Sand Creek Massacre
In May, 1860 Silas, along with his brother William L.G. Soule, and his cousin, Sam Glass, went to the gold fields in Colorado. "When I arrived here I found a party waiting for me to go to pikes peak. My Brother and cousin were in the gang going with a quartz machine belonging to Solomon and Parker of Lawrence and there was no way but I must go." Soule dug for gold and worked in a blacksmith shop, and then in December, 1861, he enlisted in Company K, 1st Colorado Volunteers. He made his way up the ranks, and in November 1864, was named commander of Company D, 1st Colorado Cavalry. On November 29, 1864, Captain Soule and his company were with the regiment at Sand Creek, Colorado. Col. John Chivington ordered the cavalry to attack the Cheyenne encampment. Soule saw that the Cheyenne were flying the U.S. flag as a sign of peace, and, when told to attack, ordered his men to hold their fire and stay put. Chivington's men, however, immediately attacked. The resulting action is now known as the Sand Creek Massacre, one of the biggest mass slaughters in U.S. history.
- "I refused to fire, and swore that none but a coward would, for by this time hundreds of women and children were coming towards us, and getting on their knees for mercy. ... I tell you Ned it was hard to see little children on their knees, having their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized."
- - Captain Silas Soule, letter to Major Edward W. Wynkoop, 14 December 1864
Chivington was furious over Soule's refusal to attack the camp and branded him a coward. Soule's men came to his defense, saying that Soule was indeed very courageous in refusing Chivington's order.
Read more about this topic: Silas Soule
Famous quotes containing the words sand, creek and/or massacre:
“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)