It has long been the custom to attribute the dangerous restlessness of the Indians during and after the Civil War to the evil machinations of the Confederacy. It has been plausible to charge that agents of the South passed among the tribes, inciting them to outbreak by pointing out the preoccupation of the United States and the defencelessness of the frontier. Popular narratives often repeat this charge when dealing with the wars and depredations, whether among the Sioux of Minnesota, or the Northwest tribes, or the Apache and Navaho, or the Indians of the plains. Indeed, had the South been able thus to harass the enemy it is not improbable that it would have done it. It is not impossible that it actually did it. But at least the charge has not been proved. No one has produced direct evidence to show the existence of agents or their connection with the Confederacy, though many have uttered a general belief in their reality. Investigators of single affairs have admitted, regretfully, their inability to add incitement of Indians to the charges against the South. If such a cause were needed to explain the increasing turbulence of the tribes, it might be worth while to search further in the hope of establishing it, but nothing occurred in these wars which cannot be accounted for, fully, in facts easily obtained and well authenticated.

Before 1861 the Indians of the West were commonly on friendly terms with the United States. Occasional wars broke this friendship, and frequent massacres aroused the fears of one frontier or another, for the Indian was an irresponsible child, and the frontiersman was reckless and inconsiderate. But the outbreaks were exceptional, they were easily put down, and peace was rarely hard to obtain. By 1865 this condition had changed over most of the West. Warfare had become systematic and widely spread. The frequency and similarity of outbreaks in remote districts suggested a harmonious plan, or at least similar reactions from similar provocations. From 1865, for nearly five years, these wars continued with only intervals of truce, or professed peace; while during a long period after 1870, when most of the tribes were suppressed and well policed, upheavals occurred which were clearly to be connected with the Indian wars. The reality of this transition from peace to war has caused many to charge it to the South. It is, however, connected with the culmination of the westward movement, which more than explains it.

For a setting of the Indian wars some restatement of the events before 1861 is needed. By 1840 the agricultural frontier of the United States had reached the bend of the Missouri, while the Indian tribes, with plenty of room, had been pushed upon the plains. In the generation following appeared the heavy traffic along the overland trails, the advance of the frontier into the new Northwest, and the Pacific railway surveys. Each of these served to compress the Indians and restrict their range. Accompanying these came curtailing of reserves, shifting of residences to less desirable grounds, and individual maltreatment to a degree which makes marvellous the incapacity, weakness, and patience of the Indians. Occasionally they struggled, but always they lost. The scalped and mutilated pioneer, with his haystacks burning and his stock run off, is a vivid picture in the period, but is less characteristic than the long-suffering Indian, accepting the inevitable, and moving to let the white man in.

The necessary results of white encroachment were destruction of game and education of the Indian to the luxuries and vices of the white man. At a time when starvation was threatening because of the disappearance of the buffalo and other food animals, he became aware of the superior diet of the whites and the ease with which robbery could be accomplished. In the fifties the pressure continued, heavier than ever. The railway surveys reached nearly every corner of the Indian Country. In the next few years came the prospectors who started hundreds of mining camps beyond the line of settlements, while the engineers began to stick the advancing heads of railways out from the Missouri frontier and into the buffalo range.

Even the Indian could see the approaching end. It needed no confederate envoy to assure him that the United States could be attacked. His own hunger and the white peril were persuading him to defend his hunting-ground. Yet even now, in the widespread Indian wars of the later sixties, uniformity of action came without much previous coÖperation. A general Indian league against the whites was never raised. The general war, upon dissection and analysis, breaks up into a multitude of little wars, each having its own particular causes, which, in many instances, if the word of the most expert frontiersmen is to be believed, ran back into cases of white aggression and Indian revenge.

