The night of the 30th was nearly a repetition of the previous night. Soldiers slept on their arms, peering into the darkness looking for ghosts. Sporadic firing broke out. Those who could fall asleep were shaken awaken by the 7:00 p.m. arrival of Lt. Andrew J. Pennock, Company D, Third Colorado, who had been left behind at Fort Lyon and now was bringing in about 40 wagons of provisions, forage, and ammunition.
About 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, December 1, the command finally packed up and headed out—but not toward the Smoky Hill. Coffin was aware they were going to pursue Little Raven’s band, but Irving Howbert didn’t know why they went south. He assumed it was because of “our regiment’s inferior horses, arms, and equipment.”
In truth, Chivington did not know exactly where the Indians were or in what numbers, and he had lost the equivalent of three companies to casualties, wagon escorting, wounded, prisoners, and captured horses. Chivington, however, did have new intelligence about a closer Indian camp. Sam Colley was “desirous so that I should find and also attack the Arapahoes,” explained Chivington, “that he sent a messenger after the fight at Sand Creek, nearly forty miles, to inform me where I could find the Arapahoes and Kiowas.” These Indians had been camped near the junction of Rush Creek and Sand Creek, about 15 miles below the battle site, and that was Chivington’s destination.
About one mile south of the battleground, the column came across a few women and children huddled in the grass by the trail. Coffin felt sorry for them. They begged to be taken on the wagons, but were left behind so they could be picked up by other Indians. According to Jim Dubois, “they were left by the road side with some considerable rations.” However, he also thought they might have been killed by soldiers bringing up the rear. The command stopped for the day near the mouth of Rush Creek, but the Arapaho were already gone.
Anthony and Soule had left Fort Lyon at 11:00 p.m. the night before and met up with Chivington at Rush Creek. On December 2, Chivington continued riding down Sand Creek to its junction with the Arkansas River. Anthony was given charge of the dead and wounded to take back to Fort Lyon. Once there, Anthony wrote to headquarters: “This has certainly been the most bloody and hard-fought Indian battle that has ever occurred on these plains.” He also observed there were too many wounded for the current surgeon to handle, and that he would ride to catch up to Chivington, after which he hoped to continue on to the Smoky Hill and end up near Fort Larned in a couple of weeks.1
On the night of December 2, Chivington broke camp and moved down the Arkansas, riding 42 miles through the night and into the next day. He reached the reported site of the last Arapaho camp, but no Indians were found. The morning of the 4th, the column came across a westbound stage whose passengers announced another Indian camp 15 miles to the east. Colonel Shoup took 30 men from each company of the Third Colorado and made for the reported camp. They arrived there at dusk, but there were no Indians in sight. Scouts reported Indians another 15 miles below, and on December 5, they moved east once more, with the same result. The Indians, it seemed, were always about one day ahead of the pursuing soldiers. On the 6th, another scout was sent 20 miles downriver, but returned without spotting anything of interest.
That night, recorded Major Sayr, was the “coldest night we have had during the campaign.” Billy Breakenridge also commented on the cold, as did Irving Howbert, who observed that from the day they left the original battleground, “it had been very cold and disagreeable. Sharp, piercing winds blew from the north almost incessantly, making us extremely uncomfortable …. The thin, shoddy government blankets afforded only the slightest possible protection against the bitter winds.”2
The extreme cold, the inability to catch the fleeing Indians, the exhaustion of the horses, and the near-expirations of the enlistments of the Third Colorado convinced Chivington it as time to turn back. On December 7, he headed back upstream and reaching Fort Lyon on the 10th. It was there Chivington learned what had happened to much of the stock captured at Sand Creek.
Lieutenant Chauncy M. Cossitt, the quartermaster at Fort Lyon, was always short on horseflesh. Before the battle, Lt. D. Perry Elliot, the quartermaster of the Third Colorado, jokingly told Cossitt they had “to have a fight in order to get even on their stores.” When the captured San Creek ponies were brought in, it was like manna from heaven. Cossitt counted 450 head. Before they were officially turned over to the post quartermaster, however, some of Lieutenant Autobees’s men drove a portion of the herd up the Arkansas River. Thus, only 327 were turned over to Cossitt at Fort Lyon. Lieutenant Henry H. Hewitt of Company I, Third Colorado, was sent to retrieve the horses that had been cut from the captured herd. He found them at Autobees’s ranch and surrounded the corral, but soldiers there told Hewitt they had driven off the stock during the battle under Autobees’ orders, and both Chivington and Shoup knew it.
