From: birdbrain@dontemailme.com   
      
   In the "other thread" currently running about US Cavalry,   
   I mention that the Denver museum of the "Colorado Historical Society"   
   currently has an exhibit highlighting one of the lowest points   
   in American military history. Here is something copied from a   
   web site that explains:   
      
   The Sand Creek Massacre   
   Southern Cheyenne   
   November 29, 1864   
      
      Colorado Territory during the 1850's and 1860's was a place of phenomenal   
   growth spurred by gold and silver rushes. Miners by the tens of thousands had   
   elbowed their way into mineral fields, dislocating and angering the Cheyennes   
   and Arapahos. The Pike's Peak Gold Rush in 1858 brought the the tension to a   
   boiling point. Tribesmen attacked wagon trains, mining camps, and stagecoach   
   lines during the Cival War, when the military garrisons out west were reduced   
   by the war. One white family died within 20 miles of Denver. This outbreak of   
   violence is sometimes referred to as the Cheyenne-Arapaho War or the Colorado   
   War of 1864-65.   
      Governor John Evans of Colorado Territory sought to open up the Cheyenne   
   and Arapaho hunting grounds to white development. The tribes, however, refused   
   to sell their lands and settle on reservations. Evens decided to call out   
   volunteer militiamen under Colonel John Chivington to quell the mounting   
   violence.   
      Evans used isolated incidents of violence as a pretext to order troops into   
   the field under the ambitious, Indian-hating  territory military commander   
   Colonel  Chivington. Though John Chivington had once belonged to the clergy,   
   his compassion for his fellow man didn't extend to the Indians.   
      
   Sand Creek Massacre   
      In the spring of 1864, while the Cival War raged in the east, Chivington   
   launched a campaign of violence against the Cheyenne and their allies, his   
   troops attacking any and all Indians and razing their villages. The Cheyennes,   
   joined by neighboring Arapahos, Sioux, Comanches, and Kiowas in both Colorado   
   and Kansas, went on the defensive warpath.   
      Evans and Chivington reinforced their militia, raising the Third Colorado   
   Calvary of short-term volunteers who referred to themselves as "Hundred   
   Dazers". After a summer of scattered small raids and clashes, white and Indian   
   representatives met at Camp Weld outside of Denver on September 28. No   
   treaties were signed, but the Indians believed that by reporting and camping   
   near army posts, they would be declaring peace and accepting sanctuary.   
      Black Kettle was a peace-seeking chief of a band of some 600 Southern   
   Cheyennes  and Arapahos that followed the buffalo along the Arkansas River of   
   Colorado and Kansas. They reported to Fort Lyon and then camped on Sand Creek   
   about 40 miles north.   
      Shortly afterward, Chivington led a force of about 700 men into Fort Lyon,   
   and gave the garrison notice of his plans for an attack on the Indian   
   encampment. Although he was informed that Black Kettle has already   
   surrendered, Chivington pressed on with what he considered the perfect   
   opportunity to further the cause for Indian extinction. On the morning of   
   November 29, he led his troops, many of them drinking heavily, to Sand Creek   
   and positioned them, along with their four howitzers, around the Indian   
   village.   
      Black Kettle ever trusting raised both an American and a white flag of   
   peace over his tepee. In response, Chivington raised his arm for the attack.   
   Chivington wanted a victory, not prisoners, and so men, women and children   
   were hunted down and shot.   
      With cannons and rifles pounding them, the Indians scattered in panic. Then   
   the crazed soldiers charged and killed anything that moved. A few warriors   
   managed to fight back to allow some of the tribe to escape across the stream,   
   including Black Kettle.   
      The colonel was as thourough as he was heartless. An interpreter living in   
   the village testified, "THEY WERE SCALPED, THEIR BRAINS KNOCKED OUT; THE MEN   
   USED THEIR KNIVES, RIPPED OPEN WOMEN, CLUBBED LITTLE CHILDREN, KNOCKED THEM IN   
   THE HEAD WITH THEIR RIFLE BUTTS, BEAT THEIR BRAINS OUT, MUTILATED THEIR BODIES   
   IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD." By the end of the one-sided battle as many as 200   
   Indians, more than half women and children, had been killed and mutilated.   
      While the Sand Creek Massacre outraged easterners, it seemed to please many   
   people in Colorado Territory. Chivington later appeared on a Denver stage   
   where he regaled delighted audiences with his war stories and displayed 100   
   Indian scalps, including the pubic hairs of women.   
      Chivington was later denounced in a congressional investigation and forced   
   to resign. When asked at the military inquiry why children had been killed,   
   one of the soldiers quoted Chivington as saying, "NITS MAKE LICE."  Yet the   
   after-the-fact reprimand of the colonel meant nothing to the Indians.   
      As word of the massacre spread among them via refugees, Indians of the   
   southern and northern plains stiffened in their resolve to resist white   
   encroachment. An avenging wildfire swept the land and peace returned only   
   after a quarter of a century.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)