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Sand Creek Massacre

The Sand Creek Massacre occurred on November 29, 1864, when members of the Colorado militia attacked a friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment, killing over 130 people, mostly women and children. It is remembered as one of the worst atrocities of the Indian Wars.

Background to the Massacre

In 1851, the United States, the Cheyenne, and the Arapaho (along with several other Indian nations) signed the Fort Laramie Treaty, which recognized the claims of the various signatory Indian nations to a vast territory in what is now the Southern Plains. However, the discovery of mineral wealth in the conceded territory, as well as the increased demand for agricultural land by American citizens and newly arrived European immigrants, put an unbearable strain upon the treaty. In response, several Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs agreed to sign the Treaty of Fort Wise in 1861, which greatly reduced their claims to the territory conceded in the earlier treaty. Not all of their fellow Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs approved of the new treaty, and the decentralized nature of Native American political structures meant that these chiefs did not feel bound to honor the 1861 agreement. Thus, although some Cheyenne and Arapaho bands on the Southern Plains accepted the new limited territory spelled out by the Treaty of Fort Wise, not all did so.

As flocks of settlers and gold rush participants flooded the Southern Plains, groups of Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors who did not hold to the Treaty of Fort Wise attacked in retaliation. U.S. military forces responded, and a series of skirmishes broke out throughout the region. Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors, like most Native American warriors, avoided direct, large-scale confrontations, preferring hit-and-run raids before disappearing back into the surrounding landscape they knew so well. The greater difficulty, however, was that it was incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to determine which bands of Indian warriors were friendly and which were not. In order to resolve this issue, military officials instructed friendly bands to camp near military forts in order to identify themselves as friendly and avoid military reprisals.

The Massacre

Black Kettle, one of the signers of the Treaty of Fort Wise, decided to move his band of Cheyenne and accompanying Arapaho closer to nearby Fort Lyon in a gesture of peace and to reaffirm his people's friendly status. His people set up camp near the Sand Creek riverbed. He few an American flag in the midst of his camp, an action military officials had assured him would mean he would not be attacked. With no obvious threat to the camp at hand, most of the men headed out to hunt nearby buffalo. Meanwhile, Colonel John M. Chivington and 700 members of the Colorado militia set out from Fort Lyon. Chivington was under immense pressure from the governor of Colorado to utilize his militia forces before their terms ended at the end of the year. So far, Chivington and his men had seen little to no action in the Indian Wars, and they probably were greatly frustrated by that fact. Chivington soon came across the Sand Creek encampment and decided to attack, despite the obvious signs that the encampment was friendly. After purportedly drinking heavily the night of November 28, Chivington's men attacked early the next morning.

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