"I tell you Ned--- it was hard to see little children on their knees
have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized."
- Silas Soule
the placeThe Sand Creek Massacre (also known as the Chivington Massacre, the Battle of Sand Creek or the Massacre of Cheyenne Indians) was an atrocity in the Indian Wars that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 700-man force of Colorado Territory militia attacked and destroyed a peaceful village of Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 70–163 Indians, about two-thirds of whom were women and children.
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the victims"I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women cut all to pieces ... With knives; scalped; their brains knocked out; children two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors ... By whom were they mutilated? By the United States troops."
—- John S. Smith, Congressional Testimony of Mr. John S. Smith, 1865[21] |
the loveHersa Coberly, early Colorado Pioneer (came to CO in 1859 at age 15). She married the Captain after the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864,
In 1865 they were married, and she was with him for the rest of his, tragically short, life. |