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1864 Massacre Victims' Bodies to Return Home

Sunday, November 07, 2004
By Lillian Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In 1864, 163 Cheyenne and Arapaho -- mostly women and children -- were massacred at Sand Creek, Colo., by U.S. troops.
 
They were shot even as they tried to surrender, hacked apart as they attempted to escape. Their remains were treated as trophies by soldiers who paraded through Denver before cheering crowds after the massacre.

David Halaas, museum division director at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, learned of it as a boy of 10 growing up in Denver.

It made a deep impression on him, and he ended up returning to it as an adult when, as Colorado state historian, he became involved in efforts to find the exact location of the massacre, commemorate the site and return the dead to be buried.

Steve Brady heard the stories of the massacre growing up as well -- from his grandfather, the son of two survivors. Brady, of Lame Deer, Mont., is president of the Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Massacre Descendants.

He has worked alongside members of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho to locate and gain custody of the remains of those killed -- held in the collections of museums from Washington, D.C., to Colorado -- and mark the site of the terrible moment in U.S. history.

Those efforts have led to plans for Sand Creek to become a National Historic Site.

"We'll have for the first time place of dishonor as a national historic site," Halaas said. "It's historic and unprecedented. Sand Creek is a symbol for all of Indian-white conflict; it was an act of genocide on the part of U.S. government."

The attack occurred Nov. 29, 1864, when Col. John M. Chivington led 700 U.S. volunteer soldiers to a village of about 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho camped along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. Although the tribes believed they were under the protection of the U.S. Army, and witnesses later testified that an American flag and white surrender flag were flown, Chivington's troops attacked and killed 163 people, mainly women, children, and the elderly. Eventually the massacre was condemned following three federal investigations.

Some of the most wrenching accounts came from John Smith, an interpreter who witnessed the massacre and the killing of his half-Indian son that day. He testified in a congressional hearing in 1865.

"They were terribly mutilated, lying there in the water and the sand; most of them in the bed of the creek, dead and dying and making many struggles. They were so badly mutilated and covered with sand and water that it was very hard for me to tell one from another," he said.

Asked if he had actually witnessed "acts of barbarity" by the troops, he said, "Yes, sir; I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women all cut to pieces."

The massacre set off an explosion of warfare, Halaas said, with a coalition of tribes that formed in the wake of the massacre.

"This kind of defined the relationship between the U.S. government and Indian people -- not just Cheyennes. If the people of Black Kettle, a known peace chief, could be slaughtered this way -- after that, Indian people knew their only hope was to fight."

The Indians shut down major routes in the West and crushed a U.S. force sent to fight them the next year.

"For the next 10 years, the Plains were just aflame in war," said Halaas.

"It was a war to annihilate native people, it really was. The climax was at Little Big Horn" in 1876.

After that, the tide turned and the Indians were defeated.