Hewitt had little choice but to arrest the men and took them back to Fort Lyon in an effort to sort through the mess. When Hewitt reached the post about December 9, he learned that more stock had been driven off to the Cimarron River. When Chivington arrived the next day, Hewitt reported to him to clarify the situation.
“You have done perfectly right,” Chivington told him. “I am glad you did it; the men had no authority from myself or Colonel Shoup to drive the stock off when they did.” Autobees, he explained, was only authorized to drive the horses back to Fort Lyon. Chivington added that “it was a scandal, that while the troops were fighting the Indians, some scoundrels should shrink to plunder.” Later, at the military tribunal, these missing horses were used as a vehicle to further discredit Chivington, although his attempted disposition of the stock was quite legitimate.3
* * *
Word of Sand Creek fight broke in the Rocky Mountain News on December 8. The “whipping” of the Indians was the “chief subject of comment and glorification” in the town. The Rocky Mountain News gloated that the local Colorado boys had “collectively ‘cleaned out’ the confederated savages of Sand Creek, have won for themselves and their commanders, from Colonel down to corporal, the eternal gratitude of dwellers on these plains.” As the troops marched back to Denver, the papers daily spilled forth with additional bits of news about the fight, all couched in grandiloquent terms. “Among the brilliant feats of arms in Indian warfare,” editorialized the Rocky Mountain News on December 17, “harkened, the recent campaign of our Colorado volunteers will stand in history with few rivals and none to exceed it in final results.” Ironically, the statement would prove to be both very right wrong, and very wrong.
On December 22, the Third Colorado rode victoriously into Denver. According to the Rocky Mountain News, Chivington, Shoup, Bowen, Sayr, and “the rank and file of the ‘bloody Thirdsters’ made a most imposing procession,” with all observers “expressing their admiration for the gallant boys.” The stories were pouring in, continued the paper, and “there’s no exaggeration in stating that no two men give the same version of the big battle, and, of the stories of a score of them, there ain’t three alike, respecting the minutiae of the great glorious victory.” On Christmas Day, Major Sayr recorded in his diary: “In camp—None of our Regiment mustered out yet—Some of the boys trying to have a Merry Christmas by getting drunk.”
It was a fine old time for all, at least until the 29th of that month, when the Rocky Mountain News ran a short and disturbing snippet: “Washington, Dec. 28—The affair at Fort Lyon, Colorado, in which Colonel Chivington destroyed a large Indian village and all its inhabitants, is to be made the subject of a Congressional investigation. Letters received from high officials in Colorado say that the Indians were killed after surrendering, and that a large proportion of them were women and children.”
The news exploded on the scene like a bombshell. Who were the “high officials” who claimed that friendly Indians had surrendered before being killed? These officials may believe the Indians were friendly, the paper editorialized, “but the mass of our people ‘can’t see it.’” Possibly those white scalps found in the lodges “were taken in a friendly, playful manner,” continued the sarcastic editorial, but they certainly weren’t taken from the heads of the wives or daughters of those “high officials.”
Many citizens welcomed an investigation to prove that the actions undertaken by the volunteers were justified. The Rocky Mountain News begged the Congressional Committee to come forth, but the paper also warned the committee members that they had better “get their scalps insured before they pass Plum Creek on their way out.” On the last day of 1864, the News speculated again about the “contemptibly mean” people who would drag Colorado down to further their own political ambitions or line their own pockets with money. These men did not care for peace, or for Colorado’s security, or for the lives of defenseless citizens, carped the paper. Instead, they spread malicious lies “Solely and simply to vent their spite upon two or three men against whom they have personal animosities, or whose power and popularity they envy and fear.”
The editorial ended with these words: “Let the investigations go on.”4
1 Coffin, Sand Creek, 37-38; Howbert, Indians of Pike’s Peak, 111-12; “Massacre of Cheyenne Indians,” 108; Anthony to Chivington, December 1, 1864, OR 41, pt. 1, 952.
2 Perrigo, “Sayr’s Diary,” 56; Breakenridge, Helldorado, 58-59; Howbert, Indians of Pike’s Peak, 113. These statements contrast with what Major Anthony wrote to his brother on December 23, when he was trying to emphasize that they could have attacked all the Indians, not just those on Sand Creek. According to Anthony, the weather was “delightful,” and “I did not wear my overcoat two days during the whole trip, and all my bedding stolen besides.” Scott J. Anthony Papers [what is this a reference to?]
3 “Sand Creek Massacre,” 153-54, 200-01.
4 Perrigo, “Sayr’s Diary,” 56-57; Williams, Through the News, 269, 280, 291, 299, 300, 304-05, 317-20, 323-24.