The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Sand Creek Massacre (11/29/1864) - Aug. 31st, 2003

http://www.terrain.org/articles/11/borowsky.htm ^ | Larry Borowsky

[SAMWolf]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

God Bless America
...................................................................................... ...........................................

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The Sand Creek Massacre

Flesh and bone littered the banks of Sand Creek on November 30, 1864. The previous day some 700 Colorado and New Mexico militiamen had routed a village of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians, killing an estimated 150. As many as 100 of the dead were women and children; two were unarmed chiefs in their 70s, mowed down as they chanted their death songs. Dozens of corpses were left in the field, to be ravaged by vultures, coyotes, and trophy hunters. A month after the battle (three days after Christmas 1864), a rope strung with 100 Sand Creek scalps (or so it was claimed) graced the stage of a glitzy Denver theater. Bones still lay at the site three years later, when a team of Army doctors came to harvest them for a study on the physiological effects of bullet wounds.

Such grisly evidence has long since vanished, but the litter of death remains at Sand Creek. A mile-long gash of war garbage—bullet casings, shrapnel fragments, camp gear, riding tack, brass buttons worked loose from the soldiers' fatigues—mars the landscape, marking the scene of that destructive day 133 years ago. But this symbolic scar is not where it's supposed to be—at least, not where history said it was. The ground long recognized as the massacre site—the place marked by a stone monument since the 1930s—lies barren, nary a spent shell nor ration tin to be found.

The tragedy actually unfolded almost two miles away, on a quiet patch of land that has gone unnoticed since the devastation it witnessed. It was identified as the true battleground in May 1999 after an intensive five-year search involving the National Park Service, the State of Colorado, and three separate tribal entities.

Did history simply make a mistake? Or was the site of the Sand Creek massacre lost on purpose, deliberately forgotten, willed out of existence like a badly dated wardrobe or a disgraced cousin?

How did this sad memory elude us for so long? Is it that we couldn't find the real Sand Creek? Or that we didn't want to?

The Sand Creek massacre is one of the few engagements ever formally disavowed by the U.S. military. Ulysses S. Grant himself denounced it as pure murder, while the Army's ranking jurist, Gen. Joseph Holt, termed it "a cowardly and cold-blooded slaughter, sufficient to cover its perpetrators with indelible infamy and the face of every American with shame and indignation."

Only too true. Yet the two primary authors of this atrocity were men of demonstrated virtue.


Archaeologists and historians recently verified the Sand Creek Massacre occurred at this site in Kiowa County, Colorado

Col. John Chivington, who commanded the attacking force, was a Methodist minister and avid anti-slavery crusader. Indeed, if it weren't for his unyielding opposition to slavery, he never would have come within 500 miles of Sand Creek. But his outspoken views on this divisive issue kept costing him pulpits during the 1850s, pushing him inexorably westward—from Quincy, Illinois, to St. Joseph, Missouri (where he once laid two pistols upon the altar to deter aggression from pro-slavery congregants), thence to Omaha, Nebraska, and finally, in 1860, to Denver, a town then two years old and ridden by vice. As badly as Denver needed his purifying touch, ending slavery proved a higher calling—Chivington quit the ministry and joined the war against the Confederacy. He fought with great distinction, leading Unionist forces to victory at Glorieta Pass, one of the most crucial Civil War battles in the West. This 1862 triumph kept the Confederates from gaining control of the Colorado gold fields and effectively ended the South's agitations on the frontier. Though the war against slavery was still raging in late 1864, John Chivington had already done his part in it and turned his energies to a new battle—the war against the Arapahoe and Cheyenne.

John Evans, governor of Colorado Territory at the time of the attack, was also an avowed enemy of slavery; he was appointed to his post largely in reward for his support of the emancipationist Abraham Lincoln during the 1860 presidential campaign. He and Lincoln knew each other from the Indiana frontier, where Evans had a distinguished career as a medical practitioner. The good doctor had lobbied long and hard for the creation of a state hospital to treat the indigent and mentally ill; he succeeded in 1850 and served as the facility's head for a number of years.

Evans launched quite a different institution on August 11, 1864—the Third Colorado volunteers, raised for the express purpose of Indian killing. Anti-Indian sentiment had been running high since June, when Arapahoe raiders had massacred a homesteader and his family about 30 miles east of Denver. It was the latest depredation in an escalating conflict between Indians and white settlers that began with the Pikes Peak gold rush of 1859. Thousands of fortune seekers raced toward newly born Denver along the Smoky Hill Trail, crossing the heart of Cheyenne and Arapahoe territory—a land promised to the tribes in an 1851 treaty signed near Fort Laramie.


Kiowa and Cheyenne leaders pose in the White House conservatory with Mary Todd Lincoln (standing far right) on March 27, 1863, during meetings with President Abraham Lincoln, who hoped to prevent their lending aid to Confederate forces. The two Cheyenne chiefs seated at the left front, War Bonnet and Standing In the Water, were killed the next year in the Sand Creek Massacre.
Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Institute, National Anthropological Archives.

As proclaimed by Evans, the volunteers were authorized "to kill and destroy, as enemies of the country, wherever they may be found, all hostile Indians." John Chivington, the territory's most decorated warrior, was the logical choice to command this special force, which was authorized for 100 days of service.

