Sand Creek Massacre: Genocide?
The World English Dictionary defines the term “genocide” as “the policy of deliberately killing a nationality or ethnic group.” Though the term “genocide” was not coined until 1944, acts of genocide have been committed throughout history. While some historians believe the killing and acts of violence toward Native Americans is considered genocide, others argue that genocide is an act of intent and does not describe the colonization experience. It is debated, then, whether one of the most heinous acts of violence against Native Americans, known as the Sand Creek Massacre, is considered genocide.
The Sand Creek Massacre occurred on November 29, 1864. It stands as one of the cruelest acts against the Native citizens of the United States. In the early dawn of that morning, Colonel John M. Chivington and his army, known as the Third Colorado Volunteers, brutally attacked a Cheyenne and Arapaho village along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. With more than seven hundred well-armed men, Chivington attacked the village of six hundred peaceful Native people. Two-thirds of the village was comprised of women, children, and the elderly. The younger men in the village were out hunting buffalo at the time, so they were not present when the massacre occurred (Brown).
Black Kettle, the chief of the Cheyenne tribe, met with Major Anthony at Fort Lyon a short time before the massacre, and was assured by him that if he and his people camped at Sand Creek they would be under the protection of the military at the fort. As chaos erupted in the village, with the soldiers assembling on two sides of the encampment, Black Kettle stood in front of his lodge waving the American flag and the white flag of surrender from a long lodge pole. He told his people not to be afraid, reminding them of the agreement of their protection by the United States soldiers. However, the firing of guns and the screaming of women and children drowned out his words. Separately and unarmed, Left Hand and White Antelope, leaders of the Arapaho tribe, approached the soldiers believing this was a misunderstanding, but both were shot. White Antelope died while Left Hand survived his wounds (Hyde).
Robert Bent, a Cheyenne, was forced by Chivington to serve as the guide on this mission. As a witness to the massacre, he told of terror and cruelty waged against the people:
There seemed to be an indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children. There were some thirty or forty squaws [women] collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards shot and killed and four or five bucks outside. The squaws offered no resistance. Everyone I saw dead was scalped. I saw one squaw cut open with an unborn child, as a thought, lying by her side. Captain Soule afterwards told me that such was the fact. I saw the body of White Antelope with the privates cut off, and I heard a soldier say he was going to make a tobacco pouch out of them. I saw one squaw whose privates had been cut out (U.S. Congress 96).
Robert Bent’s brother, George Bent, was camped with the Cheyenne when they were attacked. He saw the extermination of his people and the Arapahos camping alongside them. He was shot in the hip but was able to take shelter in one of the holes dug by some of the elders into the creek bank. George Bent's friend, Little Bear, told him of seeing "dead bodies all cut up, and even the wounded scalped and slashed," and of "one old woman wandering about; her whole scalp had been taken off and the blood was running down into her eyes so that she could not see where to go" (Hyde 154).
First Lieutenant James Connor of the First Infantry New Mexico Volunteers was another witness to the massacre and corroborated these vicious acts. He stated that Native women's genitalia and sex organs were taken and that the soldiers had "stretched them over the saddle-bows and wore them over their hats while riding in ranks" (U.S. Congress 53). He told of "a child a few months old being thrown into a feedbox of a wagon and after being carried some distance left on the ground to perish" (U.S. Congress 53). In another instance, he reported he "heard another man say that he had cut the fingers off an Indian to get the rings on the hand" (U.S. Congress 53).
The aftermath revealed the slaughter of one hundred five women and children and twenty-eight men (Brown 89). In his official reports and in the investigations following the massacre, Chivington maintained he and his corps of men had been embattled with approximately seven hundred warriors and left five to six hundred of them dead (Berthrong 217). Within the U.S. troops, nine were killed and thirty-eight were wounded. Most of the wounded was a result of "friendly fire," possibly from the consumption of alcohol before the attack (Brown 89).
When confronted with protests from officers regarding the planned assault, Chivington, a former Methodist minister, reacted violently and stated, "I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians" (U.S. Congress 73-74). Because his commission in the military expired before he commenced the assault, Chivington received no punishment for the massacre other than enduring several Congressional inquiries and ending his potential for becoming a member of Congress (Cutler 1995). The Sand Creek Massacre was clearly a genocidal massacre, as part of a larger act of genocide against the Cheyenne and Arapaho with the objective being that none would remain alive. It was, in its purest form, an act committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, or racial group through a deliberate policy of killing its members. There are many versions of events both leading up to and during the attacks at Sand Creek, but there is no version that can describe this horrendous event as anything other than genocide.
Works Cited
Berthrong, Donald J. The Southern Cheyennes. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.
Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971.
Cutler, Bruce. The Massacre at Sand Creek. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
Hyde, George E. Life of George Bent: Written from His Letters. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1968.
"genocide." Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins
Publishers. 20 Jul. 2014. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide>
United States. Cong. Senate. United States Congress. The Chivington Massacre. 39th Cong.,
2nd sess. S. Rept. 156. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1867. Web.