After spending the
last forty-five years on the frontier, beginning in the then Territory of
Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico,
Arizona and Montana, and being a close observer of cause and effect in
passing events, it will, no doubt, be of interest to the general public to
know the real cause of the uprising and consolidation of the three tribes
of Indians, namely, the Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahoes, against the
whites.
The Sioux Nation was the most powerful and numerous of any
of the tribe of Indians on the North American continent, at one time
numbering one hundred and twenty thousand warriors and consisting of three
distinct bands, called the Yankton Sioux, who inhabited the northern
boundary of the United many of whom lived in Minnesota.
The Brulés
Sioux held the territory of North and South Dakota, and the Ogalalla
Sioux, who occupied the plains of Colorado.
In the fall of 1862,
when the United States was engaged in the Civil war, Minnesota had been
settling up pretty fast, and was crowding in on the territory of the
Yankton Sioux, who were very friendly with the whites and often enjoyed
the hospitality of the settlers in the small places and in the vicinity of
New Ulm.
About this time they conceived the idea of stopping the
white settlers from coming into that part of Minnesota. Knowing that the
United States was plunged into the Civil War and, as they thought, fully
occupied with their own domestic troubles, it would be the most opportune
time for them to execute their plans.
Accordingly they held secret
councils and matured their plans of attack and massacre without the least
suspicion on the part of the frontier settlers, with whom they had been so
friendly. One old squaw, however, knew of their plans and notified some of
the white women who had been very kind to her and advised them to go to
safety at once, but the whites did not believe the Indians would do them
any harm and ignored the admonition of the old squaw; so accordingly on
the night of September 23rd, 1862, (if my memory serves me right), the
Indians, according to previous arrangement, raised, as if by one man, in
all parts of the settlement, and began to burn buildings and kill men,
women and children as fast as they could get to them. This massacre lasted
a day and a night until some three hundred settlers were killed and their
homes laid in ashes.
The United States troops were soon in pursuit
and captured some three hundred Indians and took them to the military
prison at Rock Island on the Mississippi river between Illinois and Iowa.
There they held them until the spring of 1863, when they were tried by
court martial and twenty-three of the leaders were sentenced to be hung;
they were duly executed and the balance were made to witness the hanging.
The orders from the war department were for the soldiers to take the
remaining Indians out on the plains and turn them loose, with instruction
to never return to Minnesota.
At this time nearly all the Indians
on the plains were at war with each other over disputed territory of their
hunting grounds.
The Omahas and Winnebagoes were weak tribes
without much ambition, and were satisfied to live and beg from the few
settlers in the vicinity of Omaha.
The Pawnees were located on the
Loop Fork of the South Platte river and were deadly enemies of the Sioux,
the disputed territory being near old Fort Kearney, from there west for
two hundred miles up the Platte, and from the line of New Mexico south for
six hundred miles.
In the north, the Ogalallas had supreme
control, only when menaced by the Pawnees on the east and the Cheyennes on
the west, who claimed one hundred miles of the Platte river and some five
hundred miles north and south from the west end of the Cheyennes'
territory. They claimed about sixty miles along the base of the mountains,
where Denver, Colorado Springs, Greeley and Pueblo now stand. Up in the
mountains the Utes claimed their hunting grounds, but would occasionally
go down and trespass on the Arapahoes' territory; then there was sure to
be war when this was found out.
This was the condition when nearly
three hundred of the murderous band of Yankton Sioux were turned loose on
the plains among their kindred.
They at once told their friends,
Ogalallas, what a terrible crime the whites had committed in hanging
twenty-three of their comrades and chiefs. Hanging, by the way, is the
most ignoble death for an Indian imaginable. This remnant of three hundred
at once advocated consolidation with all the Indians with whom they were
at home, to fight and exterminate the whites. They called councils of war
with the Pawnees, who refused to listen.
They then made overtures
to the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, when councils were held during the summer
of 1863, and speeches made denouncing the whites and calling the Indians
fools for fighting among themselves and killing each other, but to combine
and annihilate the whites. These councils finally prevailed late in the
fall, between the three tribes of Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahoes. The
Pawnees in the east and the Utes in the mountains to the west refusing to
participate with their enemies.
This combined force of three
tribes soon commenced their depredations, covering a territory five
hundred miles wide, east and west of the northern line of New Mexico, to
the Canadian line in the northward, a distance of some nine hundred miles.
Forts were established, and soldiers stationed all along the
Arkansas and Platte rivers to stop their murderous and destroying raids.
But the Indian war on the plains lasted about fifteen years before the
government finally got them subdued.
During this time hundreds of
emigrants and soldiers were killed and scalped, and millions of dollars
worth of property destroyed and stolen.
A few years ago the
government created an Indian Depredation Bureau and sent attorneys west to
take evidence to establish the claims of those who had been raided. The
narrator proved up on his claim for stock stolen and hay burnt to the
amount of eighteen thousand, two hundred and eighty dollars and the
attorney told him that there was upwards of seventy million dollars in
claims for Indian depredations and the government was anxious to have them
all filed and settled as soon as possible, since which time there has been
no effort on the part of Congress to take the matter up and amend one
article so the claimants can be settled with.
Some of the Pioneers of Colorado
Source: True History of some of the Pioneers of Colorado, by Miss
Luella Shaw, Press of Carson Harper Co, Denver, Colorado, 1909 |
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