Thus did Evans and Chivington—the frontier healer and the pioneer preacher; the one trained at saving lives, the other at saving souls—bring death and damnation to Sand Creek.

The volunteers of the Colorado Third were guaranteed 40 cents per day, plus rations—roughly $15 a month, or $50 for the entire 100-day campaign. One can imagine the caliber of person who was lured by these wages; but such individuals were in no short supply in frontier Denver. The company was fully manned in a matter of weeks and in the field by the first of October. They waged their initial battle on October 10, 1864, attacking a Cheyenne village on the banks of the South Platte River and killing 10 of the inhabitants.

While the Third was girding for warfare, Cheyenne and Arapahoe leaders were suing for peace. During the last weeks of September 1864 a group of Cheyenne and Arapahoe leaders headed by the Cheyenne chief Black Kettle gained an audience with Maj. Edward Wynkoop, ranking officer at Fort Lyon, the largest garrison in the vicinity (near present-day Lamar).



The chiefs declared their desire for an end to all hostilities, and Wynkoop was sufficiently convinced of their sincerity to organize another council, this one held just east of Denver at Fort Weld on September 28. Both Evans and Chivington attended; neither was impressed by what he heard. When you are ready to make peace, Chivington told Black Kettle coldly, go and lay your arms down before Major Wynkoop. Five weeks later, in early November, he yanked Wynkoop from his command and gave the new man in charge, Maj. Scott Anthony (a first cousin of women's rights pioneer Susan B.), the following instructions: "The Cheyennes will have to be soundly whipped before they will be quiet. If any of them are caught in your vicinity kill them, as that is the only way."

Coming from a man who'd risked his life to end the sufferings of an enslaved people, such race hatred may seem an unfathomable breach of character. But to Chivington there was no inconsistency. In his mind the Indians were nothing like the slaves. The latter had embraced the Bible and adopted English, whereas the Indians were savages and devils who murdered Christians and consigned them to purgatory by violating their corpses. They were the oppressors, not the oppressed. The minister had confronted evil throughout his life, yet never had he seen it on a scale such as this.

On the eve of the massacre (one of his lieutenants later testified), Chivington steeled his troops with this curse: "Damn any man who is in sympathy with the Indians!" His crusade against the heathens trumped everything else, even the cause of emancipation. In preparation for the attack the colonel had frontiersman Jim Beckwourth—a former slave—rousted from his Denver home and pressed into service (on pain of death) as an involuntary scout. Having fought so passionately against slavery, Chivington now—one year after the Emancipation Proclamation, and with the Civil War still raging—enslaved a free black man in the name of liberty.



The Colorado Third Volunteers heeded Chivington's words during the attack on Sand Creek: they showed no sympathy for their victims. As the cavalry thundered forward, Black Kettle raised an American flag and a white handkerchief to signal the village's friendly disposition. He was answered with gunfire. Most of the camp's best defenders were absent, out on a hunting trip; the population mainly comprised women, children, and aged or infirm men. George and Charles Bent, half-white sons of frontier trader William Bent, were present; so, too, were some of the elderly chiefs whose peace offering the colonel had spurned at Fort Weld in September. Two of them—White Antelope and Yellow Wolf—were killed and scalped this day.

The returning volunteers were hailed as heroes in Denver, but Washington D.C. took a less favorable view of their actions. Chagrined by reports from Wynkoop and Capt. Silas Soule (who not only ordered his men to stop shooting at Sand Creek but actually placed them between the attackers and the retreating Indians), Congress and the U.S. Army launched separate investigations. Though both entities deplored the massacre, neither sought punitive measures against those who'd carried it out. The two ranking officers of the U.S. force—Chivington and George L. Shoup—both left the Army for good in early 1865, though they did so voluntarily and with full honors.

Warfare between the United States and the Plains Indians continued for another generation, by which time the Sand Creek massacre was but a faded memory.

It wasn't until 1993 that anyone noticed the Sand Creek battle site missing. That year two hobbyists went there, to what had always been recognized as the killing ground, hoping to find some souvenirs for their collection of 19th-century military artifacts. But their metal detectors stood mute, registering nothing. They reported this oddity to the Colorado Historical Society, which decided to look into the matter. Surely the collectors had made some mistake. Battlegrounds do not simply vanish into thin air.



A series of investigations ensued. Historians sifted through the archives while geologists sifted through the soil. The Army sent its experts out to Colorado; so did the Arapahoes and Cheyennes, whose oral history of the Sand Creek massacre has come down through the generations. Aerial photographs were taken and matched against old military maps; tribal prayers were invoked, that they might bring spiritual guidance. Taken together, these lines of inquiry pointed to one very specific location, not far from where Rush Creek meets Sand Creek.

On May 24, 1999, volunteers swept the area with metal detectors and confirmed the investigators' guess: this was the place. Bullets, flint stones, buckles, latch springs—the scatter had lain there all those years, as thick as the bodies that littered the prairie the day after the massacre. This was no stone monument, no tidy atonement for long-ago sins; it was an immediate and open wound, the weapons that caused it still palpable, the flesh that received it still torn. Finding Sand Creek reawakened the pain of it, much as frozen fingers throb when they finally start to thaw. But better to ache than be numb. For more than a century the reality of Sand Creek was hiding in plain sight—there for us to look at, if only we would. After 133 years, at last we see what really happened. It is an ugly vision; but that's how it often goes with history.

