X- here's another example of the massacre you made reference to...But one that shows another set of events surrounding the Sand Creek Massacre. Humans always have reasons for whatever they do. It is also human to question some of the 'reasons'.
It is also important to see events from many sides.
edfreefoundation.org
In the shadow of Sand Creek propaganda
Recent articles in the Denver Post [1] demonstrate the continued biased coverage of that event that occurred in 1864 during the Civil War. Continued presentations like this confirm the Post’s agenda of vilifying Americanism and fanning the flames of collective white guilt. No attempt to present conflicting views of this infamous event has been attempted by the Post. Alternative views are necessary for an unbiased presentation.
Dwight Murphey, 1995, mentions the following in The Dispossession of the American Indian – and Other Key Issues in American history[2].
Denver and the Front Range were left virtually defenseless with Army troops fighting the Civil War in the east. The Indians took advantage of this.
The Minnesota (Santee Sioux) uprising of 1862 killed 800 white settlers and filled Coloradoans with fear.
In early 1863, an Indian agent reported of Colorado governor, John Evans, that the Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne had formed an alliance for a war of extermination against whites.
Colorado governor John Evans traveled to several places on the plains to meet with Indians to prevent war, but the chiefs refused to meet.
ing the months preceding Sand Creek a total of 208 whites – men, women, children and soldiers were killed by the Indians in a series of raids and battles. In June of 1864 the bodies of the Hungate family, killed on a ranch near Kiowa, CO were brought to the city for burial, with the throats of the children cut so severely that their heads were barely attached to their bodies. A monument to this event stands outside the Elbert County Court House in Kiowa, Colorado on Main Street.
Indian representatives came to Denver in September 1864 seeking peace in keeping with their pattern of conducting warfare all spring and summer and then arranging peace for the winter, but were told by governor John Evans that they would have to seek peace with the military thus removing their claim that they were under the protection of the government.
Evidence confirms that the Indians at Sand Creek were among those who attacked the settlers: a number of white scalps were found in the village.
ounts of Maj. Edward Wynkoop are questionable since the Major was an avowed enemy of Col. John Chivington the commander of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry that attacked the Indians at Sand Creek.
Recent archeological findings confirm that some of the Indians of the Southwestern United States were cannibals [3]. According to Richard Marlar in the Sept. 7, 2000 Nature magazine: “During or after the sudden abandonment of the site (author’s note: reference here is to archaeological site 5MT10010 where suspected cannibalism was verified), disarticulated, defleshed and heat-altered human remains were left in non-burial contexts in association with butchering tools with human blood residue, a cooking vessel with human myoglobin residue and a human coprolite (faeces) containing human myoglobin. These data demonstrate that humans both processed and consumed human flesh at the site [4].” Could it be that many settlers thought that the Colorado Indians were cannibalistic?
As to the slaughtering of women and children by the soldiers, certainly the Indians had already demonstrated their own propensity for sinking to such deplorable acts of savagery. The slaughter of the Hungate family near Kiowa, Colorado must have been on the minds of the soldiers that attacked at Sand Creek. Other accounts of Indian savagery by the Indian women might explain the soldiers’ actions. From Duane Schultz, Month of the Freezing Moon, 1990, p. 60: “Cheyenne squaws helped ‘scalp and torture the wounded, shooting arrows into their bodies and cutting off fingers and toes, even when they were alive.’” “Families burned alive in their cabins, children nailed to their doors, girls raped by a dozen braves and then hacked to pieces, babies dismembered and their limbs flung in their mother’s face.”[5] This could help explain the brutality of the soldiers at Sand Creek. I’m sure that the Army was well aware of the savagery that the Indians were capable of and had inflicted on hundreds of settlers in Colorado.
It should also be remembered that early European explorers like Columbus and Cortez and their predecessors discovered that the native Indians practiced cannibalism, sodomy and human sacrifice on a hitherto unknown scale. Such barbarianism as practiced by Indians in the New World must have circulated like wildfire throughout Europe. It is easy to understand why most immigrants and colonialists to America would be predisposed to consider all native Indians to be savages. Indeed the early settlers at Plymouth came under attack by the Native American Indians during the first winter. Later settlements like the Virginia Colony suffered hundreds of whites killed by the Indians in the early 1600’s. It is easy to understand the white man’s distrust and revulsion to most Indians that they perceived to be for the most part, savages.
The Denver Post has demonstrated over the years it’s bias in favor of vilifying white history in general and particularly in regards to the American Indian and other American heroes like Columbus. This historical bias and distorted coverage of the Indian displacement is indicative of a media used as a propaganda tool for totalitarian purposes. The Denver Post is such a tool. The truth is still the truth no matter how much the media may try to distort and rewrite history.
Sincerely,
Dana Mason
Director - Education Freedom Foundation
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[1] Denver Post, 9-15-00.
[2] Wichita State University, Scott-Townsend Publishers, p. 21-25.
[3] Denver Post Online, 9-7-00, reference saved as Indian Cannibal evidence: Nature Magazine, 9-7-00, p. 25-26, Archaeology: Talk of Cannibalism & p. 74, Biochemical evidence of cannibalism.
[4] Biochemical evidence of cannibalism, Nature Magazine, 9-7-00.
[5] Duane Schultz, Month of the Freezing Moon, 1990, p. 60.
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[DRM1]9-15-00, Denver Post.
[DRM2]Wichita State University, Scott-Townsend Publishers, p. 21-25.
[DRM3]Denver Post, 9-7-00, Denver Post Online reference saved as Indian cannibal evidence; Nature Magazine, 9-7-00, p. 25-26, Archaeology: Talk of Cannibalism & p. 74, Biochemical evidence of cannibalism.
[DRM4]Biochemical evidence of cannibalism.
[DRM5]Duane Schultz, Month of the Freezing Moon, 1990, p. 60. |
