Chief Niwot - The Sand Creek Massacre

The Sand Creek Massacre

After months of patrolling, Chivington and the Third Colorado failed to find any hostile Native tribes on the prairie. In frustration, they headed for Sand Creek. Despite the testimony by Major Edward Wynkoop, commander of Fort Lyons, that the Native people at Sand Creek had not been raiding, Colonel Chivington and his men attacked at dawn on November 29, 1864, completely surprising the sleeping Native families.

Chief Black Kettle was sure there was a mistake, and hastily raised both a U.S. flag and a white flag of surrender. As bullets, including the only artillery barrage ever put forth by one group on another in the history of the State of Colorado, rained down on the scattering Arapaho and Cheyenne, it is reported Chief Niwot stood in the middle of the battle, arms folded, refusing to fight the white men he still believed were his friends.

Chief Niwot was mortally wounded and died a few days later. No exact statistics exist on the number of natives killed at the Sand Creek Massacre, but most historians place the number at approximately 180. And sadly, most of the dead were women, children and the elderly.

The Sand Creek Massacre was such an atrocity that President Abraham Lincoln, though in the midst of the Civil War, called for a Congressional investigation into the tragedy. Congress ruled the “gross and wanton” incident a “massacre” rather than a “battle.” Chivington was censured for his actions. Governor Evans was removed from office and Colorado was placed under martial law.

Chief Niwot and his people's massacre at Sand Creek represents a major precipitating event that resulted in three following decades of "Indian Wars" in the West.

The fighting between whites and the Arapaho continued. The Treaty of Medicine Lodge, signed in 1867, put the Southern Arapaho on The Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Reservation in Oklahoma, but resistance continued until 1869, when General Eugene Carr, assisted by William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, finally defeated the Cheyenne and Arapaho at the Battle of Summit Springs, ending their presence in Colorado. The Northern Arapaho continued to resist white settlement seven more years until 1876, fighting General George Armstrong Custer at the Little Bighorn before finally being driven into the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.