So what are we to do with this recovered memory? The misplacement of the massacre site is easily corrected—but how to correct the massacre itself? It can't be done in any remedial sense; we can rewrite history, but not the past. The Sand Creek massacre happened; we can't take it back, however badly we might wish to. Nor, as a practical matter, can we give back all the land assigned to the Cheyennes and Arapahoes in the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851— not without displacing three million people.

But we might give them back Sand Creek.

It currently sits on a private ranch, but the owner long ago indicated his willingness to sell it, provided the site is appropriately preserved and the dead appropriately honored. The National Park Service is likely to purchase it next spring, when the final report of the Sand Creek investigation comes out.



Immediately after the sale, the land should be ceded to the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes. Let them decide what to do with Sand Creek; they have already paid too high a price for it. They may preserve it as a historic site, set up a private tribal shrine, or do whatever else with the land that they see fit. If they want to build a factory or a hotel or a farm, let them; if they want to live in teepees here and run a herd of bison, that’s okay, too. The United States should surrender it, unconditionally. We should clean up all the garbage we left behind, then leave the place in peace.

There are many other places we might give back—the mounds of Cahokia, the mined-out Black Hills of Dakota, the forests of the Mohawk Valley, the chutes of the Columbia. Token gestures? Perhaps that's all. But maybe something more—maybe an open and honest admission that we are a squatter nation; maybe the birth of understanding between two groups of people who still don't trust each other.

And the old, erroneous Sand Creek site? We should preserve it as well, as a reminder of our own stubborn blindness, our inability or unwillingness to see.

Contemplating that swath of Army trash, it is impossible not to think of the trail of ruined lives the Sand Creek massacre left strewn behind. We begin with Charley Bent, who survived that day only because a handful of the attacking soldiers knew his father. Afterward he swore vengeance on the United States and became one of the Cheyennes' deadliest warriors, participating in dozens of raids on American frontier towns and military posts. He died in 1868 of wounds sustained in battle.


Black Kettle

Silas Soule, the captain who defied Chivington's orders and stalled the cavalry's charge, was murdered on April 23, 1865, two months after testifying against his old commander at a military inquest. His killer was never found.

John Chivington's reputation was irrevocably stained by the attack on Sand Creek. A man who had done much good in his life would be remembered mainly for a deed condemned as evil.

John Evans was replaced as governor of Colorado Territory in August 1865, nine months after the Sand Creek massacre. He remained one of Colorado's leading citizens and is today among its most honored historical figures. Both he and Chivington defended the attack until their dying days.

The specter of Sand Creek haunted Chief Black Kettle for the rest of his life. He survived the massacre, dragging his wife (wounded nine times) to safety in a shelter he clawed into the stream bank. But his dream of peace died that day. The Cheyennes and Arapahoes could never bargain with the United States again, never believe in a peaceful coexistence. From now on they must fight for their land and their lives. This they did, with increasing ferocity. Thousands would die over the next 25 years, Indian and white, in the war for the Great Plains. The victims would include Black Kettle himself. He was one of 101 Cheyennes killed in western Oklahoma on November 29, 1868—four years to the day after the Sand Creek massacre—during an attack led by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.

[SAMWolf]

John M. Chivington
(1821-1894)

The hero of Glorietta Pass and the butcher of Sand Creek, John M. Chivington stands out as one of the most controversial figures in the history of the American West.

Chivington was born into an Ohio farm family in 1821. His father died when he was only five and the burden of providing for the family fell to Chivington's mother and older brothers. While he was growing up, Chivington worked on the family farm so much that he received only an irregular education. By the time of his marriage in 1844 he had been operating a small timber business in Ohio for several years.

John M. Chivington

Although he had not been particularly religious as a child and young man, Chivington found himself drawn toward Methodism when he was in his early twenties. He was ordained in 1844 and soon began his long career as a minister. He accepted whatever assignment the church gave him, moving his family to Illinois in 1848 and then to Missouri the next year. Chivington was something of a frontier minister, usually establishing congregations, supervising the erection of churches, and often serving as a de facto law enforcement officer. For a time in 1853 he assisted in a Methodist missionary expedition to the Wyandot Indians in Kansas.

Chivington's contempt for slavery and talk of secession caused him enormous trouble in Missouri. In 1856, pro-slavery members of his congregation sent him a threatening letter instructing him to cease preaching. When many of the signatories attended his service the next Sunday, intending to tar and feather him, Chivington ascended the pulpit with a Bible and two pistols. His declaration that "By the grace of God and these two revolvers, I am going to preach here today" earned him the sobriquet the "Fighting Parson."

Soon after this incident, the Methodist Church sent Chivington to Omaha, Nebraska to escape the tumult of Missouri. He and his family remained in Nebraska until 1860, when he was made the presiding elder of the Rocky Mountain District of the Methodist Church and moved to Denver to build a church and found a congregation.

