Forgotten History: The 1870 Massacre of the Blackfeet In Montana Territory

Jan. 23, 1870, Major Eugene Baker didn’t much care whether the Blackfeet people in the camp his men were surveying were warriors or not, whether they were peaceful or not, “That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans [Blackfeet] and we will attack them.” 

Baker was a fast-rising senior officer in the northwest and on this day he was in charge of three companies of cavalry, while there had been hostility between the Blackfoot Confederacy, comprised of the Blackfoot, Blood, and Piegan tribes, and the white settlers in the past and the recent killing of a White trader named Malcolm Clarke had inflamed settlers, while there was at this time no open hostilities. General Philip Sheridan had ordered Baker to take his men to find the killer of Clarke, a Blackfoot named “Little Owl’.

In the hunt for Little Owl scouts led Baker to a semi-permanent camp on the Marias River (also known as the Bear River). Little Owl and other known mountain chiefs were not in the camp, and the scouts informed Baker of this but he still had his men spread out along a ridge with the high ground for shooting, When the leader of the camp, Heavy Runner saw them he approached Baker with papers from Sheridan stating the band was peaceful and to be left alone. Baker promptly had Heavy Runner shot by the scout Joe Cobell and ordered his men to fire on the camp.

This assault caught the Blackfeet in the camp completely unprepared and they were defenseless. The shooters hailed down bullets penetrating the lodges, then the men rode in and set fire to the lodges. They shot everyone they could find or trapped them in the lodges and set them on fire.

The cavalry captured some 140 of Heavy Runner’s band and stole 300 horses. They set fire to the entire camp and destroyed as many supplies as possible.

Baker then discovered the survivors had smallpox and released them without food or shelter in the terrible winter conditions, reported to be minus 30 degrees, and in the end, there were few survivors. By historical investigation, it is estimated 90 women and 50 children were killed in the attack and with starvation and hyperthermia another 140 died.

The massacre was generally unreported in the newspapers for over two months, and then it was given scant coverage. Other reports did reach Washington D.C. and there were calls for investigation; however Commanding General of the Plains William Tecumseh Sherman deflected a public inquiry by silencing the protests of General Alfred Sully, the Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent of Montana Indians, and Lieutenant William Pease, the Piegan Indian Agent who had reported the damning body count.

With little reporting and a complete whitewash by superiors, Baker stayed in command for another decade and the massacre got buried until indigenous people began to press for true history.

For many years, students and faculty from Blackfeet Community College have held an annual memorial on January 23 at the site. One year they placed 217 stones at the site to commemorate the victims as counted by Joe Kipp.

In 2010, the Baker Massacre Memorial was erected at the site.

 Photo: 

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soldiers-massacre-the-wrong-camp-of-indians

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-mariasmassacre/

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/sunday/blackfeet-remember-montana-s-greatest-indian-massacre/article_daca1094-4484-11e1-918e-001871e3ce6c.html

 

 

The Sand Creek Massacre: Colonel John Chivington Murders Hundreds

 

November 29, 1864, a 675-man force of the Third Colorado Cavalry under the command of Colonel John Chivington attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory. The village had no warriors but was full of elderly, sick, women and children. The Southern Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle and several other chiefs had gathered along the Big Sandy Creek 40 miles north of Fort Lyon hoping for peace and at the behest of Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans while he and other negotiated with the chiefs regarding sacred grounds and hunting and settlement peace.

On this morning Chivington had circled the camp of Black Kettle even though he no orders to leave Denver at the time and it was known to scouts that this particular camp was not for war or battle. They began their attack  and in the next eight hours the American troops killed around 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people composed mostly of women, children, and the elderly. During the afternoon and following day, the soldiers wandered over the field committing atrocities on the dead before departing the scene on December First.

Chivington and his men dressed their weapons, hats, and gear with scalps and other body parts, including human fetuses and male and female genitalia. They also publicly displayed these battle trophies in Denver's Apollo Theater and area saloons. Three Indians who remained in the village are known to have survived the massacre: George Bent's brother Charlie Bent, and two Cheyenne women who were later turned over to William Bent.

Chivington and the majority of his men talked up their massacre as a battle with a very hard-won victory. All his reports were written to make this clear. However, the few survivors started talking and then witnesses did. Among them Silas Soule who was a captain with the Colorado Volunteers under Chivington. Soule was an abolitionist from Kansas whose family had a long been aligned with individual like John Brown and Walt Whitman. On the morning of the massacre Soule refused to order his men to attack

Soule wrote to Major Edward Wynkoop telling what he had witnessed that day and the number of Arapaho and Cheyenne who had approached his command on their knees surrendering. Soule was murdered after testifying to the Joint Committee of the Conduct of the War. The Joint Committee held multiple hearings and made a report that Chivington and others who participated in the massacre be prosecuted however neither Evans nor the army followed these, largely in part because Chivington had resigned his commission and was beyond their reach as a civilian. The report and the press with it did destroy Chivington’s political ambitions.

After the massacre of non-combatants many of the Cheyenne, including the great war chief Roman Nose, and many Arapaho joined the Dog Soldiers and sought revenge on settlers throughout the Platte valley. The war pipe was smoked and passed from camp to camp among the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors in the area. In January 1865, they planned attacked with 1,000 warriors on the stage station and fort, then called Camp Rankin, at present-day Julesburg, Colorado. The associated bands captured much loot and killed many white settlers, including men, women and children.

Image: Black Kettle and Wife, Medicine Woman escaping by Andy Thomas

Sources:

https://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/fall2014/campuslife/john-evans-and-the-sand-creek-massacre.html

https://www.nps.gov/sand/learn/historyculture/index.htm

Forgotten History: The Native American occupation of Alcatraz

 

On this day in 1969 79 Indigenous Activists began an occupation of the federal facilities on Alcatraz Island. Calling themselves Indians of All Tribes (IAT) they elected a council, set up a school and distributed tasks amongst the whole group, voting on all major decisions. They choose Alcatraz because the fact I t was basically a rock without electricity or running water meant that it was representative of the reservations that most tribes had been given by the federal government.

“We moved onto Alcatraz Island because we feel that Indian people need a cultural center of their own. For several decades, Indian people have not had enough control of training their young people. And without a cultural center of their own, we are afraid that the old Indian ways may be lost. We believe that the only way to keep them alive is for Indian people to do it themselves.” —Letter from Indians of All Tribes, December 16, 1969

The occupiers began broadcasting an unlicensed radio station Radio Free Alcatraz in December of 1969 and their story became worldwide news until June of 1971 when federal law enforcement removed them, however, this incident began a modern Native American Rights movement

Sources:

https://workingclasshistory.tumblr.com/post/701453440807845888/on-this-day-20-november-1969-a-group-of-78

https://books.google.com/books?id=3M6Nhi5Pu1EC&pg=PA223#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/520.html