Read the following articles and answer the questions attached after each.

How the Civil War Became the Indian WarsBY BOYD COTHRAN AND ARI KELMAN MAY 25, 2015 7:00 AM May 25, 2015 7:00 am

On Dec. 21, 1866, a year and a half after Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ostensibly closed the book on the Civil War’s final chapter at Appomattox Court House, another soldier, Capt. William Fetterman, led cavalrymen from Fort Phil Kearny, a federal outpost in Wyoming, toward the base of the Big Horn range. The men planned to attack Indians who had reportedly been menacing local settlers. Instead, a group of Arapahos, Cheyennes and Lakotas, including a warrior named Crazy Horse, killed Fetterman and 80 of his men. It was the Army’s worst defeat on the Plains to date. The Civil War was over, but the Indian wars were just beginning.

These two conflicts, long segregated in history and memory, were in fact intertwined. They both grew out of the process of establishing an American empire in the West. In 1860, competing visions of expansion transformed the presidential election into a referendum. Members of the Republican Party hearkened back to Jefferson’s dream of an “empire for liberty.” The United States, they said, should move west, leaving slavery behind. This free soil platform stood opposite the splintered Democrats’ insistence that slavery, unfettered by federal regulations, should be allowed to root itself in new soil. After Abraham Lincoln’s narrow victory, Southern states seceded, taking their congressional delegations with them.

Never ones to let a serious crisis go to waste, leading Republicans seized the ensuing constitutional crisis as an opportunity to remake the nation’s political economy and geography. In the summer of 1862, as Lincoln mulled over the Emancipation Proclamation’s details, officials in his administration created the Department of Agriculture, while Congress passed the Morrill Land Grant Act, the Pacific Railroad Act and the Homestead Act. As a result, federal authorities could offer citizens a deal: Enlist to fight for Lincoln and liberty, and receive, as fair recompense for their patriotic sacrifices, higher education and Western land connected by rail to markets. It seemed possible that liberty and empire might advance in lock step.

But later that summer, Lincoln dispatched Gen. John Pope, who was defeated by Lee at the Second Battle of Bull Run, to smash an

uprising among the Dakota Sioux in Minnesota. The result was the largest mass execution in the nation’s history: 38 Dakotas were hanged the day after Christmas 1862. A year later, Kit Carson, who had found glory at the Battle of Valverde (during the Mexican- American War), prosecuted a scorched-earth campaign against the Navajos, culminating in 1864 with the Long Walk, in which Navajos endured a 300-mile forced march from Arizona to a reservation in New Mexico.

That same year, Col. John Chivington, who turned back Confederates in the Southwest at the Battle of Glorieta Pass (in New Mexico), attacked a peaceful camp of Cheyennes and Arapahos at Sand Creek in Colorado. Chivington’s troops slaughtered more than 150 Indians. A vast majority were women, children or the elderly. Through the streets of Denver, the soldiers paraded their grim trophies from the killing field: scalps and genitalia.

In the years after the Civil War, federal officials contemplated the problem of demilitarization. Over one million Union soldiers had to be mustered out or redeployed. Thousands of troops remained in the South to support Reconstruction. Thousands more were sent West. Set against that backdrop, the project of continental expansion fostered sectional reconciliation. Northerners and Southerners agreed on little at the time except that the Army should pacify Western tribes. Even as they fought over the proper role for the federal government, the rights of the states, and the prerogatives of citizenship, many Americans found rare common ground on the subject of Manifest Destiny.

During the era of Reconstruction, many American soldiers, whether they had fought for the Union or the Confederacy, redeployed to the frontier. They became shock troops of empire. The federal project of demilitarization, paradoxically, accelerated the conquest and colonization of the West.

The Fetterman Fight exploded out of this context. In the wake of the Sand Creek Massacre, Cheyennes, Arapahos and various Sioux peoples forged an alliance, hoping to stem the tide of settlers surging across the Plains. Officials in Washington sensed a threat to their imperial ambitions. They sent Maj. Gen. Grenville Dodge, who had commanded a corps during William Tecumseh Sherman’s pivotal Atlanta campaign, to win what soon became known as Red Cloud’s War. After another year of gruesome and ineffectual fighting, federal and tribal negotiators signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie, guaranteeing the Lakotas the Black Hills “in perpetuity” and pledging that settlers would stay out of the Powder River Country.