When Colors Bleed
(Sand Creek 1864)

When the Civil War broke out, Colorado's territorial governor, William Gilpin, offered Chivington a commission as a chaplain, but he declined the "praying" commission and asked for a "fighting" position instead. In 1862, Chivington, by that point a Major in the first Colorado Volunteer Regiment, played a critical role in defeating confederate forces at Glorietta Pass in eastern New Mexico, where his troops rapelled down the canyon walls in a surprise attack on the enemy's supply train. He was widely hailed as a military hero.

Back in Denver after the defeat of the Confederacy's Western forces, Chivington seemed destined for even greater prominence. He was a leading advocate of quick statehood for Colorado, and the likely Republican candidate for the state's first Congressional seat. In the midst of his blossoming political prospects, tensions between Colorado's burgeoning white population and the Cheyenne Indians reached a feverish pitch. The Denver newspaper printed a front-page editorial advocating the "extermination of the red devils" and urging its readers to "take a few months off and dedicate that time to wiping out the Indians."

Chivington took advantage of this dangerous public mood by blasting the territorial governor and others who counseled peace and treaty-making with the Cheyenne. In August of 1864, he declared that "the Cheyennes will have to be roundly whipped -- or completely wiped out -- before they will be quiet. I say that if any of them are caught in your vicinity, the only thing to do is kill them." A month later, while addressing a gathering of church deacons, he dismissed the possibility of making a treaty with the Cheyenne: "It simply is not possible for Indians to obey or even understand any treaty. I am fully satisfied, gentlemen, that to kill them is the only way we will ever have peace and quiet in Colorado."

Cheyenne warrior.
Photo courtesy of PBS.

Several months later, Chivington made good on his genocidal promise. During the early morning hours of November 29, 1864, he led a regiment of Colorado Volunteers to the Cheyenne's Sand Creek reservation, where a band led by Black Kettle, a well-known "peace" chief, was encamped. Federal army officers had promised Black Kettle safety if he would return to the reservation, and he was in fact flying the American flag and a white flag of truce over his lodge, but Chivington ordered an attack on the unsuspecting village nonetheless. After hours of fighting, the Colorado volunteers had lost only 9 men in the process of murdering between 200 and 400 Cheyenne, most of them women and children. After the slaughter, they scalped and sexually mutilated many of the bodies, later exhibiting their trophies to cheering crowds in Denver.

Chivington was at first widely praised for the "battle" at Sand Creek, and honored with a widely-attended parade through the streets of Denver just two weeks after the massacre. Soon, however, rumors of drunken soldiers butchering unarmed women and children began to circulate, and at first seemed confirmed when Chivington arrested six of his men and charged them with cowardice in battle. But the six, who included Captain Silas Soule, a personal friend of Chivington's who had fought with him at Glorietta Pass, were in fact militia members who had refused to participate in the massacre and now spoke openly of the carnage they had witnessed. Shortly after their arrest, the U.S. Secretary of War ordered the six men released and Congress began preparing for a formal investigation of Sand Creek.

Cheyenne mother and daughter.
Photo courtesy of PBS.

Soule himself could not be a witness at any of the investigations, because less than a week after his release he was shot from behind and killed on the streets of Denver. Although Chivington was eventually brought up on court-martial charges for his involvement in the massacre, he was no longer in the U.S. Army and could therefore not be punished. No criminal charges were ever filed against him. An Army judge, however, publicly stated that Sand Creek was "a cowardly and cold-blooded slaughter, sufficient to cover its perpetrators with indelible infamy, and the face of every American with shame and indignation."

Although he was never punished for his role at Sand Creek, Chivington did at least pay some price. He was forced to resign from the Colorado militia, to withdraw from politics, and to stay away from the campaign for statehood. In 1865 he moved back to Nebraska, spending several unsuccessful years as a freight hauler. He lived briefly in California, and then returned to Ohio where he resumed farming and became editor of a small newspaper. In 1883 he re-entered politics with a campaign for a state legislature seat, but charges of his guilt in the Sand Creek massacre forced him to withdraw. He quickly returned to Denver and worked as a deputy sheriff until shortly before his death from cancer in 1892

[SAMWolf]

Black Kettle
(??-1868)

Few biographical details are known about the Southern Cheyenne chief Black Kettle, but his repeated efforts to secure a peace with honor for his people, despite broken promises and attacks on his own life, speak of him as a great leader with an almost unique vision of the possiblity for coexistence between white society and the culture of the plains.

Black Kettle lived on the vast territory in western Kansas and eastern Colorado that had been guaranteed to the Cheyenne under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Within less than a decade, however, the 1859 Pikes Peak gold rush sparked an enormous population boom in Colorado, and this led to extensive white encroachments on Cheyenne land. Even the U.S. Indian Commissioner admitted that "We have substantially taken possession of the country and deprived the Indians of their accustomed means of support."


Black Kettle

Rather than evict white settlers, the government sought to resolve the situation by demanding that the Southern Cheyenne sign a new treaty ceding all their lands save the small Sand Creek reservation in southeastern Colorado. Black Kettle, fearing that overwhelming U.S. military power might result in an even less favorable settlement, agreed to the treaty in 1861 and did what he could to see that the Cheyenne obeyed its provisions.

