 163 victims.
The Colorado Volunteers lost nine killed and 38 wounded, and returned to Denver with scalps and genitalia as trophies while being hailed as heroes.
Sand Creek ignited more than a decade of warfare on the
Great Plains. As historian Shelby Foote put it, when
the buffalo-hunting braves returned and saw the mutilations
practiced upon their people ... they swore to serve their
enemy in the same fashion when the tables were turned, as
they soon would be.
Sand Creek is an certainly a major event in American history, as deserving of designation as Gettysburg or Yorktown. By some theories, history is supposed to be instructive, and in that case, what lessons might we learn today?
One is that while it is convenient to depict Chivington as an arch-fiend, this not the totality of his life. This was brought home to me about a year ago.
Our daughter Abby was taking a Colorado history class from Tom Noel at the University of Colorado in Denver. Right around Halloween, the class went to Fairmount Cemetery, and students stood by graves and portrayed their occupants. (They do this most years, but not this year, since Noel is on sabbatical.)
Abby was Dr. Florence Sabin, a public-health pioneer, and she gave a presentation that made us prouder parents.
John M. Chivington is also interred at Fairmount, and I wondered how they were going to handle him. An African-American student, Wilhelmina Evans, more than met the challenge -- she was brilliant.
She spoke of Sand Creek, of course, but turned the focus to Chivington's career as a Methodist preacher and a courageous abolitionist.
Part of that fight against slavery came at the Battle of Glorieta Pass in New Mexico on March 28, 1862. The First Colorado Volunteers and the Texas invaders fought to a standstill, but as the battle raged, Chivington's detachment sneaked around the Texans and destroyed their supply train, thus forcing a retreat and keeping the gold of California and Colorado in Union hands.
Sure, the graveside presentation had an element of spin, but it was thought-provoking spin. I left wondering how a man could be so concerned about the humanity of African-American slaves, and so callous about the humanity of the Plains Indians.
What sort of moral blinders did he wear? Probably the same ones as his superior in 1864, Territorial Gov. John Evans -- a founder of churches and universities, a builder of railroads, and a man who believed it was immoral for uncivilized nomads to occupy land that could be used for productive family farms that would help feed a nation.
Not everyone wore those blinders. Capt. Silas Soule,
commander of a cavalry company at Sand Creek, refused to
obey Chivington's order to attack, as it was outright
murder.
A congressional committee heard from Soule and
others, and declared Chivington's raid a cowardly and
cold-blooded slaughter, sufficient to cover its
perpetrators with indelible infamy, and the face of every
American with shame and indignation.
Even so, that presentation made me continue to ponder
what sort of moral blinders we wear today, what sorts of
things that most of us honor or celebrate, even if there
are a few carping critics, will be seen as indelible
infamy
by future generations. And how could the same
man could be heroic in one cause, and a callous butcher in
another?
If a National Historic Site at Sand Creek makes us all stop and wonder about such matters from time to time, then it will provide a most worthy lesson of history.
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