The Indian wars of the Reconstruction era devastated not just Native American nations but also the United States. When the Civil War ended, many Northerners embraced their government, which had, after all, proved its worth by preserving the Union and helping to free the slaves. For a moment, it seemed that the federal government could accomplish great things. But in the West, Native Americans would not simply vanish, fated by racial destiny to drown in the flood tide of civilization.

Red Cloud’s War, then, undermined a utopian moment and blurred the Republican Party’s vision for expansion, but at least the Grant administration had a plan. After he took office in 1869, President Grant promised that he would pursue a “peace policy” to put an end to violence in the West, opening the region to settlers. By feeding rather than fighting Indians, federal authorities would avoid further bloodshed with the nation’s indigenous peoples. The process of civilizing and acculturating Native nations into the United States could begin.

This plan soon unraveled. In 1872, Captain Jack, a Modoc(Native American) headman, led approximately 150 of his people into the lava beds south of Tule Lake, near the Oregon-California border. The Modocs were irate because federal officials refused to protect them from local settlers and neighboring tribes. Panic gripped the region. General Sherman, by then elevated to command of the entire Army, responded by sending Maj. Gen. Edward Canby to pacify the Modocs. A decade earlier, Canby had devised the original plan for the Navajos’ Long Walk, and then later had helped to quell the New York City Draft Riots. Sherman was confident that his subordinate could handle the task at hand: negotiating a settlement with a ragtag band of frontier savages.

But on April 11, 1873, Good Friday, after months of bloody skirmishes and failed negotiations, the Modoc War, which to that point had been a local problem, became a national tragedy. When Captain Jack and his men killed Canby – the only general to die during the Indian wars – and another peace commissioner, the violence shocked observers around the United States and the world. Sherman and Grant called for the Modoc’s “utter extermination.” The fighting ended only when soldiers captured, tried, and executed Captain Jack and several of his followers later that year. Soon after, the Army loaded the surviving Modocs onto cattle cars and shipped them off to a reservation in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

President Grant’s Peace Policy perished in the Modoc War. The horror of that conflict, and the Indian wars more broadly, coupled

with an endless array of political scandals and violence in the states of the former Confederacy – including the brutal murder, on Easter Sunday 1873 in Colfax, La., of at least 60 African-Americans – diminished support for the Grant administration’s initiatives in the South and the West.

The following year, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer claimed that an expedition he led had discovered gold in the Black Hills – territory supposedly safeguarded for the Lakotas by the Fort Laramie Treaty. News of potential riches spread around the country. Another torrent of settlers rushed westward. Hoping to preserve land sacred to their people, tribal leaders, including Red Cloud, met with Grant. He offered them a new reservation. “If it is such a good country,” one of the chiefs replied, “you ought to send the white men now in our country there and leave us alone.” Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and other warriors began attacking settlers. Troops marched toward what would be called the Great Sioux War.

Early in 1876, Lt. Gen. Philip Sheridan, the Army’s commander on the Plains, insisted that all Indians in the region must return to their reservations. The Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes refused. That summer, as the nation celebrated its centennial, the allied tribes won two victories in Montana: first at the Rosebud and then at the Little Bighorn. The Army sent reinforcements. Congress abrogated(repealed)the Lakotas’ claims to land outside their reservation. The bloodshed continued until the spring of 1877, when the tribal coalition crumbled. Sitting Bull fled to Canada. Crazy Horse surrendered and died in federal custody.

The final act of this drama opened in 1876. When federal officials tried to remove the Nez Perce from the Pacific Northwest to Idaho, hundreds of Indians began following a leader named Chief Joseph, who vowed to fight efforts to dispossess his people. Sherman sent Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard, formerly head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, to quiet the brewing insurgency. As Howard traveled west, the 1876 election remained undecided. The Democrat Samuel Tilden had outpolled the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes by nearly 300,000 votes. But both men had fallen short in the Electoral College. Congress appointed a commission to adjudicate the result. In the end, that body awarded the Oval Office to Hayes. Apparently making good on a deal struck with leading Democrats, Hayes then withdrew federal troops from the South, scuttling Reconstruction.