As it turned out, however, the Sand Creek reservation could not sustain the Indians forced to live there. All but unfit for agriculture, the barren tract of land was little more than a breeding ground for epidemic diseases which soon swept through the Cheyenne encampments. By 1862 the nearest herd of buffalo was over two hundred miles away. Many Cheyennes, especially young men, began to leave the reservation to prey upon the livestock and goods of nearby settlers and passing wagon trains. One such raid in the spring of 1864 so angered white Coloradans that they dispatched their militia, which opened fire on the first band of Cheyenne they happened to meet. None of the Indians in this band had participated in the raid, however, and their leader was actually approaching the militia for a parlay when the shooting began.

This incident touched off an uncoordinated Indian uprising across the Great Plains, as Indian peoples from the Comanche in the South to the Lakota in the North took advantage of the army's involvement in the Civil War by striking back at those who had encroached upon their lands. Black Kettle, however, understood white military supremacy too well to support the cause of war. He spoke with the local military commander at Fort Weld in Colorado and believed he had secured a promise of safety in exchange for leading his band back to the Sand Creek reservation.



But Colonel John Chivington, leader of the Third Colorado Volunteers, had no intention of honoring such a promise. His troops had been unsuccessful in finding a Cheyenne band to fight, so when he learned that Black Kettle had returned to Sand Creek, he attacked the unsuspecting encampment at dawn on November 29, 1864. Some two hundred Cheyenne died in the ensuing massacre, many of them women and children, and after the slaughter, Chivington's men sexually mutilated and scalped many of the dead, later exhibiting their trophies to cheering crowds in Denver.

Black Kettle miraculously escaped harm at the Sand Creek Massacre, even when he returned to rescue his seriously injured wife. And perhaps more miraculously, he continued to counsel peace when the Cheyenne attempted to strike back with isolated raids on wagon trains and nearby ranches. By October 1865, he and other Indian leaders had arranged an uneasy truce on the plains, signing a new treaty that exchanged the Sand Creek reservation for reservations in southwestern Kansas but deprived the Cheyenne of access to most of their coveted Kansas hunting grounds.

Only a part of the Southern Cheyenne nation followed Black Kettle and the others to these new reservations. Some instead headed north to join the Northern Cheyenne in Lakota territory. Many simply ignored the treaty and continued to range over their ancestral lands. This latter group, consisting mainly of young warriors allied with a Cheyenne war chief named Roman Nose, angered the government by their refusal to obey a treaty they had not signed, and General William Tecumseh Sherman launched a campaign to force them onto their assigned lands. Roman Nose and his followers struck back furiously, and the resulting standoff halted all traffic across western Kansas for a time.


SAND CREEK BUFFALO HIDE
Eugene Ridgely Sr.

At this point, government negotiators sought to move the Cheyenne once again, this time onto two smaller reservations in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) where they would receive annual provisions of food and supplies. Black Kettle was again among the chiefs who signed this treaty, the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, but after his people had settled on their new reservation, they did not receive the provisions they had been promised, and by year's end, more and more of them were driven to join Roman Nose and his band.

In August 1868, Roman Nose led a series of raids on Kansas farms that provoked another full-scale military response. Under General Philip Sheridan, three columns of troops converged to launch a winter campaign against Cheyenne encampments, with the Seventh Cavalry commanded by George Armstrong Custer selected to take the lead. Setting out in a snowstorm, Custer followed the tracks of a small raiding party to a Cheyenne village on the Washita River, where he ordered an attack at dawn.

It was Black Kettle's village, well within the boundaries of the Cheyenne reservation and with a white flag flying above the chief's own tipi. Nonetheless, on November 27, 1868, nearly four years to the day after Sand Creek, Custer's troops charged, and this time Black Kettle could not escape: "Both the chief and his wife fell at the river bank riddled with bullets," one witness reported, "the soldiers rode right over Black Kettle and his wife and their horse as they lay dead on the ground, and their bodies were all splashed with mud by the charging soldiers." Custer later reported that an Osage guide took Black Kettle's scalp.



On the Washita, the Cheyenne's hopes of sustaining themselves as an independent people died as well; by 1869, they had been driven from the plains and confined to reservations.

Additional Sources:

www.pbs.org
www2.coloradocollege.edu
www.legacy-project
www.lastoftheindependents.com
marquis.rebsart.com
www.cnn.com

[SAMWolf]

'In going over the battle ground the next day, I did not see a body of a man, woman, or child but was scalped; and in many cases their bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner. I heard one man say that he had cut a woman's private parts out, and had them for exhibition on a stick; I heard another man say that he had cut off the fingers of an Indian to get the rings off the hand.'

Lt. James Cannon
Affidavit of January 16, 1865

'Maj. Colley, Indian Agent Fort Lyon
Cheyenne Village August 29th /64

Maj. Colley, We received a letter from Bent wishing us to make peace. We held a counsel in regard to it & all came to the conclusion to make peace with you providing you make peace with the Kiowas, Commenches, Arrapahoes, Apaches, and Siouxs.

