I don’t disagree. It is notable that it is very easy to find detailed accounts of the Sand Creek Massacre.
Much more difficult to find detailed accounts of the Indian raids and accompanying atrocities that had caused the CO militia to be so angry.
At Sand Creek all the militia guys did was respond in muted kind to Indian atrocities. It was wrong, but not by Indian standards. By ours.
I’m always amused by Indian activists who get such a charge out of recounting what happened at SC, when all the soldiers did there was imitate the Indians, in a somewhat pallid way.
My oldest book on the Minnesota massacre was published in I think, 1865, or a little before.
“Minnesota Massacre” doesn’t google so well, and I don’t expect to ever see a movie on it.
***Much more difficult to find detailed accounts of the Indian raids and accompanying atrocities that had caused the CO militia to be so angry.***
Try these books. MASSACRES OF THE MOUNTAINS by J R Dunn Jr. Written a during the late 1870s. Lots of details as to WHY!
The author admits he likes Indians but is not willing to sugarcoat many of the findings in his own research and interviews with people of those days.
And this one THE INDIAN WARS OF 1864 by Captain Eugene Ware. University of Nebraska Press.
Then I have a very old rare copy of ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY OF PIONEER LIFE by Augustus Lynch Mason (1883)
THE SAVAGE YEARS anthology edited by Shepard Rifkin. articles taken from old newspapers and pioneer diaries.
Comanches, The History of a People by T.R. Fehrenbach
And this:
You will never look at the Indian Wars in the same light again.