Warring Tribes Co-Exist on Wyoming Reservation
Sand Creek Massacre Trail Unites Them on Wind River Reservation
Sep 23, 2009
The markers allude to horrific atrocities committed 144 years ago against native Arapahos by agents of the U.S. government. The lasting after-effects are palpable on the reservation today in the form of poverty, alcoholism and drug abuse, and a hopeless sense of fatalism. History books fail to provide these details when telling the story of How the West Was Won.
In plain terms, The Sand Creek Massacre was one instance of systematic genocide and racial extermination, carried out by the U.S. government in order to fulfill its Manifest Destiny. Today, labels like ‘treachery,’ ‘planting false evidence,’ ‘war crimes,’ ‘hate crimes,’ ‘sex crimes’ and ‘ethnic cleansing' would describe the tactics used.
These terms describe the atrocities which led to the establishment of Wind River Reservation in 1866. The attack was led by Colonel J.M. Chivington with 600 calvarymen from Colorado, and Major Scott Anthony with 100 of his men.
The Makings of a Massacre
It was a well-devised plan. Hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapahos were camped around Sand Creek near Fort Lyon, where U.S. agents had assured their protection and safety. According to the historical account recorded in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Anthony had already cut the Indians’ rations and demanded the surrender of their weapons. Meanwhile, he sent the young Cheyenne hunters miles away to hunt buffalo.
After nightfall on November 29, 1864, Chivington and his men stormed the encampment with 12-pounder mountain howitzers and talk about “collecting scalps” and “wading in gore.” In Congressional hearings after the attack, Chivington was quoted to have declared, “I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians.”
The soldiers attacked 600 Indians camped at Sand Creek -- two-thirds of them women and children. They did not retaliate. They thought they were safe under the United States flag, which flew above Chief Black Kettle’s lodge, along with a white flag of surrender.
But as Indians fled in panic, old men, women, children and infants were shot down. Reports later confirmed that most victims were scalped and mutilated, their body parts displayed as trophies on soldiers’ saddles and hats.
The End of an Era
Within a few hours, hundreds of Indians were murdered (accounts range from 200-500). Nine U.S. soldiers died in the chaos; many from friendly fire. Less than a year later, the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes abandoned their claims to the Territory of Colorado.
Tribal leaders considered the Sand Creek Massacre a declaration of war on their way of life and a complete breach of trust. It sparked 12 years of intermittent warfare that culminated in the Battle of Little Big Horn. It hastened the end of an era for the Native Americans, who would never again roam the plains at will, according to tribal traditions.
The massacre was one of the few American military campaigns atrocious enough to be condemned by Congress. In the 1865 Treaty of the Little Arkansas, Chivington’s attack was called a “gross and wanton” outrage. Two congressional committees censured him, but Chivington went unpunished.
Massacre Trail Finally Marked
After nearly 150 years -- in 2006 -- the State of Wyoming designated the Sand Creek Massacre Trail, a 600-mile link between the site of the massacre in Colorado and Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation. It follows the path of surviving Northern Arapaho and Cheyenne in the years following the massacre until wintering on the Wind River Indian Reservation in 1876, where the Arapaho remain today.
The reservation was set aside exclusively for the Eastern Shoshones by the U.S. government in 1866, but 10 years later, the weary band of Northern Arapahos from Colorado moved onto the reservation ‘temporarily.’ The two tribes – traditional enemies -- have lived together ever since. The Shoshones, original inhabitants of the reservation, call the Arapahos’ enduring presence “the Long Winter.”
Located in the foothills of the Wind River Mountain Range, the reservation stretches 110 miles to Yellowstone National Park. It’s a wild and sparsely populated region of the West, where it’s easy to imagine herds of wild buffalo roaming the high plains, as they once did by the millions.
“Living history” commonly passes as a staged recital of past battles or pivotal political speeches by dead heroes. But travelling the Sand Creek Massacre Trail from Colorado to Wind River Reservation in Wyoming is the real thing.
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