The Sioux uprising of 1862 came a little ahead of the general wars, with causes rising from the treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux in 1851. The plains situation had been clearly seen and succinctly stated in this year. "We are constrained to say," wrote the men who made these treaties, "that in our opinion the time has come when the extinguishment of the Indian title to this region should no longer be delayed, if government would not have the mortification, on the one hand, of confessing its inability to protect the Indian from encroachment; or be subject to the painful necessity, upon the other, of ejecting by force thousands of its citizens from a land which they desire to make their homes, and which, without their occupancy and labor, will be comparatively useless and waste." The other treaties concluded in this same year at Fort Laramie were equally the fountains of discontent which boiled over in the early sixties and gave rise at last to one of the most horrible incidents of the plains war.

In the Laramie treaties the first serious attempt to partition the plains among the tribes was made. The lines agreed upon recognized existing conditions to a large extent, while annuities were pledged in consideration of which the savages agreed to stay at peace, to allow free migration along the trails, and to keep within their boundaries. The Sioux here agreed that they belonged north of the Platte. The Arapaho and Cheyenne recognized their area as lying between the Platte and the Arkansas, the mountains and, roughly, the hundred and first meridian. For ten years after these treaties the last-named tribes kept the faith to the exclusion of attacks upon settlers or emigrants. They even allowed the Senate in its ratification of the treaty to reduce the term of the annuities from fifty years to fifteen.

In a way, the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians lay off the beaten tracks and apart from contact with the whites. Their home was in the triangle between the great trails, with a mountain wall behind them that offered almost insuperable obstacles to those who would cross the continent through their domain. The Gunnison railroad survey, which was run along the thirty-ninth parallel and through the Cochetopa Pass, revealed the difficulty of penetrating the range at this point. Accordingly, a decade which built up Oregon and California made little impression on this section until in 1858 gold was discovered in Cherry Creek. Then came the deluge.

Nearly one hundred thousand miners and hangers-on crossed the plains to the Pike's Peak country in 1859 and settled unblushingly in the midst of the Indian lands. They "possessed nothing more than the right of transit over these lands," admitted the Peace Commissioners in 1868. Yet they "took possession of them for the purpose of mining, and, against the protest of the Indians, founded cities, established farms, and opened roads. Before 1861 the Cheyenne and Arapaho had been driven from the mountain regions down upon the waters of the Arkansas, and were becoming sullen and discontented because of this violation of their rights." The treaty of 1851 had guaranteed the Indians in their possession, pledging the United States to prevent depredations by the whites, but here, as in most similar cases, the guarantees had no weight in the face of a population under way. The Indians were brushed aside, the United States agents made no real attempts to enforce the treaty, and within a few months the settlers were demanding protection against the surrounding tribes. "The Indians saw their former homes and hunting grounds overrun by a greedy population, thirsting for gold," continued the Commissioners. "They saw their game driven east to the plains, and soon found themselves the objects of jealousy and hatred. They too must go. The presence of the injured is too often painful to the wrong-doer, and innocence offensive to the eyes of guilt. It now became apparent that what had been taken by force must be retained by the ravisher, and nothing was left for the Indian but to ratify a treaty consecrating the act."

Instead of a war of revenge in which the Arapaho and Cheyenne strove to defend their lands and to drive out the intruders, a war in which the United States ought to have coÖperated with the Indians, a treaty of cession followed. On February 18, 1861, at Fort Wise, which was the new name for Bent's old fort on the Arkansas, an agreement was signed by which these tribes gave up much of the great range reserved for them in 1851, and accepted in its place, with what were believed to be greater guarantees, a triangular tract bounded, east and northeast, by Sand Creek, in eastern Colorado; on the south by the Arkansas and Purgatory rivers; and extending west some ninety miles from the junction of Sand Creek and the Arkansas. The cessions made by the Ute on the other side of the range, not long after this, are another part of the same story of mining aggression. The new Sand Creek reserve was designed to remove the Arapaho and Cheyenne from under the feet of the restless prospectors. For years they had kept the peace in the face of great provocation. For three years more they put up with white encroachment before their war began.

