Two American Tragedies of our Own Making

 On November 29, 2014 hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Indian, Euro, and Hispanic Americans will gather at the Sand Creek massacre site for a Civil War Commemoration.  No re-enactment will occur, and no Confederate flags will be seen, for this is not a commemoration of a battle, or a rebel action.  This is the 150th anniversary of the only Civil War military engagement of the war on Colorado soil, and it was a pure, senseless, mutilation and massacre of almost 200 human beings.

American Volunteer Cavalry, and Artillery, sadly untrained 100 day men under the command of Indian hater  and self-aggrandizing opportunist Col John Chivington, were told to attack at dawn and totally annihilate this camp called at this time a Peace Camp under the ostensible leadership of Black Kettle, one of the Cheyenne's wisest older chiefs, and perhaps the only chief who could have brought peace between his people, and the Arapaho and the American Army, still caught up in the deadly last full year of the Civil War in the east.

We were blessed upon arrival to be able to spend almost an hour with Ranger Jeff, who, along with his partner, Karl,  in this remote but very interesting site, have seriously studied the American Indian cultures involved, and the climate of  the then Colorado Territories rapidly growing white population toward the inhabitants of the land before them.




But even though the attack itself, and its purpose, to annihilate, not capture or encircle, but to kill every peace camp Indian, was bad enough, this alone did not result in Chivington's departure from the US Army, or the then Governor of Colorado, Evans, being removed as territorial governor by President Lincoln.

No, it was the horrible mutilations of the dead, and the horrible ways many, especially women and children, were killed.  Almost no more brutal acts upon any field called a 'battlefield' have been recorded by any people group on the North American Continent as vile as what these so called civilized men in blue did to the helpless and those pleading under flags of truce for mercy.

The rest of the photos are on my Facebook Page, but these tell a tale of the site, and the walk we took over a part of it, today. Read the letters on FB I've photographed in sections by officers under Chivington who, with their men, actually refused to participate in the days action, even under threat of immediate court martial and even summary death.

The 'battle' raged for almost 9 hours, beginning before sun-up.  The warriors fought to almost the last man as they retreated from their village northward up Sand Creek toward what would become the small town of Kit Carson on today's US route 40. Their purpose was to save as many women and children, and horses, as they could. Some were chased as much as 40 miles up the riverbank.

Only the lack of more ammunition for the carbines and pistols and two mountain howitzers of the US Army kept the Cavalry from killing all.  The Indians ran out of bullets for the few guns they had early on and fought with bows and arrows and spears till night came.

I walked about 2 miles of the main trail.  And believe me, I followed the strong advice of signs and Ranger Jeff: STAY ON THE TRAILS. The western plains are beautiful, but if you aren't familiar with where you are the red ants, rattlers and biting flies can kill or at least drive you
                                                      mad.  Oh, and the Cholla and
                                                      Prickly Pear cactus barbs?  Forget about it!

 We were told by ranger Karl that only a month ago a family who is anonymous, arranged to bring a human remain to the site for formal burial by representatives of the Arapaho and Cheyenne Nation. An ancestor of theirs had acquired it at the site on November 29, or from a person who got it their. This family, now living in San Diego, had discovered it among family articles in storage and learned of the burial site on Sand Creek. It was an Indian scalplock. Perhaps the one from the baby one US soldier ripped from his dead mother's womb so he could scalp it.


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Not so awful in human mortality and mutilation, but just as awful in emotional pain and shame for our nation, is a site not 50 miles southeast of the Sand Creek Massacre area.  Granada was just another small Colorado farm town until in early 1942 an area big enough to eventually hold over 10,000 Japanese Americans was turned into one of our US 'Internment Camps".  Never considered concentration camps, the interns (sometimes called inmates) were Japanese American families sometimes having lived in the states as citizens for over three generations.  They lost everything when they were forcibly uprooted as possible enemy collaborators after the surprise Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor.


Here outside quiet Granada, Colorado, was built one such camp.

We spent an hour driving the camp site before a huge prairie thunder, lightning, wind and rain storm hit. In the dead quiet of the prairie we could only faintly hear the laughter of little children and the sobs of sorrowful adults. The smallest children knew only that since moving away fro their former homes they had many new friends crowded about them to play.  The older kids and adults only knew they had lost all they thought they owned when they became 'those hated Japs".

The camps were promoted as clean and comfortable to the American public. They had newspapers, schools, and everything.  Except real beds.  Only army canvas cots for everyone.  And even the food was army chow, with rice mixed in to make it 'Japanese".

 The gardens and farms were touted as some of the best anywhere. Why shouldn't they be?  They were tended by some of the formerly most successful farmers on the west coast.

The streets are laid out still in their 1940's plan.  The buildings wood  forms are all gone, but the empty concrete foundations remain.  Rows, and rows, and rows of them.

The last time I saw something like this was the foundations of the barracks at Dachau near Munich, Germany

 Over 120 died in this camp in its 3 year history. One statement at least that these were not NAZI concentration camps.

 The brother of  General Dwight  Eisenhower, Milton, was the first Director of the Internment Camp Bureau assigned by Roosevelt.

He boldly supported his bureaus actions in the 1940's. But time has a way of changing hearts and minds.

Three decades later he is quoted as saying, "I have thought and thought for all these years about what we did in 1942.  How could a society have been so wrong?"


Two different camp sites, almost 100 years and about 50 miles apart as the crow flies.  Each one with actions taken that were  'undeniable necessary' according to those who made them happen.

What is it then that we justify because we or others feel the 'need' to put down or fear another?

Chivington said "the babies had to be killed. Nits make Gnats".

Roosevelt said we had to wire in the American Japanese for their own safety. But the guns on the guard towers always pointed IN.

-Ken