The Sand Creek Massacre a.k.a. the Chivington Massacre
From: http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com
The Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 remains a powerful symbol of the U.S. government's appalling treatment of Native Americans.
In September 1864, Black Kettle, a known peaceful chief of the Cheyennes, sent peace feelers to Fort Lyon in response to the proclamation of Colorado governor John Evans issued the previous June. In essence, Evans had declared that any group of American Indians who detached from known hostile groups would be allowed to set
Map from http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/places/states/colorado/sandcreek.htm up camp near specified army posts and enjoy military protection.
In the weeks following the proclamation, however, the situation became increasingly tense. Indian raids to the east had virtually isolated Denver, and the June murder of the Hungate family near Denver had fueled public outcry for retaliation. Evans was thus caught in a difficult situation: On the one hand, his offer was on record; on the other, the public was demanding action. So, Evans promulgated a second notice in August, which virtually gave citizens a free hand with any hostile Indians. He had also received authorization to form a volunteer cavalry regiment for home defense. In late September, at a parley held at Camp Weld near Denver, Evans washed his hands of the problem by turning it over to the district military commander, Col. John M. Chivington. The June offer was still open, Evans informed Black Kettle, but it would now be necessary to make peace with the military.
Disturbed but still desiring peace, Black Kettle and the other chiefs agreed to the governor's terms. In early October, a large band of Arapahos surrendered to Maj. Edward Wynkoop at Fort Lyon, near the site of present-day Lamar, Colorado. Since the Indians were in effect considered prisoners, Wynkoop saw it as his responsibility to feed them, an act for which he was promptly replaced by Maj. Scott Anthony. After collecting the Indians' firearms, Anthony ordered the Arapahos to camp on Sand Creek, some 40 miles distant; when Black Kettle arrived in early November, he too was directed to set up camp on Sand Creek. Both contingents believed they had acted in good faith and were now under the protection of the troops.
Meanwhile, in Denver, Chivington had been formulating plans for a strike against the Indians. There was a sense of urgency to Chivington's efforts, as the term of enlistment for the Third Colorado, organized during the summer, would soon run out. The regiment had
1 seen no action and had come to be known as the Bloodless Third.
Although there had been some vague talk of a campaign against hostile villages in eastern Colorado, it seems clear that Chivington aimed from the start to strike the Indian encampments on Sand Creek. Accordingly, on November 28, Chivington arrived at Fort Lyon with the Third Colorado, prepared to launch a surprise attack. Some of the officers at Fort Lyon strenuously objected on the grounds that the Indians were under a pledge of protection, a protest that Chivington angrily overruled. That evening, Chivington's command, composed of the Third Colorado and part of the First Colorado, together with four mountain howitzers—some 700 men in all—left Fort Lyon.
By dawn on November 29, the forces were positioned for a surprise attack on Black Kettle's village. Chivington struck. While two battalions cut off and captured the pony herds, the remaining troops attacked the village proper. Unable to accept what he saw was happening, Black Kettle hoisted an American flag above his tipi and reassured his people that there was no need to panic. White Antelope, meanwhile, ran at the attacking troops, urging them not to fire and crying out that this was a peaceful camp. It was all to no avail, as he was quickly killed.
Elsewhere in the village, panic took hold despite Black Kettle's pleas. The troops tore through and shot or bayoneted any Indian they came across—man, woman, or child. Chivington had ordered that no prisoners be taken, and none were. Perhaps 60 or 70 of the villagers managed to take up a defensive position of sorts and return fire, but it did little to halt the slaughter. When at last it was over, more than 200 Indians—the entire village—lay dead, many of them mutilated.
In the aftermath, cries of indignation echoed from across the country. To his dying day, Chivington defended his actions at Sand Creek, but the verdict of history has condemned the act for what it was: one of the most infamous massacres on record, a grim day in the annals of American history. The legacy of Sand Creek was a bloody war that lasted from 1867 to 1869.
Further Reading Dunn, William R., I Stand by Sand Creek: A Defense of Colonel John M. Chivington and the Third Colorado Cavalry, 1985; Hoig, Stan, The Sand Creek Massacre, 1963; Mendoza, Patrick M., Song of Sorrow: Massacre at Sand Creek, 1993; Schultz, Duane P., Month of the Freezing Moon: The Sand Creek Massacre, November 1864, 1990; Utley, Robert M., Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1865, 1967.
