Chivington got a bad rap for Sand Creek. He captured Confederate agents, who were tribal members in the camp, found fresh white scalps that had not been stretched on hoops, and a blanket fringed with the scalps of white women.
The Confederate agents were there to make sure the tribe went on the war path the next year.
There were other “massacres” which were far worse. This one is remembered only because some upper-crust BOSTONIANS took it up as a cause.
In reading a book about the “Old Mine Road” (built prior to the American Revolution, from the Delaware Water Gap in PA/NJ to Kingston NY), came across a piece about colonials towards the end of the war intercepting a British column making a beeline for Canada. Their baggage includes “bales of scalps” they’d paid Indians to take in an area where there were too few British troops to suppress the rebellion...
250 years later and too many still have no place in a Western country.