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Last week, the Longmont City Council voted to put a new name on Chivington Drive. It was a sensible decision, since any other course would have prolonged a controversy that began in late 1864 when Col. John Milton Chivington ordered the Third Colorado Volunteer Regiment to attack the Cheyenne and Arapaho camp near the Kansas border a few miles north of the Arkansas River.
That action is now known as the Sand Creek
Massacre,
and Chivington's name is forever associated
with the slaughter of women and children who had believed
they were under government protection.
That's not how most Coloradans saw it then, though. The Civil War was raging back east, and it took almost every Union soldier. Few were left out here to defend against Indians, so the locals had to organize militias for protection.
Did they need it? In June of 1864, Arapaho raiders visited the Hungate ranch, 25 miles southeast of Denver, and killed Nathan, Ellen and their young daughters.
Later that summer, Plains Indian raids were so frequent that freighters would no longer travel from civilization to Denver. Food prices soared, there was no mail, and Denver was essentially cut off from the world for months.
There was talk, not entirely unfounded, that the Confederates had allied with the Indians to isolate and then capture the gold mines of Colorado. The Confederacy had once before marched toward Colorado, only to be defeated on March 28, 1862, at Glorieta Pass between Santa Fe and Las Vegas in New Mexico.
The hero of that battle was John M. Chivington, who maneuvered his 430 volunteers around the main battle to destroy the Confederate supply train, thus forcing the Rebel army to retreat back to Texas.
Chivington was a staunch abolitionist. Just about everybody is against slavery these days, but in the 1850s it was not a popular stance, and he demonstrated courage as he preached against slavery in Bloody Kansas.
After Sand Creek, Chivington was hailed as a hero in
Denver; the Rocky Mountain News reported that All
acquitted themselves well, and Colorado soldiers again
covered themselves with glory.
So, are we applying presentism
when we now find
Chivington's name offensive? Are we judging him by the
standards of our time, when he lived under the standards of
a different time, a time when, as territorial Gov. John
Evans later wrote, the benefit to Colorado of that
massacre, as they call it, was very great for it ridded the
plains of the Indians.
?
Even in Chivington's time, though, there were standards
that he violated. His men bashed babies to death, shot
unarmed prisoners and took body parts as souvenirs. Two
officers in his command, Lt. Joseph A. Cramer and Capt.
Silas Soule, reported the barbarous massacre to Washington.
Maj. Ned Wynkoop called Chivington an inhuman
monster.
Congress launched an investigation, and in 1865 reported
that It is difficult to believe that beings in the form
of men, and disgracing the uniform of United States
soldiers and officers, could commit or countenance the
commission of such acts of cruelty and barbarity as are
detailed in the testimony.
The Army considered a
court-martial, but there were jurisdiction problems that
protected Chivington.
So by the standards of his own time, Chivington was
cruel and barbarous. We're not engaging in
presentism
if we find him so now, although we should
also understand how frightened the people of Denver were in
1864 and 1865.
And it isn't as though Chivington Drive in Longmont dates back to pioneer days. It dates only to 1977 when it was apparently christened by a developer. In my days of covering the Longmont City Council for a weekly newspaper there in 1972, I saw frequent annexations, many with streets named by the developer, and never once did anyone ask about the street names. I suspect this one slid through in like manner.
So a new name for Chivington Drive is in order -- I suggest Soule Drive, to honor the soldier who was murdered by Chivington's agents for telling the truth about Sand Creek.
And if there's a renaming ceremony, it would be a good time to reflect on war crimes, from Sand Creek to Abu Ghraib, and how even when the government tries to do right by identifying and punishing those responsible -- there's a substantial portion of the public which wants to honor the criminal.
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