We are going to send a messenger to the Kiowas and to the other nations about our going to make with you. We heard that you some prisoners in Denver. We have seven prisoners of you which we are willing to give up providing you give up yours. There are three war parties out yet and two of Arrapahoes. they have been out some time and expect now soon. When we held this counsel there were few Arrapahoes and Siouxs present. we want true news from you in return, that is a letter.

Black Kittle & Other Chieves'

Letter (dictated) from Black Kettle (signed Black Kittle), Cheyenne Village, Aug. 29, 1864, to Major Colley.

Brought to Ft Lyon Sunday Sept 4th 1864 by One Eye

[SAMWolf]

[RadioAstronomer]

I have been to the Bent Fort site. Quite a place to see. The previous day I was in Folsum NM. where the folsum arrow points were found. A very nice museum there as well. :-)

[GailA]

Good Morning

[snippy_about_it]

.......FALL IN to the FReeper Foxhole!

.......Good Sunday Morning Everyone!


If you would like added or removed from our ping list let me know.

[E.G.C.]

Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the Foxhole.

Received about an inch of rain yesterday. Flooidng in progress right now in the Turner Falls park area in Murray County Oklahoma.

[snippy_about_it]

Good Morning RA. Good to see you stop in at the Foxhole.

[snippy_about_it]

Good Morning Gail.

Nice blade and nice handle on that knife.

[snippy_about_it]

Good Morning EGC.

We've had quite a bit of flooding this year, relatively short lived and mostly low lying or near flood prone areas. We just can't get a break from it raining nearly every day.

I guess I can hope that there will be no moisture left and we won't get snow this winter.

[Valin]

On This Day In History


Birthdates which occurred on August 31:
12 Caligula (Gaius Caesar), 3rd Roman emperor (37-41 AD)
0161 Lucius A A Coomodus, emperor of Rome (180-91)
1811 Theophile Gautier Tarbas France, writer/poet (Albertus)
1834 Amilcare Ponchielli Paderno Italy, composer (I Lituani)
1870 Maria Montessori Italy, educator (spontaneous response)
1880 Queen Mother Wilhelmina Netherlands (1890-1948)
1885 DuBose Heyward novelist (Porgy)
1889 A Provost Idell father of modern volleyball
1897 Frederic March Wisc, actor (Dr Jeckyll-Acad Awards 1932/1946)
1903 Arthur Godfrey radio, TV host (Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scout)
1903 Sir Bernard Lovell England, radio astronomer, founded Jodrell Bank
1905 Dore Schary producer/writer/director (Act 1, Boys Town, Big City)
1907 Ram¢n Magsaysay Phillipines, statesman (US Legion of Merit-1952)
1908 William Saroyan US, novelist/playwright (Time of Your Life)
1914 Richard Basehart Zanesville Oh, actor (Voyage to Bottom of Sea)
1916 Daniel Schorr broadcast journalist (CBS)
1918 Alan Jay Lerner lyricist composer (Lerner & Leowe-My Fair Lady)
1919 Richard Basehart actor (Voyage to Bottom of the Sea)
1924 Buddy (Leonard) Hackett Bkln, comedian (God's Little Acre, Music Man)
1928 James Coburn Laurel Nebr, actor (Our Man Flint, Magnificent Seven)
1930 Tiny Little Jr Worthington Minn, pianist (Lawrence Welk Show)
1931 Dan Rather news anchor (CBS-TV)
1931 Jean Beliveau hockey star (Montreal Canadiens)
1935 Eldridge Cleaver Black Panther turned Republican
1935 Frank Robinson baseball player/manager (MVP 1961-NL 1966-AL)
1937 Warren Berlinger Bkln, actor (Larry-Joey Bishop Shop, Take Two)
1940 Alain Calmat France, figure skater (Olympic-silver-1964)
1942 Carole Wells Shreveport La, actress (Pistols n Petticoats)
1945 Itzhak Perlman Tel Aviv Israel, violinist/polio victim
1945 Leonid I Popov cosmonaut (Soyuz 35, 40, T-7)
1945 Van Morrison Belfast, singer (Here Comes the Night)
1949 Richard Gere Phila Pa, actor (Breathless, Cotton Club)
1952 Rudolf Schenker heavy metal rocker (Scorpions-No One Like You)
1954 Tula [Barry Kenneth Cossey], Engld, transexual (For Your Eyes Only)
1957 Glenn Tilbrook guitarist/vocalist (Squeeze-Tempted)
1958 Edwin C Moses track star (hurdler, Olympic-gold-1984)
1959 Rachel Dennison Knoxville Tn, actress (Doralee Rhodes-9 to 5)
1961 David Chastain heavy metal rocker (Chastain-Rule of Wasteland)
1963 Reb Beach heavy metal rocker (Winger-17)
1970 Debbie Gibson Brooklyn NY, singer (Only in My Dreams)
1977 Paul Garber helped establish Air & Space Museum in Washington DC