The Colorado miners, like those of the other boom camps, had been loud in their demand for transportation. To satisfy this, overland traffic had been organized on a large scale, while during 1862 the stage and freight service of the plains fell under the control of Ben Holladay. Early in August, 1864, Holladay was nearly driven out of business. About the 10th of the month, simultaneous attacks were made along his mail line from the Little Blue River to within eighty miles of Denver. In the forays, stations were sacked and burned, isolated farms were wiped out, small parties on the trails were destroyed. At Ewbank Station, a family of ten "was massacred and scalped, and one of the females, besides having suffered the latter inhuman barbarity, was pinned to the earth by a stake thrust through her person, in a most revolting manner; ... at Plum Creek ... nine persons were murdered, their train, consisting of ten wagons, burnt, and two women and two children captured.... The old Indian traders ... and the settlers ... abandoned their habitations." For a distance of 370 miles, Holladay's general superintendent declared, every ranch but one was "deserted and the property abandoned to the Indians."

Fifteen years after the destruction of his stations, Holladay was still claiming damages from the United States and presenting affidavits from his men which revealed the character of the attacks. George H. Carlyle told how his stage was chased by Indians for twenty miles, how he had helped to bury the mutilated bodies of the Plum Creek victims, and how within a week the route had to be abandoned, and every ranch from Fort Kearney to Julesburg was deserted. The division agent told how property had been lost in the hurried flight. To save some of the stock, fodder and supplies had to be sacrificed,—hundreds of sacks of corn, scores of tons of hay, besides the buildings and their equipment. Nowhere were the Indians overbold in their attacks. In small bands they waited their time to take the stations by surprise. Well-armed coaches might expect to get through with little more than a few random shots, but along the hilltops they could often see the savages waiting in safety for them to pass. Indian warfare was not one of organized bodies and formal manoeuvres. Only when cornered did the Indian stand to fight. But in wild, unexpected descents the tribes fell upon the lines of communication, reducing the frontier to an abject terror overnight.

The destruction of the stage route was not the first, though it was the most general hostility which marked the commencement of a new Indian war. Since the spring of 1864 events had occurred which in the absence of a more rigorous control than the Indian Department possessed, were likely to lead to trouble. The Cheyenne had been dissatisfied with the Fort Wise treaty ever since its conclusion. The Sioux were carrying on a prolonged war. The Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa were ready to be started on the war-path. It was the old story of too much compression and isolated attacks going unpunished. Whatever the merits of an original controversy, the only way to keep the savages under control was to make fair retribution follow close upon the commission of an outrage. But the punishment needed to be fair.

In April, 1864, a ranchman named Ripley came into one of the camps on the South Platte and declared that some Indians had stolen his stock. Perhaps his statement was true; but it must be remembered that the ranchman whose stock strayed away was prone to charge theft against the Indians, and that there is only Ripley's own word that he ever had any stock. Captain Sanborn, commanding, sent out a troop of cavalry to recover the animals. They came upon some Indians with horses which Ripley claimed as his, and in an attempt to disarm them, a fight occurred in which the troop was driven off. Their lieutenant thought the Indians were Cheyenne.

A few weeks after this, Major Jacob Downing, who had been in Camp Sanborn inspecting troops, came into Denver and got from Colonel Chivington about forty men, with whom "to go against the Indians." Downing later swore that he found the Cheyenne village at Cedar Bluffs. "We commenced shooting; I ordered the men to commence killing them.... They lost ... some twenty-six killed and thirty wounded.... I burnt up their lodges and everything I could get hold of.... We captured about one hundred head of stock, which was distributed among the boys."

On the 12th of June, a family living on Box Elder Creek, twenty miles east of Denver, was murdered by the Indians. Hungate, his wife, and two children were killed, the house burned, and fifty or sixty head of stock run off. When the "scalped and horribly mangled bodies" were brought into Denver, the population, already uneasy, was thrown into panic by this appearance of danger so close to the city. Governor Evans began at once to organize the militia for home defence and to appeal to Washington for help.