Less than two months after Hayes’s inauguration, Howard warned the Nez Perce that they had 30 days to return to their reservation. Instead of complying, the Indians fled, eventually covering more than

1,100 miles of the Northwest’s forbidding terrain. Later that summer, Col. Nelson Miles, a decorated veteran of Antietam, the Peninsula Campaign and the Appomattox Campaign, arrived to reinforce Howard. Trapped, Chief Joseph surrendered on Oct. 5, 1877. He reportedly said: “I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, collective memory casts that conflict as a war of liberation, entirely distinct from the Indian wars. President Lincoln died, schoolchildren throughout the United States learn, so that the nation might live again, resurrected and redeemed for having freed the South’s slaves. And though Reconstruction is typically recalled in the popular imagination as both more convoluted and contested – whether thwarted by intransigent Southerners, doomed to fail by incompetent and overweening federal officials, or perhaps some combination of the two – it was well intended nevertheless, an effort to make good on the nation’s commitment to freedom and equality.

But this is only part of the story. The Civil War emerged out of struggles between the North and South over how best to settle the West – struggles, in short, over who would shape an emerging American empire. Reconstruction in the West then devolved into a series of conflicts with Native Americans. And so, while the Civil War and its aftermath boasted moments of redemption and days of jubilee, the era also featured episodes of subjugation and dispossession, patterns that would repeat themselves in the coming years. When Chief Joseph surrendered, the United States secured its empire in the West. The Indian wars were over, but an era of American imperialism was just beginning.

1. How did the United States government encourage western settlement during the Civil War?2. Describe the interactions that the Federal government had with the following tribes.(List each tribes geographic location)A. DakotaB. Navaho C. Cheyenne/ArapahoD. Lakota E. ModocF. Nez Perce

A. CASE STUDIES

The Dakota Uprising 1862 The Dakota War of 1862 was a brief conflict between the Dakota people of Minnesota and settlers. Lasting only five weeks, the conflict had a profound impact on not only the Dakota, but Native Americans across the state. The conflict can be viewed as one of the genocidal efforts to forcibly remove the Dakota from Minnesota, which also included the internment of hundreds of women, children and elderly on Pike Island below Fort Snelling.      Viewed in a larger historical context, the Dakota War was part of a series of conflicts that have been called the American Indian Wars. These caused, together with starvation and disease, a massive decimation of the Indian population across the United States. Following these repeated attempts to destroy Native American populations, the United States government embarked on a policy of assimilation towards indigenous people into Euro-American society. These policies would remain in effect until well into the second half of the twentieth century.    The Dakota People before the War The Sioux settling in North and South Dakota, Western Minnesota, and Northern Iowa are known as the Eastern Dakota. Although culturally related to the Western Dakota and Lakota, several differences exist to distinguish the tribal communities.The Eastern Dakota had been a part of Minnesota for centuries. The bluffs where the Minnesota and Minneapolis Rivers diverge, near present day Fort Snelling, play a critical role in the tribe’s origin story. According to Dakota legend, the first members of the tribe came out of rock. The Dakota call this place Bdote. This makes Fort Snelling State Park an important place in Dakota culture, history, and religion.The likely first encounters with Europeans began in the mid-to-late seventeenth century, as mostly French fur traders began exploring Dakota lands. The land itself would remain largely unsettled by Euro-Americans until the early nineteenth century when the tribe began signing treaties with the United States government.Broken Treaties The first treaties signed by the Dakota tribes came in 1805 when the Dakota signed a treaty with Zebulon Pike that gave the US government a significant amount of land where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers meet. In 1825, the tribe agreed to define its borders, along with several other tribes, at a meeting at Prairie du Chien, what is now Western Wisconsin. This would make it easier for the government to purchase tribal lands in the future. Between 1837 and 1858, the Dakota tribes agreed to a series of treaties that exchanged Dakota land for money and food. At the same time, the US government passed a number of policies encouraging settlement along the western frontier, including the creation of the state of Minnesota.