From: http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com
A fearless Native American warrior, Crazy Horse was an implacable foe of white encroachment on Native American land and of the reservation system. His annihilation of American forces led by Gen. George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876 established him as a fierce defender of Native American sovereignty.
Crazy Horse (Tashunka uitko) was born around 1840 near Rapid Creek, South Dakota, a member of the Oglala Sioux nation. He accompanied horse-stealing raids against the Crow and other neighboring tribes while quite young and became renowned for fearlessness and guile. His quiet nature, refusal to take scalps, and penchant for mystical visions made him unique among his tribesmen, and they appointed him war chief around 1858.
Apparently, Crazy Horse's first contact with army troops came as a result of punitive raids by Gen. William S. Harney against Sioux villages in 1855. Crazy Horse thereafter displayed a hostile, uncompromising attitude toward whites, subsequently distinguishing himself in Red Cloud's war against settlers along the Powder River road in the late 1860s. He became renowned for using feinting and decoy tactics to confuse his foes. On December 21, 1866, he lured a detachment of 80 soldiers under Capt. William J. Fetterman up a ravine and wiped them out.
Crazy Horse also fought well at the Wagon Box Fight of August 2, 1867 and refused to abide by the Fort Laramie Treaty (1868), which ceded much of the Oglala Sioux's land to the U.S. government. Rather than settle on a reservation, Crazy Horse led his tribe west onto their traditional old ranges where they hunted buffalo, raided Crow villages, and attacked prospectors looking for gold. In 1873, Crazy Horse skirmished with a party of cavalry led by Custer, his future nemesis, on the Yellowstone River before riding north to join a group of Sioux and Cheyenne under Sitting Bull.
In 1875, gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which the Sioux regarded as sacred. The government offered to buy the land, but when tribal leaders refused, they threatened to shoot any Native American not on a reservation by January 1876. This threat stung the Native Americans into open defiance and imparted a sense of unity and cohesion among tribes that had been lacking in prior encounters. By springtime, they had mustered several thousand warriors. On March 17, 1876, a U.S. Army column under Gen. 3 George Crook mistakenly attacked what they thought was Crazy Horse's village. Instead, it turned out to be a Cheyenne encampment, and the survivors threw themselves into the swelling ranks of other tribesmen.
The extent of Native American resolve became apparent on June 17, 1876, when Crook attacked Crazy Horse at Rosebud River, sustained heavy losses, and was forced to withdraw. He took no further part in the campaign while the victorious Native Americans returned to their main encampment along Little Bighorn River to await developments. On June 25, their camp was attacked by elements of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry under Custer, which were promptly driven off. Once the Hunkpapa Sioux under Chief Gall had pinned the Americans frontally, a large body of Native Americans under Crazy Horse turned their flank and attacked the U.S. troops from behind. After 20 minutes of fighting, Custer and his 226 men were completely annihilated. Despite this success, achieved largely through tribal unity, the Native American bands broke up their encampment and dispersed.
Custer's defeat stimulated greater efforts on the part of the U.S. Army to crush the Native Americans. Throughout the winter of 1876, a column under Gen. Nelson A. Miles relentlessly hounded Crazy Horse's band, and on January 7, 1876, Miles and his men destroyed the remaining Sioux village at Wolf Mountain in southern Montana. The tribesmen, hungry and half-frozen, began surrendering in small groups to the Americans. Crazy Horse, however, held out until the spring, when emissaries from Red Cloud arrived and entreated him to surrender. When Gen. Crook assured him of his own reservation on the Powder River, Crazy Horse led 800 exhausted followers to Fort Robinson on May 5, 1877.
Unfortunately, Crook could not fulfill the terms of the agreement, and Crazy Horse was constrained to the Red Cloud Agency, a reservation in the area. Older chiefs, including Red Cloud himself, resented the adoration given Crazy Horse by younger braves, and they urged Crook to confine him. Crook was apparently taken in by rumors that Crazy Horse was plotting a rebellion in camp and ordered his arrest. Crazy Horse was bayoneted in the attempt to arrest him on September 5, 1877 and died as he had lived, defiantly. He remains an enduring symbol of human resistance to tyranny and is commemorated by Korczak Ziolkowski's gigantic sculpture on the same Black Hills that Crazy Horse gave his life to defend. Further Reading Ambrose, Stephen E., Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, 1975; Brown, Vinson, Great upon the Mountain: The Story of Crazy Horse, 1971; Clark, Robert A., ed., The Killing of Crazy Horse: Three Eyewitness Views, 1988; DeWall, Rob, Crazy Horse and Korczak: The Story of an Epic Mountain Carving, 1982; Kadlecek, Edward, To Kill an Eagle: Indian Views on the Death of Crazy Horse, 1981; Robinson, Charles M., A Good Year to Die: The Story of the Great Sioux War, 1996.
