The inference is conveyed in to-day’s article that Indian hostilities on the plains were provoked by and followed after the Sand Creek massacre. We, who were so unfortunate as to be citizens of Colorado at the time, know that a very great majority of the savage atrocities of that period occurred before the battle of Sand Creek. We know that the Sand Creek Indian camp was the common rendezvous of the hostile bands who were committing those atrocities. We know that comparatively few occurred afterward. No amount of special pleading, no reiteration of partial statements, and withholding of more important truths, will change the facts so well known to the earlier settlers of Colorado.
I deny that the Utes have either bought or paid for any land. They have relinquished for a consideration a certain portion of the land they formerly claimed, and still retain the other portion. I deny, also, that only twelve of the White River Utes are guilty and the great mass of them innocent. The contrary is the fact.
New York, Feb. 24th, 1880.
To the Editor of the Tribune:
Sir,—In reply to the assertion that the perpetrators of the Sand
Creek massacre were “denied a hearing in their defence,” I wish
to state to the readers of The Tribune that, in addition to the
Congressional committees from whose reports I have already quoted,
there was appointed a Military Commission to investigate that
massacre. This commission sat seventy-three days, in Denver
and at Fort Lyon, Colonel J. M. Chivington called before it, in
his “defence,” all the witnesses he chose, and gave notice on the
seventy-third day of the commission’s sitting that he did not
“wish to introduce any more witnesses for the defence.” He
also had (and used) the privilege of cross-examining every
witness called by the commission. The evidence given before this
commission occupies over two hundred pages of Volume II., Senate
Documents for 1866-'67.
In reply to the assertion that “a great majority of the savage atrocities of that period occurred before” the massacre at Sand Creek, and that “comparatively few occurred after,” I will give to the readers of The Tribune one extract from the report of the Indian Peace Commission of 1868. Alluding to the Sand Creek massacre, the report says:
“It scarcely has its parallel in the records of Indian barbarity.