Eventually, the Civil War meant the US government had fallen seriously behind on its payments and delivery of food, leaving the Dakota on the verge of starvation. This, combined with an influx of American settlers, meant the Dakota had no way of feeding themselves. The situation would come to a head in the summer of 1862.The War On August 17, a Dakota hunting party stole eggs from settlers in Acton Township, located in Meeker County. The raid led to the deaths of five settlers. Little Crow, a chief of the Mdewakanton band of Dakota, decided to continue the raids. The day after the raid in Acton, Little Crow led another raid against the Lower Sioux Agency near Morton, MN in Renville County. A relief force, led by the Minnesota Militia, was routed by the Dakota. In the subsequent days, Dakota warriors led raids against New Ulm and Fort Ridgley, both of which had limited success. Because of the Civil War, the US government was slow to send troops to quell the uprising. Instead, military forces were primarily comprised of volunteer groups, led by former Governor Henry Sibling. On September 23, federal forces defeated the Dakota at the Battle of Wood Lake in Yellow Medicine County. Three days later, the Dakota surrendered, releasing nearly 300 captives. The Dakota who surrendered were held until military trials could take place that November. Hundreds of Dakota were held at Camp Release, near Montevideo.The Dakota Trials and Their Aftermath In November 1862, the trials of the Dakota held at Camp Release began. Of the 498 trials held, more than 300 men were sentenced to death, for crimes ranging from rape to murder. The defendants were not allowed legal representation and the trials themselves were brief, with some lasting less than five minutes. President Abraham Lincoln personally reviewed the convictions of the Dakota men. Proponents and opponents of execution alike lobbied Lincoln on behalf of the settlers and the Dakota. In the end, Lincoln commuted all but 39 sentences, deciding only the Dakota involved in civilian massacres should be executed. On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota men were hung in Mankato, an event which remains the largest single execution in American history. The men who had received a commuted sentence were sent to Camp McClellan in Iowa where they would remain interned for four years. Another nearly 1600 Dakota women, children and elderly were held during the winter of 1862-63 on Pike Island, not far from the Bdote and within sight of Fort Snelling. Disease quickly spread, killing hundreds in the camp. In April 1863, Minnesota voided its treaties with the Dakota and sent those living in the camps to Nebraska. Soon after, Congress passed legislation making it illegal for the Dakota to live in Minnesota. It remains a law to this day. To ensure the Dakota were totally driven from Minnesota, a bounty was created, awarding money for every Dakota scalp turned in. Little Crow, who had led the first raids, was killed and his scalp collected for bounty. His skull was kept as a memento until 1971. The last Dakota executions took place in 1865.

The Legacy of the War In the years following the Dakota War, a number of memorials were established honoring the white settler casualties of the conflict. In Mankato, a memorial to mass execution existed until the early 1970’s. One hundred and fifty years after the war, Governor Mark Dayton formally apologized, declaring August 17, 2012 to be a “Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation.” The Minneapolis and St. Paul City Councils formally declared 2013, “The year of the Dakota” and employed the term “genocide” in their resolutions.The war and its aftermath are explored in a number of artistic representations amongst Native American and white artists alike. Many of the memorials recognizing the American experience within the conflict are being replaced to better reflect the experience of the Dakota people. Even today, the Dakota War of 1862 continues to be a difficult period of history for many Minnesotans to explore.

https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/dakota-war-1862

“On December 26, 1862, before a crowd of some 4000 people, the prisoners walked to the great wooden gallows specially constructed just a few days earlier so that all thirty-eight men (one of the men on Lincoln’s list received a last minute reprieve) would die simultaneously. 71 The prisoners wore white muslin coverings and sang a traditional Dakota song as they were led to gallows. Ropes were placed around their necks, and a single blow from an ax cut the rope that held the platform causing the prisoners to fall to their deaths. This was the largest mass execution in American history. “72https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1261&context=facsch

On September 28, 1862, two days after the surrender at Camp Release, a commission of military officers established by Henry Sibley began trying Dakota men accused of participating in the war. Several weeks later the trials were moved to the

Lower Agency, where they were held in one of the only buildings left standing, trader François LaBathe’s summer kitchen. 