By the time of the attack upon the stage line it was clear that an Indian war existed, involving in varying degrees parts of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa tribes. The merits of the causes which provoked it were considerably in doubt. On the frontier there was no hesitation in charging it all to the innate savagery of the tribes. Governor Evans was entirely satisfied that "while some of the Indians might yet be friendly, there was no hope of a general peace on the plains, until after a severe chastisement of the Indians for these depredations."

In restoring tranquillity the frontier had to rely largely upon its own resources. Its own Second Colorado was away doing duty in the Missouri campaign, while the eastern military situation presented no probability of troops being available to help out the West. Colonel Chivington and Governor John Evans, with the long-distance aid of General Curtis, were forced to make their own plans and execute them.

As early as June, Governor Evans began his corrective measures, appealing first to Washington for permission to raise extra troops, and then endeavoring to separate the friendly and warlike Indians in order that the former "should not fall victims to the impossibility of soldiers discriminating between them and the hostile, upon whom they must, to do any good, inflict the most severe chastisement." To this end, and with the consent of the Indian Department, he sent out a proclamation, addressed to "the friendly Indians of the Plains," directing them to keep away from those who were at war, and as evidence of friendship to congregate around the agencies for safety. Forts Lyons, Laramie, Larned, and Camp Collins were designated as concentration points for the several tribes. "None but those who intend to be friendly with the whites must come to these places. The families of those who have gone to war with the whites must be kept away from among the friendly Indians. The war on hostile Indians will be continued until they are all effectually subdued." The Indians, frankly at war, paid no attention to this invitation. Two small bands only sought the cover of the agencies, and with their exception, so Governor Evans reported on October 15, the proclamation "met no response from any of the Indians of the plains." The war parties became larger and more general as the summer advanced, driving whites off the plains between the two trails for several hundred miles. But as fall approached, the tribes as usual sought peace. The Indians' time for war was summer. Without supplies, they were unable to fight through the winter, so that autumn brought them into a mood well disposed to peace, reservations, and government rations. Major Colley, the agent on the Sand Creek reserve at Fort Lyon, received an overture early in September. In a letter written for them on August 29, by a trader, Black Kettle, of the Cheyenne, and other chiefs declared their readiness to make a peace if all the tribes were included in it. As an olive branch, they offered to give up seven white prisoners. They admitted that five war parties, three Cheyenne and two Arapaho, were yet in the field.

Upon receipt of Black Kettle's letter, Major E. W. Wynkoop, military commander at Fort Lyon, marched with 130 men to the Cheyenne camp at Bend of Timbers, some eighty miles northeast of Fort Lyons. Here he found "from six to eight hundred Indian warriors drawn up in line of battle and prepared to fight." He avoided fighting, demanded and received the prisoners, and held a council with the chiefs. Here he told them that he had no authority to conclude a peace, but offered to conduct a group of chiefs to Denver, for a conference with Governor Evans.

On September 28, Governor Evans held a council with the Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs brought in by Major Wynkoop; Black Kettle and White Antelope being the most important. Black Kettle opened the conference with an appeal to the governor in which he alluded to his delivery of the prisoners and Wynkoop's invitation to visit Denver. "We have come with our eyes shut, following his handful of men, like coming through the fire," Black Kettle went on. "All we ask is that we may have peace with the whites. We want to hold you by the hand. You are our father. We have been travelling through a cloud. The sky has been dark ever since the war began. These braves who are with me are all willing to do what I say. We want to take good tidings home to our people, that they may sleep in peace. I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies." To him Governor Evans responded that this submission was a long time coming, and that the nation had gone to war, refusing to listen to overtures of peace. This Black Kettle admitted.

