The hospital tipis overflowed with wounded that evening. Assistant surgeon Caleb S. Burdsal and surgeon-inchief of the volunteers, T. J. Leas, had their hands full as they busily worked by campfire light, taking care of more than 60 injured men, several with mortal wounds.1
While the surgeons tirelessly worked, the widely scattered soldiers returned from the battle and were ordered to form in a hollow square. Horses were picketed inside the formation, and on the outside the remaining lodges were set afire and burned brightly against the dark plains. Theodore Chubbuck and his friend Frank Bartholf, both members of Company M, took turns torching a number of tipis. Some soldiers walked to the creek in search of water, but believed the few trickles they found tainted with blood. Some dug holes in the sand to let the water seep through in an effort to filter the bloody liquid so that by morning, they would have what they hoped was clean drinkable water to satiate their thirst.
“I was so utterly exhausted,” said Howbert, “for want of sleep and food … that I hunted up a buffalo robe, of which there were large numbers scattered around, threw myself down on it, and was asleep almost as soon as I touched the ground.” Howbert was jostled awake at dusk to eat supper and once he finished, wanted nothing more than to sleep again. The soldiers were instructed, however, that they must sleep “with our guns in our hands, ready for use at any moment.”2
Alston Shaw and John Patterson visited the badly wounded Joe Connor in one of the hospital tipis. There was talk that Little Raven would attack them that night. Connor told Shaw that if the Indians attacked and it looked like the soldiers would be overrun, he wanted Shaw to shoot him. It would be a hard thing to do, but Shaw agreed. He did not have to think about it long, however, for that night “between nine and ten,” recalled Shaw, “the Angel of Death relieved him of his promise.” Connor’s passing did not relieve them of other troubles. The men were unable to sleep “on account of the horrible nerveracking noise that lasted throughout the night.” The barking of dogs combined with the yipping of coyotes, they explained, “had the heinous sound of a fiend’s chuckle when he is tormenting a victim.” The neighing of the horses and the groans of the wounded all served to numb the soldiers, who were already battling exhaustion, hunger, anxiety, and fear.3
Morse Coffin also remembered the howling dogs. He was certain sleep would find him, but “a hundred or two Indian dogs were scattered over the plains and making the night hideous by their dismal wailing cry.” It was no use trying to sleep, he explained, for it was “like a night among the wolves.”
Another disruption occurred at midnight when nervous pickets fired in the darkness and came running back toward camp crying out that Indians were coming. “Third battalion, turn out!” shouted Captain Cree. The order, repeated by Captain Nichols, shook Coffin awake. The exhausted soldiers stumbled about, bewildered by the order and unsure where to go. It made for “a confusion not readily described,” wrote Coffin. The shouting and chaos traveled around the square. Howbert recalled being ordered to immediately fall into line to repel an Indian attack. “We rushed out,” he said, “but in our sleepy condition had difficulty forming a line, as we hardly knew what we were doing.” In Coffin’s estimation, “There is no telling the result of a sudden and determined attack of even one hundred Indians at such a time.”
The officers had every fourth man form a skirmish line several rods in front around the camp perimeter. The dying fires of the burning tipis still glowed, and occasional shots echoed across the plains. In the orange glow of the fires, men thought they spotted approaching Indians. Howbert saw “what looked to be hundreds of Indian ponies running hither and thither.” The horses all appeared to be riderless, but in the soldiers’ imaginations they were certain to be ridden by warriors clinging to the far sides. Howbert was convinced he and his fellow soldiers “should surely be overwhelmed.” While nervously awaiting the attack, the volunteers finally discovered they were being charged by hundreds of dogs that had lost their masters and were simply running wildly about in every direction.4
Much more was moving about beyond the glow of the burning lodges than just dogs or phantoms. The Coloradans may have spent a trying night, but for the surviving Indians, it was much worse. George Bent recalled how most of them lay in their pits until dark, suspecting that the soldiers might return. They eventually crawled out, “stiff and sore, with the blood frozen on our wounded and half-naked bodies.” Many slowly retreated up Sand Creek. Occasional wails from women and children broke the stillness, but everyone did their best to muffle their cries. Many women and children met up with warriors who had left the camp before the fighting to gather up the horses. The warriors had driven the ponies out of the battle area and waited until dark to return. One of Bent’s cousins gave him a pony, but his hip hurt so badly that he had to be lifted onto its back. The survivors moved slowly north, some mounted and many on foot, until they were too exhausted to continue and stopped on the open plains for the night. The ground was frozen, there was no shelter, and no wood to build a fire. Some gathered grass to ignite small intermittent blazes, close to which the wounded and children were placed. Bent would never forget those tortuous hours, which he described as “the worst night I ever went through.”5
Some Indians who had lost relatives crept back to the battlefield to search for them, but only a very few wounded were found and carried out alive. Black Kettle searched in the darkness for the body of his wife, Medicine Woman, and almost miraculously found her alive. Her clothes were frozen to the clotted blood from nine wounds. Black Kettle carried her away on his back until someone gave him a pony, and they started for the Smoky Hill camps. Old Yellow Fingernails had been scalped alive, but somehow managed to crawl away and find his family. The botched scalping left his forehead skin hanging loose over his eyes. He wanted to say goodbye to his grandchildren, but they were afraid to look at him. He grabbed his loose skin in his hand and held it back, bade them farewell, and died. Tallow Woman, the 14-year-old who told of hearing whistling sounds the previous night, disappeared completely. The Cheyenne Strong Bow managed to get his family out before the soldiers reached them, but they fled with little except the clothes on their back. The child Black Bear was lifeless when they stopped late in the day to rest. Strong Bow thought he had frozen to death. They were burying him in the sand when the sun broke through the clouds. Perhaps it was the combination of light and warmth, but it was enough to revive him.
When Bent’s group could stand the cold no longer, they picked up and began walking east toward the camps on the Smoky Hill some 50 miles away. Luckily for them, a number of Indians who had escaped on horseback early in the fighting had ridden directly to Smoky Hill, which they reached about nightfall. When they spread the news of the attack, many rescuers set out with ponies loaded with blankets, robes, and food. The column met the fugitives after daybreak and no doubt saved some of their lives.
The Sand Creek attack was one of the worst blows to ever hit the Cheyenne. Black Kettle’s people lost more than any other band. White Antelope and Lone Bear (One Eye) were killed, and their bands suffered heavy losses. The oldest of the chiefs, Yellow Wolf, and his brother Big Man were dead. Bear Man was killed, and War Bonnet and half of his band were wiped out. Stand in the Water, chief of the Southern Elkhorn Scrapers, was killed, as were Two Thighs of the Kit Foxes and Yellow Shield of the Bowstrings. Spotted Crow, Bear Robe, and Little Robe also were killed, as were most of the Arapaho. Sand Hill, who had camped farther away, suffered the lightest losses.6
Unfortunately, the killing was not yet at an end.
1 “Sand Creek Massacre,” 165.
2 Chubbuck, “Sand Creek,” 2; Howbert, Indians of Pike’s Peak, 108.
3 Shaw, Pioneers of Colorado, 84-85.
4 Coffin, Sand Creek, 32; Howbert, Indians of Pike’s Peak, 109.
5 Hyde, George Bent, 156-57.
6 Hyde, George Bent, 158; Powell, Sacred Mountain I, 308; Sand Creek Massacre Project, 190, 203, 233.