As weeks passed, cases were handled with increasing speed. On November 5, the commission completed its work. 392 prisoners were tried, 303 were sentenced to death, and 16 were given prison terms. President Lincoln and government lawyers then reviewed the trial transcripts of all 303 men. As Lincoln would later explain to the U.S. Senate:   "Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I ordered a careful examination of the records of the trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females." When only two men were found guilty of rape, Lincoln expanded the criteria to include those who had participated in “massacres” of civilians rather than just “battles.” He then made his final decision, and forwarded a list of 39 names to Sibley. On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged at Mankato. At 10:00 am on December 26, 38 Dakota prisoners were led to a scaffold specially constructed for their execution. One had been given a reprieve at the last minute. An estimated 4,000 spectators crammed the streets of Mankato and surrounding land. Col. Stephen Miller, charged with keeping the peace in the days leading up to the hangings, had declared martial law and had banned the sale and consumption of alcohol within a ten-mile radius of the town. As the men took their assigned places on the scaffold, they sang a Dakota song as white muslin coverings were pulled over their faces. Drumbeats signalled the start of the execution. The men grasped each others’ hands. With a single blow from an ax, the rope that held the platform was cut. Capt. William Duley, who had lost several members of his family in the attack on the Lake Shetek settlement, cut the rope.  After dangling from the scaffold for a half hour, the men’s bodies were cut down and hauled to a shallow mass grave on a sandbar between Mankato’s main street and the Minnesota River. Before morning, most of the bodies had been dug up and taken by physicians for use as medical cadavers. Following the mass execution on December 26, it was discovered that two men had been mistakenly hanged. Wicaƞḣpi Wastedaƞpi (We-chank-wash-ta-don-pee), who went by the common name of Caske (meaning first-born son), reportedly stepped forward when the name “Caske” was called, and was then separated for execution from the other prisoners. The other, Wasicuƞ, was a young white man who had been adopted by the Dakota at an early age. Wasicuƞ had been acquitted. Letter from Hdainyanka to Chief Wabasha written shortly before his execution: "You have deceived me.  You told me that if we followed the advice of General Sibley, and gave ourselves up to the whites, all would be well; no innocent man would be injured.  I have not killed, wounded or injured a white man, or any white persons.  I have not participated in the plunder of their property; and yet to-day I am set apart for execution, and must die in a few days, while men who are guilty will remain in prison.  My wife is your daughter, my children are your grandchildren.  I leave them

all in your care and under your protection.  Do not let them suffer; and when my children are grown up, let them know that their father died because he followed the advice of his chief, and without having the blood of a white man to answer for to the Great Spirit."  Source: Isaac V. D. Heard, History of the Sioux War and Massacres of 1862 and 1863, NY: Harper & Bros., 1863 

St. Paul follows Minneapolis in labeling U.S.-Dakota War as 'genocide'Sharp words, part of "Year of the Dakota" declaration, similar to Mpls. resolution last month. By Kevin Duchschere Star Tribune JANUARY 10, 2013 — 6:53AM St. Paul joined Minneapolis on Wednesday in labeling the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War as the start of "the genocide of the Dakota people" that included holding them after the war "in a concentration camp at the base of Fort Snelling."

The terms, disputed by many historians who believe they don't convey the complexity of the conflict, were included in a resolution that the St. Paul City Council passed unanimously to declare 2013 "the Year of the Dakota" and to show its support for an effort to identify Dakota sites along the Mississippi River.

The St. Paul resolution was patterned on a similar one passed last month by the Minneapolis City Council that pledged more dialogue on issues of "land, reparations and restitution, treaties, genocide, suppression of American Indian spirituality and ceremonies, suppression of indigenous languages, bounties, concentration camps, forced marches, mass executions and forcible removals."

The two city councils are thought to be the first major governmental bodies in Minnesota to use such provocative terms in referring to the war, which marked its 150th anniversary this fall.

"We've now got the Twin Cities of Minnesota coming out with these resolutions," Chris Mato Nunpa, a retired professor and Dakota advocate from Granite Falls, told the St. Paul council after the vote. "What I regard as significant and important is that key terms were used ... I really am elated and excited I have lived long enough to see something like this happen here."