"So far as making a treaty now is concerned," continued Governor Evans, "we are in no condition to do it.... You, so far, have had the advantage; but the time is near at hand when the plains will swarm with United States soldiers. I have learned that you understand that as the whites are at war among themselves, you think you can now drive the whites from this country; but this reliance is false. The Great Father at Washington has men enough to drive all the Indians off the plains, and whip the rebels at the same time. Now the war with the whites is nearly through, and the Great Father will not know what to do with all his soldiers, except to send them after the Indians on the plains. My proposition to the friendly Indians has gone out; [I] shall be glad to have them all come in under it. I have no new proposition to make. Another reason that I am not in a condition to make a treaty is that war is begun, and the power to make a treaty of peace has passed to the great war chief." He further counselled them to make terms with the military authorities before they could hope to talk of peace. No prospect of an immediate treaty was given to the chiefs. Evans disclaimed further powers, and Colonel Chivington closed the council, saying: "I am not a big war chief, but all the soldiers in this country are at my command. My rule of fighting white men or Indians is to fight them until they lay down their arms and submit." The same evening came a despatch from Major-general Curtis, at Fort Leavenworth, confirming the non-committal attitude of Evans and Chivington: "I want no peace till the Indians suffer more.... I fear Agent of the Interior Department will be ready to make presents too soon.... No peace must be made without my directions."

The chiefs were escorted home without their peace or any promise of it, Governor Evans believing that the great body of the tribes was still hostile, and that a decisive winter campaign was needed to destroy their lingering notion that the whites might be driven from the plains. Black Kettle had been advised at the council to surrender to the soldiers, Major Wynkoop at Fort Lyon being mentioned as most available. Many of his tribe acted on the suggestion, so that on October 20 Agent Colley, their constant friend, reported that "nearly all the Arapahoes are now encamped near this place and desire to remain friendly, and make reparation for the damages committed by them."

The Indians unquestionably were ready to make peace after their fashion and according to their ability. There is no evidence that they were reconciled to their defeat, but long experience had accustomed them to fighting in the summer and drawing rations as peaceful in the winter. The young men, in part, were still upon the war-path, but the tribes and the head chiefs were anxious to go upon a winter basis. Their interpreter who had attended the conference swore that they left Denver, "perfectly contented, deeming that the matter was settled," that upon their return to Fort Lyon, Major Wynkoop gave them permission to bring their families in under the fort where he could watch them better; and that "accordingly the chiefs went after their families and villages and brought them in, ... satisfied that they were in perfect security and safety." While the Indians gathered around the fort, Major Wynkoop sent to General Curtis for advice and orders respecting them. Before the orders arrived, however, he was relieved from command and Major Scott J. Anthony, of the First Colorado Cavalry, was detailed in his place. After holding a conference with the Indians and Anthony, in which the latter renewed the permission for the bands to camp near the fort, he left Fort Lyons on November 26. Anthony meanwhile had become convinced that he was exceeding his authority. First he disarmed the savages, receiving only a few old and worn-out weapons. Then he returned these and ordered the Indians away from Fort Lyons. They moved forty miles away and encamped on Sand Creek.

The Colorado authorities had no idea of calling it a peace. Governor Evans had scolded Wynkoop for bringing the chiefs in to Denver. He had received special permission and had raised a hundred-day regiment for an Indian campaign. If he should now make peace, Washington would think he had misrepresented the situation and put the government to needless expense. "What shall I do with the third regiment, if I make peace?" he demanded of Wynkoop. They were "raised to kill Indians, and they must kill Indians."

Acting on the supposition that the war was still on, Colonel Chivington led the Third Colorado, and a part of the First Colorado Cavalry, from 900 to 1000 strong, to Fort Lyons in November, arriving two days after Wynkoop departed. He picketed the fort, to prevent the news of his arrival from getting out, and conferred on the situation with Major Anthony, who, swore Major Downing, wished he would attack the Sand Creek camp and would have done so himself had he possessed troops enough. Three days before, Anthony had given a present to Black Kettle out of his own pocket. As the result of the council of war, Chivington started from Fort Lyon at nine o'clock, on the night of the 28th.

