The Sand Creek massacre, 1864

29 November 2026

Before dawn on 29 November 1864, about 675 soldiers of the 1st and 3rd Colorado Volunteer Cavalry attacked a camp of Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho along Big Sandy Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory, some 170 miles southeast of Denver. More than 230 people were killed, most of them women, children and the elderly. The camp had been told it was under Army protection.

The village held roughly 700 people, led by Peace Chief Black Kettle and the Arapaho leader Left Hand, on land covered by the 1861 Treaty of Fort Wise. Black Kettle had moved his people near Fort Lyon as instructed, and a United States flag and a white flag of truce flew from his lodge. Colonel John M. Chivington of the Colorado volunteers led the attack without orders to leave Denver.

The killing went on for hours along the dry creek bed. Among the dead were 13 Cheyenne peace chiefs and an Arapaho chief, and the park service says the loss of those leaders disrupted tribal governance for generations. Soldiers mutilated the dead and took body parts as trophies; they left on 1 December with 600 horses. Army casualties were about 18 dead and 70 wounded.

Two officers refused to take part: Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer ordered their companies not to fire, and later testified. A congressional inquiry in 1865 condemned what it called a cowardly and cold-blooded slaughter, but Chivington was never charged or tried, and Governor John Evans was forced to resign. The survivors fled north toward the Smoky Hill River.

The numbers in the record disagree. The park service’s site page says more than 230 were killed over about seven hours; its brochure says eight hours and puts the village at over 750 people; an older park service text says about 160. Congress authorized the national historic site in 2000, and it was established on 27 April 2007 with land conveyed by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

Sources

• National Park Service, “Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site”
• National Park Service, “History & Culture”, Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
• National Park Service, site brochure, “Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site”
• Colorado Encyclopedia, “Sand Creek Massacre”
• National Park Service, “The Sand Creek Massacre”, Castillo de San Marcos National Monument

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