Sand Creek Massacre

On November twenty-ninth, eighteen sixty-four, a force of approximately seven hundred Colorado Volunteer soldiers led by Colonel John Chivington attacked a peaceful encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho people on Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado.

The encampment had gathered there at the direction of military authorities, with assurances of safety. Black Kettle, the Cheyenne peace chief, had met with Army officers in Denver that fall and was told to bring his people to Sand Creek and wait. He flew both an American flag and a white flag from his lodgepole the morning of the attack.

Chivington ordered the assault before dawn. Between one hundred fifty and two hundred people were killed. Women, children, and elderly people made up a large portion of the dead. Soldiers took body parts as trophies, some of which were later displayed publicly in Denver. Black Kettle survived. He spent the remaining four years of his life continuing to seek peace with the United States government, and was killed in a separate Army attack in Oklahoma in eighteen sixty-eight.

Three congressional investigations followed the massacre. The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War called the attack a foul and dastardly massacre. Chivington had already resigned his commission before criminal charges could be brought. No one was prosecuted.

Congress authorized Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in two thousand. The site, in Kiowa County in southeastern Colorado, marks the location of the attack and includes a memorial to those killed. The Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes were involved in its establishment and remain connected to it.