160 Years Later, Descendants of Army’s Sand Creek Massacre Still Wait for Justice

Less than a week after Thanksgiving in 1864, Army Col. John Chivington had a plan for a Native American encampment he gazed down upon. His designs stood in wild opposition to a part of the holiday’s history tied to breaking bread with tribes.

Chivington ordered nearly 700 troops to attack the tent camp, where members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho lay resting near Big Sandy Creek on the vast plains of the Colorado territory.

The tribes were staying not far from Fort Lyon amid peace negotiations, and Chief Black Kettle had instructed that a white banner and an American flag adorn their tents in accordance with instructions from U.S. officials.

But as the first rays of daylight began to glisten on the snow and ice on Nov. 29, Chivington and his men descended on the resting Native Americans and gunfire tore through the village.

Hundreds of women and children were coming toward us and getting on their knees for mercy,” a letter from one officer who refused to participate in the attack read. “I tell you … it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized.”

Upward of 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne people were brutally mutilated, scalped and murdered by the American soldiers, according to the National Park Service. The majority of those killed were women, children and the elderly. Following the tragedy, Chivington and his soldiers brought body parts back to Denver as trophies.

Friday, Nov. 29, marks 160 years since the Sand Creek bloodshed, and the pain of the tragedy still haunts descendants of those who were slain and those who escaped.

Eleanor McDaniel, a 72-year-old who is an enrolled Comanche tribesman, is the great-great-granddaughter of Chief Little Raven, an Arapaho leader who was among those who camped farther away from the scene of the ambush and survived the slayings.

McDaniel believes she was 12 when she first heard about the massacre from her grandfather.

“Our grandfather from the Arapaho tribe came to our home and was telling my mom and her sisters all about it,” she said.

McDaniel made a choice in her youth to put on the Army uniform with her husband during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, despite the troubled history between the military and her tribe.

“This land meant a lot to us as Native Americans because all our people, everywhere you go, from East to West, North to South on this continent, our people are buried there,” McDaniel told Military.com. “So, I love this country. I’m willing to defend it.”

The Aftermath

The U.S. government made a series of promises to the survivors of the massacre and their descendants, promises that have never been fulfilled.

Nearly one year after the massacre, in October 1865, the U.S. government ratified the Treaty of the Little Arkansas.

The treaty strongly expressed the “condemnation of and as far as many be repudiated the gross and wanton outrages perpetrated against certain bands of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians” on Nov. 29 and guaranteed land, goods and payment to the survivors and the descendants of those who were killed.

But almost as quickly as the treaty’s promises were made, they were taken away. A subsequent treaty two years later reduced the lands promised to the Cheyenne and Arapaho and made no mention of reparations for the Sand Creek massacre.

Now, 160 years after the massacre, McDaniel and other descendants tied to it are still fighting for what they were promised. The U.S. government, to this day, has not paid out funds to them, lawyers and descendants claim.

Though funds have not been forthcoming, the U.S. government has slowly begun to more openly acknowledge the killings.

In 2000, Congress passed legislation that created the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site — permanent government recognition of the atrocities committed by troops in 1864.

“When we talk about military acts against the people that were in this village, against Indigenous people, the name of this place reminds us that Indigenous communities have endured a very long, violent relationship with non-native powers or use of authority,” Mario Medina, the lead park ranger at the Sand Creek Massacre Historic Site, told Military.com in an interview.

In 2014, then-Colorado governor, now-U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper formally apologized for the tragedy on behalf of the state to the Cheyenne and Arapaho people.

But descendants, lawyers associated with the tribe and National Park staff are unaware of any formal Department of Defense or Army apology — and descendants are still locked in a legal battle regarding an unfulfilled treaty that offered reparations to survivors of the massacre.

The Minister and the Whistleblower

The leader of the slaughter, Chivington, a Methodist minister, was known in military circles for his achievements during the early years of the Civil War, specifically his success at the Battle of Glorieta Pass in New Mexico.

It earned him the rank of colonel and command of the Colorado Military District, according to the National Park Service. Another officer who fought alongside Chivington at Glorieta Pass — Silas S. Soule — was promoted by Chivington from lieutenant to captain and joined the colonel in his new command.

Capt. Soule was alongside Chivington and other officials for some of the discussions with the Arapaho and Cheyenne leading up to the Sand Creek Massacre, according to the National Park Service, and saw firsthand the Native Americans’ desire for peace. When Chivington ordered his men to begin their slaughter, Soule disobeyed orders and held his men on the other side of the creek.

“I took my [company] across the Creek, and by this time the whole of the 3rd and the Batteries were firing into them and you can form some idea of the slaughter,” Capt. Soule wrote in a letter to his former commanding officer just weeks after the attack. “My [company] was the only one that kept their formation, and we did not fire a shot.”

Soule documented the horrors of the day in the Dec. 14 letter, not sparing any graphic details of the massacre.

“You would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there, but every word I have told you is the truth, which they do not deny,” Soule wrote. “It was almost impossible to save any of them.”

Soule’s correspondence and account of the events began to circulate and ultimately led to an inquiry from the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, as well as the Army itself.

Chivington escaped punishment and court-martial by resigning from the Army in disgrace. He died of cancer 30 years after the massacre.

Former Rep. Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, said during a 2005 speech that a judge who was part of the original Army investigation described the Sand Creek massacre as “a cowardly and cold-blooded slaughter, sufficient to cover its perpetrators with indelible infamy, and the face of every American with shame and indignation.”

Soule was shot and killed in 1865 in Denver, after he’d testified against his commander Chivington and detailed the atrocities committed by troops at Sand Creek.

The National Park Service wrote on the Sand Creek Massacre Historic Site’s webpage that Soule’s murderers, “though known, were never brought to justice.”

Broken Promises

Efforts on the congressional level to account for and get the payments promised in the Treaty of the Little Arkansas have fallen short. In 2013, the Sand Creek Massacre Descendants Trust filed a class-action lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed. In 2016, lawyers for the descendants hoped to have their case heard by the Supreme Court, to no avail.

Darren Derryberry, an attorney who represented some descendants in litigation, told Military.com that lawyers are still weighing other options for getting those family members what they believe they’re owed.

His late father, who served as the attorney general of Oklahoma, also represented the descendants of the Sand Creek Massacre in their fight for reparations.

“It’s a tragedy that the descendants of those massacred at Sand Creek are still having to

attempt to gain their rightful reparation so many years after the massacre,” Derryberry said. “I saw my father work with descendants to try to have the treaty upheld, and I am now working with our team to try to accomplish a goal started decades ago.”

McDaniel joined the Army after seeing her older brothers and sister serve in the Navy and Marine Corps. They have passed away, leaving her alone to wait and wonder whether the government will make good on its promise.

She said she is proud of her family’s legacy in uniform. As much as she believes an apology is due from the Army or the Department of Defense, she said it would also feel disingenuous — at least until the promises of the Little Arkansas Treaty are fulfilled.

“This generation is the last-ditch effort to see something resolved,” McDaniel said.