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Deaths which occurred on August 31:
1057 Leofric husband of Lady Godiva, dies
1218 Al-Malik ab-Adil/Saphadin/Saif al-Din), brother of Saladin,
1422 Henry V, King of England (1413-22)/France (1416-19)
1688 John Bunyan preacher/novelist/author of "Pilgrim's Progress,", dies
1879 William Barber 6th US chief engraver (1844-79), dies
1888 Mary Ann Nicholls a 42-year-old prostitute, was found stabbed to death in London, 1st of at least five murders by Jack the Ripper
1963 George F Broque cubist painter, dies at 81 in Paris
1964 Carole Coleman singer (Face the Music), dies at 42
1964 Rocky Marciano former heavyweight champ, dies in a plane crash
1968 Dennis O'Keefe actor (Suspicion), dies at 60
1990 Nat (Sweetwater) Clifton NY Knick, dies at 65 of a heart attack

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Reported: MISSING in ACTION
1967 CAREY DAVID J. JEANNETTE PA.
[03/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1967 PERRY RICHARD C. CARLIN NV.
[REMAINS RETURNED 11/26/86]
1967 STAFFORD HUGH A. CAMBRIDGE MD.
[03/14/73 RELEASED BY DRV, ALIVE IN 98]
1968 BARTOCCI JOHN E. NEW YORK NY.

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

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On this day...
1385 English King Richard the Second invaded Scotland with a force estimated at 80-thousand men.
1521 Cortes captures the city of Tenochtitlan, Mexico, and sets it on fire.
1535 Pope Paul II deposed & excommunicated King Henry VIII
1772 Hurricane destroy ships off Dominica
1778 British kill 17 Stockbridge indians in the Bronx during Revolution
1802 Captain Merriwether Lewis leaves Pittsburgh to meet up with Captain William Clark and begin their trek to the Pacific Ocean.
1829 The opera "Guillaume Tell" is produced (Paris)
1842 US Naval Observatory authorized by an act of Congress
1850 Calif pioneers organized at Montgomery & Clay Streets
1864 Atlanta Campaign-Battle of Jonesborough
1864 At the Democratic convention in Chicago, General George B. McClellan is nominated for president.
1865 Federal government estimates the American Civil War had cost about eight-billion dollars. Human costs have been estimated at more than one-million killed or wounded.
1881 1st US tennis championships (Newport, RI)
1886 1st major earthquake recorded in eastern US, at Charleston, SC
1886 Crocker-Woolworth National Bank organized
1887 Thomas A Edison patents Kinetoscope, (produces moving pictures)
1889 Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure "Cardboard Box" (BG)
1894 Phillies Billy Hamilton steals 7 bases
1895 1st pro football game (QB John Brallier paid $10 & won 12-0)
1900 Dodgers' Brickyard Kennedy walks 6 straight Phillies
1902 Split skirt 1st worn by Mrs Adolph Landeburg (horse rider)
1903 A Packard automobile completed a 52-day journey from San Francisco to New York, becoming the first car to cross the nation under its own power.
1903 Joe McGinnity wins his 3rd doubleheader of the month
1907 England, Russia & France form the Triple Entente
1915 Chic White Sox Jimmy Lavender no-hits NY Giants, 2-0
1919 Communist Labor Party of America formed in Chicago
1919 Petlyura's Ukranian Army kills 35 members of a Jewish defense group
1934 1st football all star game-Bears tie collegians 0-0 in Chicago
1935 1st national skeet championship (Indianapolis)
1935 Chicago White Sox Vern Kennedy no-hits Cleveland Indians, 5-0
1935 FDR signs an act prohibiting export of US arms to belligerents
1939 Japanese invasion army driven out of Mongolia
1939 Staged "Polish" assault on radio station in Gleiwitz by Nazis dressed as Poles to "provoke" war, excuse for Gerrmany to invade Poland tomorrow to start World War II
1941 Great Gildersleeve, a spin-off of Fibber McGee & Molly debuts on NBC
1949 Six of the 16 surviving Union veterans of the Civil War attend the last-ever encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, held in Indianapolis, Indiana.
1950 Dodger Gil Hodges hits 4 HRs & a single in a game vs Braves
1951 The 1st Marine Division begins its attack on Bloody Ridge in Korea. The four-day battle results in 2,700 Marine casualties.
1954 Census Bureau established
1954 Hurricane Carol (1st major named storm) hits New England, 70 die
1955 1st microwave TV station operated (Lufkin, Tx)
1955 1st sun-powered automobile demonstrated, Chicago, Ill
1957 Malaya (Malaysia) gains independence from Britain (National Day)
1959 Australia defeats US for tennis' Davis Cup
1960 Agricultural Hall of Fame established
1962 Trinidad & Tobago gain independence from Britain (National Day)
1965 House of Reps joins Senate establish Dept of Housing & Urban Develop
1968 6,000 die in 7.8 quake destroys 60,000 buildings in NE Iran
1968 Private Eye magazine reports a John Lennon & Yoko Ono album will have a picture of them nude on the cover
1969 25,000 attend New Orleans Pop Festival
1970 Lonnie McLucas, a Black Panther activist, convicted
1970 US defeats German FR for tennis' Davis Cup
1971 Dave Scott becomes 1st person to drive a car on the Moon
1972 Olga Korbut, USSR, wins olympic gold medal in gymnastics
1973 1st heavyweight championship fight in Japan (Foreman beats Roman)
1977 Aleksandr Fedotov sets aircraft alt rec of 38.26 km (125,524')
1978 Symbionese Liberation Army founders William & Emily Harris plead guilty to 1974 kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst
1979 Comet Howard-Koomur-Michels collides with the Sun
1979 Donald McHenry named to succeed Andrew Young as UN ambassador
1980 Poland's Solidarity labor union founded
1983 Edwin Moses of USA sets the 400m hurdle record (47.02) in Koblenz
1984 Pinklin Thomas defeats Tim Witherspoon for the WBC heavyweight title
1985 "Prakas" sets trotting mile record of 1:53.4 at Du Quoin, Ill
1985 Night Stalker suspect that terrorized S Calif captured in East LA
1986 Aeromexico jet & small plane collide kill 82
1986 Soviet passenger ship Adm Nakhimov, collides with a merchant vessel
1987 Curtis Strange sets golf's earning for the year record ($697,385)
1988 5-day power blackout of downtown Seattle begins
1991 Kyrgyzstan The Land of "Tien Shan" (Heavenly Mountains) Uzbekistan and Kirghizia declared their independence, raising to 10 the number of republics seeking to secede and leaving only five republics with membership in the Soviet Union.
1992: White separatist Randy Weaver surrenders to authorities in Naples Idaho, ending an 11-day siege by federal agents (Weaver's wife & son, and a deputy U.S. marshal, were killed during the seige)
1994: The Irish Republican Army declares a cease-fire
1994: After a half-century, Russia officially ends its military presence in the former East Germany and the Baltics
1995: At the O.J. Simpson trial, Judge Ito rules that the defense can play only two examples of Mark Fuhrman's racist comments in taped conversations with a screenwriter
1996 Seven people drowned when their vehicle rolled into John D. Long Lake in Union, S.C.; they had gone to see a monument to the sons of Susan Smith, who had drowned the two boys in October 1994.
1997: Diana, the Princess of Wales, is killed in an automobile accident in a tunnel by the Seine in Paris (the accident also killed Emad Mohammed al-Fayed, the Harrod's heir)
1999 One person was killed and 40 more injured in a bomb blast at a Moscow shopping center. The Russian government blamed terrorists from the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