4 George Armstrong Custer
From: http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com
One of the youngest generals in the Civil War, George Armstrong Custer went on to an infamous career on the frontier as an Indian fighter during the Sioux Wars until he and his Seventh Cavalry were defeated at the Battle of the Little Bighorn-known as Custer's Last Stand-in 1876.
Custer was born on December 5, 1839 in New Rumley, Ohio, although he spent part of his childhood with his half-sister in Monroe, Michigan. Nicknamed "Autie" by his family, Custer often accompanied his father to local militia drills. By the age of four, he could go through the manual of arms perfectly, and the militiamen in New Rumley called him "a born soldier." He graduated from Stebins' Young Men's Academy at the age of 16 and was admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in July 1857. Custer the cadet was a practical joker and popular with his classmates, although he finished at the bottom of his class, performing just well enough in his courses to graduate in 1861 on the eve of the Civil War.
Despite his mediocre record as a student, Custer excelled in military strategy and as a soldier during the Civil War. Shortly after graduating from West Point, he was assigned to a regiment on its way to the first battle of Bull Run. His daring reconnaissance patrols and valor brought him to the attention of the Union Army's commander, Gen. George B. McClellan. As a captain and a staff officer for McClellan, Custer demonstrated his potential to such an extent that he was promoted to brigadier general and given command of a Michigan cavalry brigade at the age of 23.
With his flamboyant uniform-which he designed personally-and his long flowing yellow hair, Custer immediately became a national hero; this helped him win the heart of Elizabeth Bacon, whom he married on February 9, 1864. From the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 through the end of the war, he was renowned for his fearless and often decisive cavalry charges and earned the respect of his men and superiors. By the end of the war, he had been promoted to major general, commanded a full division, and was considered one of the most brilliant cavalry officers in the Union Army.
After the war, Custer returned to the regular army with a permanent rank of lieutenant 5 colonel in the Seventh Cavalry. Because his commanding officer was frequently absent, the Seventh was, for all intents and purposes, Custer's regiment. He quickly made a name for himself on the Plains. Dressed in fringed buckskin instead of a traditional uniform, he was the embodiment of the dashing Indian fighter. Easterners looked on Custer as the army's foremost Indian fighter. His best-selling book, My Life on the Plains (1874), and several popular magazine articles helped to reinforce his reputation as a military genius. Yet the "Custer myth" did not always square with reality.
Custer was no more successful than his military peers as an Indian fighter, and even less so than a few. Indeed, Custer's first experience fighting the Native Americans in 1867 ended in humiliating failure. Not only did he fail to defeat any Native Americans, but he was court- martialed and sentenced to a year's suspension of rank and pay. He rebounded from this personal setback in 1868 when he surprised Chief Black Kettle's Cheyenne village in a brutal and strategically questionable attack. Although not a military target, the victory helped to burnish Custer's public reputation.
In 1874, miners attached to the Seventh Cavalry found gold in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory, and the U.S. government subsequently attempted to buy the Black Hills from the Sioux. When this effort failed, Sioux aggression against neighboring tribes-led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse-gave American officials the necessary justification to send in the military to resolve the situation. The result was the Great Sioux War of 1876.
On June 25, 1876, Custer's Seventh attacked the village of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse on the Little Bighorn River. Refusing reinforcements from other cavalry units, Custer divided his regiment in an effort to outflank the Sioux. However, he underestimated the size and fighting ability of Crazy Horse's force and found himself outnumbered 10 to one and surrounded. In one of the most famous and controversial battles in American history, the Sioux slaughtered "Long Hair"-the name the Sioux had given him-and his men, including Custer's younger brother Tom. "Custer's Last Stand" stunned Americans and awarded to Custer an immortality that he probably did not deserve but that fit with his reputation and public persona.
