The Sand Creek Massacre November 29, 1864

The Sand Creek Massacre

November 29, 1864

The Trial of Colonel J.M. Chivington for War Crimes

At dawn on November 29, 1864, as the Civil War raged in the East, more than six hundred well-armed cavalry troopers swept down on a peacefully sleeping Cheyenne and Arapaho village camped on the Big Sandy River in southeastern Colorado, exacting brutal revenge for a year-long campaign of terror waged by tribal warrior societies on the Kansas and Colorado plains. They were led by a former Methodist minister turned military commander Colonel John M. Chivington. When the smoke cleared Colonel Chivington and his troops returned to Denver, waving Indian scalps and body parts to an adoring crowd that hailed them as conquering heroes and as saviors of the territory. Colonel Chivington claimed his militia decimated the entire Cheyenne and Arapaho nations – some five to six hundred warriors among them, including the fearsome Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. His actions prompted the Rocky Mountain News to laud Colonel Chivington among the greatest American military leaders of the in the West.

But the hostile Dog Soldiers were still alive. In fact, few if any of the warriors suspected of committing some of the violent murders and mutilations were anywhere near Black Kettle’s village when the US Calvary attacked at Sand Creek. Astonishingly, several Union commanders who were at Sand Creek refused to participate in the assault and later accused the Colonel Chivington of conducting a wholesale massacre of peaceful Indians camped under the protection of the army. They later claimed the majority of the dead were women, children and elderly. Within a year Colonel Chivington’s renowned "Battle of Sand Creek" became known as the “Massacre at Sand Creek.”

You and your students will now have the chance to determine which of those two labels is likely correct, and whether Colonel John Chivington should be indicted by the International Court of History for war crimes.