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Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Afghanistan : Pashtunistan Day
England, Channel Is, Northern Ireland, Wales : Bank Holiday ( Monday )
Malaysia : Malaysia Day (1957)
Trinidad & Tobago : Independence Day (1962)
US : Festal Day/Order of the Eastern Star (Robert Morris' birthday)
Hong Kong : Liberation Day (1945) ( Monday )
Mental Health Workers Week Begins
National Financial Services Week Begins

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Religious Observances
Ang : Commem of Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, monastic founder
RC : Comm of St Raymund Nonnatus, cardinal, ransomer of captives
Luth : Commemoration of John Bunyan, teacher

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Religious History
1688 Death of English Puritan clergyman and writer John Bunyan, 69. Imprisoned several times between 1660 and 1672, Bunyan used these periods of isolation to pen his two literary masterpieces, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and Pilgrim's Progress (1678).
1757 Anglican clergyman and hymnwriter John Newton wrote in a letter: 'I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that He is indeed our Master.'
1824 Birth of Anna B. Warner, American hymnwriter. She never married, but lived with her sister Susan in New York state. In 1860, a novel they co-authored contained a poem which became one of the most beloved of all children's hymns: I Know.'
1861 Birth of Jesse Brown Pounds, American hymnwriter. During her lifetime she published nine books, 50 cantatas and over 400 religious song texts. Three of her hymns remain popular today: "Anywhere With Jesus," "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" and "The Way of the Cross Leads Home."
1870 Birth of Maria Montessori, Italian educator. She developed a theory of teaching which emphasized a reinforcement of initiative, and a freedom of movement for the child. Her theory of elementary education has since been named, appropriately, the "Montessori Method."

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

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Thought for the day :
"Faith is like radar that sees through the fog."

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You Might Be A Redneck If...
You think www is a URL is a logo for a wrestling organization.

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Murphys Law of the day...(NONRECIPROCAL LAWS OF EXPECTATIONS)
Negative expectations yield negative results...
Positive expectations yield negative results.

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Cliff Clavin says, it's a little known fact that...
It's a little known fact that smartest animal is a pig. Scientists say if pigs had thumbs and a language, they could be trained to do simple manual labor. They give you 20-30 years of loyal service and then at their retirement dinner you can eat them

[SAMWolf]

Good Morning Snippy

[SAMWolf]

Hey RA! Nice to hear from you.

[SAMWolf]

Morning GailA.

Great looking knife!

[SAMWolf]

Morning E.G.C. We're still warm and dry here.

[Soaring Feather]

Good Sunday morning everyone. Here I am. I guess I must have fallen in the hole.

Where is Sam?? I bet he is conked out in bed yet.

[Samwise]

Most of these posts make me truly proud to be an American, not so today.

[SAMWolf]

1939 Staged "Polish" assault on radio station in Gleiwitz by Nazis dressed as Poles to "provoke" war, excuse for Gerrmany to invade Poland tomorrow to start World War II

The Foxhole is going to cover the Invasion of Poland tomorrow.

They give you 20-30 years of loyal service and then at their retirement dinner you can eat them

ROTFLMAO!!

[Samwise]

I guess I must have fallen in the hole.

Was that a Hobbit joke?