Further Reading Ambrose, Stephen E., Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, 1975; Connell, Evan, Son of the Morning Star, 1984; Graham, W. A., The Custer Myth: A Sourcebook of Custeriana, 1953; Kinsley, D. A., Custer: The Indian Fighter, 1968; Monaghan, Jay, Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer, 1971; Stewart, Edgar, Custer's Luck, 1955; Wert, Jeffrey D., Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer, 1996.
From: http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com
With only a handful of warriors, Chief Joseph and his band of 800 Nez Percé Indians conducted one of the most epic retreats in military history. Across 1,700 miles of foreboding terrain, they evaded 10 columns of U.S. Army troops and beat them in 18 skirmishes, only to succumb to exhaustion. Joseph's surrender marked a turning point in Native Americans' attempt to maintain their sovereignty when threatened by thousands of American settlers spreading into the West.
Joseph was born Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt ("Thunder rolling down
thefederationoflight.ning.com from the mountains") around 1840 in the Walloway Valley, Oregon. His father, known as Chief Joseph the Elder, was a Christian convert who, in 1855, signed a treaty with the Americans that ceded large tracts of Nez Percé land to the United States for white settlement. When the elder Joseph died in 1871, his son succeeded him as chief, and steadfastly refused to surrender any more of his ancestral Walloway Valley or be moved onto a reservation.
An uneasy truce between the Nez Percé and American forces existed for six years, but by 1877, after the discovery of gold in eastern Oregon, the U.S. government wanted more land and hoped to force the remaining Nez Percé onto the reservation at Lapwai, Idaho. Gen. Oliver O. Howard (commander of the Department of the Columbia) opened negotiations with the Nez Percé for additional land, but relations between the Native Americans and white settlers remained extremely tense. On June 13, negotiations came to an abrupt end after several young Nez Percé warriors killed 20 settlers, viewing them as intruders. The tribe initially tried to hide the warriors but elders decided that the entire tribe (comprising 800 people, most of whom were women and children) should flee. The U.S. Army pursued them.
Thus began the Nez Percé's dramatic escape across the northwest and toward Canada. At several points during the Nez Percé's flight, they turned and fought their pursuers, most notably at White Bird Canyon in Idaho on June 17 and Big Hole River in Montana on August 9. Despite the Nez Percé's inferior numbers, at each battle they managed to hold the U.S. Army at bay, although they suffered increasingly from casualties and desertions. The tribe eventually slipped into Montana through the Lolo Pass, continuing on through the Absaroka Mountains. There, Joseph learned that the Crow Indians were providing scouts to the army pursuing them. The elders then decided to head north through Montana and seek refuge 7 among Sitting Bull's renegade band in Canada.
After nearly three months on the trail and covering hundreds of miles, they arrived in northern Montana and seemed to be close to securing their escape. They beat off an attack by Col. Samuel Sturgis at Canyon Creek, Montana on September 13 and two weeks later raided an army depot at Cow Island on the Missouri River for food. Hungry and weary, the tribe encamped on Snake Creek in the Bear Paw Mountains, only 40 miles from the Canadian border. They thought they had eluded their pursuers and hoped that a few days' rest could help them recover from the deep exhaustion caused by their long flight. Unexpectedly, however, Col. Nelson A. Miles and 600 troopers discovered their resting place and launched a surprise attack. Despite heavy fighting, a stalemate ensued until Joseph, one of the last surviving chiefs, surrendered what was left of his tribe (414 people) on October 5, 1877. "Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired. My heart is sick and sad," he declared, "From where http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/six/goodwords.htm the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."
Despite government promises that they could return to a small portion of their land, the Nez Percé were refused access to the Wallowa Valley and were sent instead to reservations in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Eventually, they were transferred to reservations in Idaho and Washington. Joseph seemed resigned to his fate, and encouraged education and abstinence from drinking among his people. He died on September 21, 1904, in Nespelem, Washington, a tragic symbol of Native American resistance.
Further Reading Hampton, Bruce, Children of Grace: The Nez Percé War of 1877, 1994; Joseph, Chief, Chief Josephís Own Story: An Indianís View of Indian Affairs, 1973; Laughty, Linwood, comp., In Pursuit of the Nez Percé: The Nez Percé War of 1877, 1993; McDermott, John D., Forlorn Hope: The Battle of White Bird Canyon and the Beginning of the Nez Percé War, 1978; Scott, Robert A., Chief Joseph and the Nez Percé, 1993.
8