The resolution, sponsored by all but one St. Paul council member, was brought forward by Dave Thune. He said he hoped it would spur discussion

about what happened during the war, including the killing of white settlers by the Dakota. "The problem is that people haven't talked about it at all," Thune said.

Gov. Mark Dayton issued a strong statement in August repudiating Gov. Alexander Ramsey's wartime language about exterminating the Indians and driving them out of the state. But Dayton didn't speak of genocide or describe the Fort Snelling camp where hundreds of Dakota were held as a concentration camp, a term that didn't emerge until the 20th century.

"Atrocities were committed by combatants on both sides against combatants and noncombatants alike," Dayton said in his statement.

State Rep. Dean Urdahl, a longtime history teacher whose ancestors were involved in the war and who has introduced resolutions urging Congress to repeal the Dakota Exclusion Act, said he discouraged people from using such terms.

"There are those who do consider Fort Snelling a concentration camp, and there are also many who think it was an internment camp," he said. "Genocide implies extermination of a people. The Minnesota River valley, after the war started, became a war of extermination on both sides. ..."

"I don't think the terms genocide and concentration camp accurately portray what it was without further explanation. Horrible things happened, but it wasn't completely one-sided."

Editorial Your View: A blond scalp is worth remembering alsoPaul A. Mueller, MankatoMar 18, 2012  During a trip to Mankato in 1962, my uncle — who was a history buff — took us to the Blue Earth County Historical Society. It was located in the Hubbard House at that time. My uncle asked the curator about a human scalp from the 1862 war he had previously seen on display there. The curator told us that some of the visitors had objected to its being on display, so in an effort to sanitize history, they put it out of sight in a drawer. While he was explaining this, the curator (who seemed like a crusty old gentleman), reached in a drawer and tossed something at me. Being a 13-year-old kid, I instinctively caught it. When I realized what it was, I gingerly handed it back. It was a human scalp with long blond hair attached to a circle of dry, leathery skin. The curator told us that it was supposedly from a girl about 16-22 years old.When I visited the historical society again in the 1970s, I was told the scalp had been given to the biology department at MSU.

I have no objection to honoring both sides in the 1862 conflict. They both fought for survival. The Dakota because they were losing their way of life, the European settlers because they were trying to improve theirs. If another monument is put up, maybe you could hang that nameless girl’s scalp on it. She deserves to be remembered also. I’m sure her death was a lot more complicated than a drop from the gallows.

3. Should the Federal government’s response to the Dakota Uprising be considered an act of genocide? Why or Why not? 4. Write a response to the editorial “A blond scalp is worth remembering also”.

B. . SAND CREEK MASSACRERemember the Sand Creek MassacreBy NED BLACKHAWKNOV. 27, 2014

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/opinion/remember-the-sand-creek-massacre.html On Nov. 29, 1864, as Union armies fought through Virginia and Georgia, Col. John Chivington led some 700 cavalry troops in an unprovoked attack on peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho villagers at Sand Creek in Colorado. They murdered nearly 200 women, children and older men. Sand Creek was one of many assaults on American Indians during the war, from Patrick Edward Connor’s massacre of Shoshone villagers along the Idaho-Utah border at Bear River on Jan. 29, 1863, to the forced removal and incarceration of thousands of Navajo people in 1864 known as the Long Walk.

Sand Creek Massacre (1864) “We’re the only unit in the National Park Service that has ‘massacre’ in its name,” says the site’s superintendent, Alexa Roberts. Usually, she notes, signs for national historic sites lead to a presidential birthplace or patriotic monument. “So a lot of people are startled by what they find here.”  Visitors are also surprised to learn that the massacre occurred during the Civil War, which most Americans associate with Eastern battles between blue and gray, not cavalry killing Indians on the Western plains. But the two conflicts were closely related, says Ari Kelman, a historian at Penn State University and author of A Misplaced Massacre, a Bancroft Prize-winning book about Sand Creek. 

