Prelude To Battle
Events leading to the Battle of the Washita began with the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. On November 29, troops under the command of Col. J.M. Chivington attacked and destroyed the Cheyenne camp of Chief Black Kettle and Chief White Antelope on Sand Creek, 40 miles from Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory. Black Kettle’s band flew an American flag and a white flag, and considered themselves at peace and under military protection. The terrible slaughter caused a massive public outcry. In response, a federal Peace Commission was created to convert Plains Indians from their nomadic way of life and settle them on reservations.
On the Southern Plains, the work of the Commission culminated in the Medicine Lodge Treaty of October 1867. Under treaty terms the Arapahos, Cheyennes, Comanches, Kiowas, and Plains Apaches were assigned to reservations in the Indian Territory. There they were supposed to receive permanent homes, farms, agricultural implements, and annuities of food, blankets, and clothing. The treaty was doomed to failure. Many tribal officials refused to sign. Some who did sign had no authority to compel their people to comply with such an agreement. War parties, mostly young men violently opposed to reservation life, continued to raid white settlements in Kansas.
Major General Philip H. Sheridan, in command of the Department of the Missouri, adopted a policy that “punishment must follow crime.” In retaliation for the Kansas raids, he planned to mount a winter campaign when Indian horses would be weak and unfit for all but the most limited service. The Indians’ only protection in winter was the isolation afforded by brutal weather.
Black Kettle and Arapaho Chief Big Mouth went to Fort Cobb in November 1868 to petition General William B. Hazen for peace and protection. A respected leader of the Southern Cheyenne, Black Kettle had signed the Little Arkansas Treaty in 1865 and the Medicine Lodge Treaty in 1867. Hazen told them that he could not allow them to bring their people to Fort Cobb for protection because only General Sheridan, his field commander, or Lt. Col. George Custer, had that authority. Disappointed, the chiefs headed back to their people at the winter encampments on the Washita River.
***The terrible slaughter caused a massive public outcry. In response, a federal Peace Commission was created to convert Plains Indians from their nomadic way of life and settle them on reservations.***
Myths upon myths.
Why would these Indians carry around a flag pole and put it up when the ground was frozen hard as a rock? In the inquest after no one claimed to have seen a flag pole with any white flag on it.
The “peaceful” Indians still had the scalps of white people so fresh they had not been streched on hoops and tanned.
The Indians sent a letter (written by Charlie Bent, believed to be a confederate agent sent to stir up the tribes) in which they state that IF the government would treat with the hostiles, they would also come in and treat with the whites. If they were peaceful why would they come in and treat?
It was a known fact that the indians would make peace in the winter and live on government goods till the spring grass was high enough to support a war horse, the the Ineians would go on their raids again. Social status in the tribe was from raiding and fighting.
The army in Colorado was glad when Chivington hit the indians and killed so many. They later turned away from him, not because of public outcry but because he did not kill as many as he claimed he did. Chivington never backed down from what he did at Sand Creek.
Many years later, he was invited to a celebration in Colorado in which he still stood by Sand Creek. The crowd appauded and cheered him because they remembered the brutality of the indians at that time.
The white error in making peace was that the chiefs could make theri mark on all the papers but it was the WARRIOR SOCIETIES that held the true power, and THEY did not want peace.