About daybreak on November 29 Chivington's force reached the Cheyenne village on Sand Creek, where Black Kettle, White Antelope, and some 500 of their band, mostly women and children, were encamped in the belief that they had made their peace. They had received no pledge of this, but past practice explained their confidence. The village was surrounded by troops who began to fire as soon as it was light. "We killed as many as we could; the village was destroyed and burned," declared Downing, who further professed, "I think and earnestly believe the Indians to be an obstacle to civilization, and should be exterminated." White Antelope was killed at the first attack, refusing to leave the field, stating that it was the fault of Black Kettle, others, and himself that occasioned the massacre, and that he would die. Black Kettle, refusing to leave the field, was carried off by his young men. The latter had raised an American flag and a white flag in his effort to stop the fight. The firing began, swore interpreter Smith, on the northeast side of Sand Creek, near Black Kettle's lodge. Driven thence, the disorderly horde of savages retreated to War Bonnet's lodge at the upper end of the village, some few of them armed but most making no resistance. Up the dry bottom of Sand Creek they ran, with the troops in wild charge close behind. In the hollows of the banks they sought refuge, but the soldiers dragged them out, killing seventy or eighty with the worst barbarities Smith had seen: "All manner of depredations were inflicted on their persons; they were scalped, their brains knocked out; the men used their knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked them in the head with their guns, beat their brains out, mutilated their bodies in every sense of the word." The affidavits of soldiers engaged in the attack are printed in the government documents. They are too disgusting to be more than referred to elsewhere.

Here at last was the culmination of the plains war of 1864 in the "Chivington massacre," which has been the centre of bitter controversy ever since its heroes marched into Denver with their bloody trophies. It was without question Indian fighting at its worst, yet it was successful in that the Indian hostilities stopped and a new treaty was easily obtained by the whites in 1865. The East denounced Chivington, and the Indian Commissioner described the event in 1865 as a butchery "in cold blood by troops in the service of the United States." "Comment cannot magnify the horror," said the Nation. The heart of the question had to do with the matter of good faith. At no time did the military or Colorado authorities admit or even appear to admit that the war was over. They regarded the campaign as punitive and necessary for the foundation of a secure peace. The Indians, on the other hand, believed that they had surrendered and were anxious to be let alone. Too often their wish in similar cases had been gratified, to the prolongation of destructive wars. What here occurred was horrible from any standard of civilized criticism. But even among civilized nations war is an unpleasant thing, and war with savages is most merciful, in the long run, when it speaks the savages' own tongue with no uncertain accent. That such extreme measures could occur was the result of the impossible situation on the plains. "My opinion," said Agent Colley, "is that white men and wild Indians cannot live in the same country in peace." With several different and diverging authorities over them, with a white population wanting their reserves and anxious for a provocation that might justify retaliation upon them, little difficulties were certain to lead to big results. It was true that the tribes were being dispossessed of lands which they believed to belong to them. It was equally true that an Indian war could terrify a whole frontier and that stern repression was its best cure. The blame which was accorded to Chivington left out of account the terror in Colorado, which was no less real because the whites were the aggressors. The slaughter and mutilation of Indian women and children did much to embitter Eastern critics, who did not realize that the only way to crush an Indian war is to destroy the base of supplies,—the camp where the women are busy helping to keep the men in the field; and who overlooked also the fact that in the mÊlÉe the squaws were quite as dangerous as the bucks. Indiscriminate blame and equally indiscriminate praise have been accorded because of the Sand Creek affair. The terrible event was the result of the orderly working of causes over which individuals had little control.

In October, 1865, a peace conference was held on the Little Arkansas at which terms were agreed upon with Apache, Kiowa and Comanche, Arapaho and Cheyenne, while the last named surrendered their reserve at Sand Creek. For four years after this, owing to delays in the Senate and ambiguity in the agreements, they had no fixed abode. Later they were given room in the Indian Territory in lands taken from the civilized tribes.