A Century of Dishonor/Chapter A11
XI.
EXTRACT FROM TREATY WITH CHEYENNES, IN 1865.
Art. 6th of the treaty of Oct. 14th, 1865, between the United States and the chiefs and headmen representing the confederated tribes of the Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians:
“The United States being desirous to express its condemnation of, and as far as may be repudiate the gross and wanton outrages perpetrated against certain bands of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians by Colonel J. M. Chivington, in command of United States troops, on the 29th day of November, 1864, at Sand Creek, in Colorado Territory, while the said Indians were at peace with the United States and under its flag, whose protection they had by lawful authority been promised and induced to seek, and the Government, being desirous to make some suitable reparation for the injuries thus done, will grant 320 acres of land by patent to each of the following named chiefs of said bands, * * * and will in like manner grant to each other person of said bands made a widow, or who lost a parent on that occasion, 160 acres of land. * * * The United States will also pay in United States securities, animals, goods, provisions, or such other useful articles as may in the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior be deemed best adapted to the respective wants and conditions of the persons named in the schedule hereto annexed, they being present and members of the bands who suffered at Sand Creek on the occasion aforesaid, the sums set opposite their names respectively, as a compensation for property belonging to them, and then and there destroyed or taken from them by the United States troops aforesaid.”
One of the Senate amendments to this treaty struck out the words “by Colonel J. M. Chivington, in command of United States troops.” If this were done with a view of relieving “Colonel J. M. Chivington” of obloquy, or of screening the fact that “United States troops” were the instruments by which the murders were committed, is not clear. But in either case the device was a futile one. The massacre will be known as “The Chivington Massacre” as long as history lasts, and the United States must bear its share of the infamy of it.