The Road to Sand Creek: What Led to the Massacre

The Sand Creek Massacre grew out of a whirlwind of forces: the Civil War in the East and West; white settlers' overreaction on the western frontier to the 1862–63 Dakota uprising in Minnesota; the relations among bands of Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho and other Plains tribes; the constant threat of Confederate incursions; and Colorado politics. Above all, it was driven by the unstoppable momentum of Manifest Destiny — the United States' aim to dominate the land between the Mississippi River and the Pacific.

Timeline

About 1700–1750: the Cheyenne and Arapaho move west

By 1700, horses had spread across the West from Mexico to Canada. The Cheyenne and Arapaho acquired them around 1750 and began moving south and west from the forests and lakes of Minnesota toward the Plains and the Rockies, trading life as settled farmers for life as nomadic buffalo hunters. Between 1815 and 1830 they reached what is now Colorado and soon became the dominant tribes between the Platte and Arkansas rivers.

1803: the Louisiana Purchase

The United States bought French Louisiana — from the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to the Rockies and the Continental Divide — roughly doubling the country's size and taking in nearly half of future Colorado. French foreign minister Talleyrand told the Americans: "You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most of it."

1806–1825: exploring the new territory

Army expeditions probed the land that would become Colorado. Lt. Zebulon Pike strayed south of the Arkansas and was arrested by Spanish troops, learning while detained of the fortunes to be made in the Rocky Mountain fur trade. In 1821, Maj. Stephen Long dismissed Colorado's plains as the "Great American Desert." In 1825, the Cheyennes signed the Friendship Treaty, the first of many with the United States.

1821–1871: the Santa Fe Trail

Newly independent Mexico opened New Mexico's markets to American trade, and traders gambled on hauling goods 900 miles across the "Great American Desert." The Arkansas and Purgatory river valleys offered a route with reliable water — the Santa Fe Trail's Mountain Route, part of an international trade network.

• Bent, St. Vrain & Company built a massive fort near the rivers' confluence, with the help of the Cheyennes and Arapahos, who traded peacefully for years with their friend William Bent.
• Bent married into the Cheyenne tribe and became their most trusted counselor. Comanche, Kiowa, Apache and other southern Plains tribes also traded at Bent's Fort.

1845–1848: Manifest Destiny and the Mexican-American War

The dispute over Texas, sharpened by the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, brought the United States and Mexico to war after clashes on disputed ground in spring 1846. The war ended disastrously for Mexico, which lost Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and more of the Southwest. Gen. Stephen Kearny's Army of the West set out from Bent's Fort to conquer New Mexico — the trading company now a leader of Manifest Destiny and its claim that conquest of the West was divinely guided.

1848–1851: gold, emigrants and the Treaty of Fort Laramie

Victory over Mexico and gold in California turned the stream of westward migrants into a flood, with devastating effects on the land. In 1851, officials held a great peace council at Fort Laramie with more than 10,000 Indians from at least eight Plains nations. The tribes agreed to let emigrant trains pass safely in exchange for treaty lands protected from American encroachment. The treaty recognized nearly 75,000 square miles as Cheyenne and Arapaho domain — about 40,000 of them in Colorado — stretching from the Rockies' Front Range into Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas, and from the North Platte to south of the Arkansas.

1858–1861: the Colorado gold rush and the Treaty of Fort Wise

The 1859 "Pike's Peak gold rush" brought 100,000 "59ers" and more environmental damage to the Front Range. Most newcomers squatted on Cheyenne and Arapaho land guaranteed at Fort Laramie. Officials of soon-to-be Colorado Territory called the tribes back to negotiate near Bent's New Fort, trying to formalize the theft. The 1861 Treaty of Fort Wise cut the tribes' land to less than one-tenth of what Fort Laramie had granted. More militant factions rejected it as the cynical land grab it was, and as settlers kept coming, tension, distrust and fear grew.

1861–1864: Civil War, railroads and dreams of glory

Colorado officials raised troops without clear federal authority. The "Pikes Peakers" of the 1st Colorado Regiment helped turn back a Confederate invasion of New Mexico, making war heroes — with political ambitions — of once-obscure men like the Methodist minister John Chivington. The territory's political and business elite decided railroads were essential to Colorado's future, and saw the Cheyenne and Arapaho as obstacles — relics of a vanishing past.

1864: an army in search of a war

• Rumors spread that the Plains tribes were "Red Rebels" allied with the Confederacy to drive whites from Colorado.
• Governor John Evans ordered that Indians who did not put themselves under military protection be shot on sight. After a white family was killed by Indians near Denver, Evans warned Washington that a bloody Indian war was imminent, and won authority to raise a new regiment: the 3rd Colorado, U.S. Volunteer Cavalry.
• Maj. Edward Wynkoop, commanding Fort Lyon, received a letter from Chief Black Kettle, dictated to George Bent and Edmond Guerrier, asking for peace talks in the Smoky Hill country of Kansas.
• Wynkoop escorted Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs to Denver to meet Evans and Chivington at Camp Weld, where they faced harsh questions and veiled threats before being sent back to the Arkansas valley — believing they would be safe if they came in to Wynkoop at Fort Lyon.
• By November, bands of both tribes were camped at Sand Creek — and Chivington sent the new 3rd Colorado Cavalry on a winter campaign against "hostile Indians."

Sources

Based on "The Road to Sand Creek," part of the series Understanding Sand Creek, Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.