The Civil War, he observes, was rooted in westward expansion and strife over whether new territories would join the nation as free states or slave states. Slavery, however, wasn’t the only obstacle to free white settlement of the West; another was Plains Indians, many of whom staunchly resisted encroachment on their lands. “We remember the Civil War as a war of liberation that freed four million slaves,” Kelman says. “But it also became a war of conquest to destroy and dispossess Native Americans.” Sand Creek, he adds, “is a bloody and mostly forgotten link” between the Civil War and the Plains Indian Wars that continued for 25 years after Appomattox. http://www.historynet.com/sand-creek-massacreThe Sand Creek Massacre summary: On November 29, 1864, seven hundred members of the Colorado Territory militia embarked on an attack of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian villages. The militia was led by U.S. Army Col. John Chivington, a Methodist preacher, as well as a freemason. After a night of heavy drinking by the soldiers, Chivington ordered the massacre of the Indians. Over two-thirds of the slaughtered and maimed were women and children. This atrocity has been known as the Sand Creek Massacre ever since. For years, the United States had been engaged in conflict with several Indian tribes over territory. The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851 had given the Indians extensive territory, but the Pikes Peak gold rush in 1858 and other factors had persuaded the U.S. to renegotiate the terms of the treaty. In 1861, the Treaty of Fort Wise was signed by Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs. The treaty took from the Indians much of the land given to them by the earlier treaty, reducing the size of their reservation land to about 1/13th of the original amount. Although the peace-seeking chiefs signed the treaty to ensure the safety of their people, not all of the tribes were happy with the decision. In particular, a group of Indians known as the Dog Soldiers, made up of Cheyenne and Lakota, were vehemently opposed to having white settlers on what the Indians still referred to as their land. In 1864, a group of Civil War soldiers under commander Colonel John Chivington, with the blessing of Colorado governor John Evans, began to attack several Cheyenne camps in Colorado. Another attack on Cheyenne camps occurred in Kansas by forces under the command of Lieutenant George S. Eayre. The Cheyenne retaliated for the attack, furthering the aggression of the U.S. forces. In an attempt to maintain peace, two chiefs, Black Kettle and White Antelope, tried to establish a truce. They were advised to camp near Fort Lyon in Colorado and fly an American flag over their camp to establish themselves as friendly. On November 29th, 1864, while the majority of the males were out hunting, Colonel Chivington and his 700 troops attacked the Indian campsite near Fort Lyon. More than a hundred Indians were killed, despite the American flag flying overhead and the raising of a white flag after the attack began. Most of the Indians killed were women and children, and many of their bodies were mutilated. Despite eye witness accounts from survivors and some soldiers, Chivington and his men were not charged for the heinous attack.

A.

1864's Turning Point: Hungate Family MurderedThis article is part of a series by the National Park Service concerning the 150th Anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre.

Often given as a cause for the savagery of the massacre on Sand Creek, the murder of the Hungate Family forms one of the mysteries of 1864's sordid history. Nathan (29 years), Ellen (25), Laura (2 ½) and Florence (under 6 mos.) Hungate were killed along Running or Box Elder Creek at or near the cabin of their employer, Isaac P. Van Wormer. Killed about 25 miles southeast of downtown Denver at about noon on June 11, 1864, the young family had only been in the territory about three months. The bodies were exhumed and brought to Denver on June 13, where they were publicly displayed, inciting the citizens and heightening the paranoia about impending Indian attacks. Although many speculated about suspects in the murders, a single individual or group has never been identified to a reasonable certainty. Many Coloradans blamed the Cheyenne or Arapaho, as reflected in the Coroner's inquest on June 14. It stated that the family, "... came to their death by being feloniously killed by some person or persons to the jury unknown, but supposed to be Indians[.]" However, even experienced frontiersman Jim Beckwourth doubted the family had been killed by either the Cheyenne or Arapaho because of the manner of death, according to the June 15th Daily Commonwealth. After four burials and three exhumations, their remains finally came to rest at Denver's Fairmount Cemetery in late July 1892.

Sand Creek Eye Witness Testimony Captain Silas S. Soule and Lieutenant Joseph A. Cramer of the 1st Colorado (U.S.) Volunteer Cavalry put their military careers - and lives – at risk by refusing to fire during the attack against a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho village at Sand Creek, November 29, 1864. With their companies backing them up, they purposely took little or no part in the massacre of people they knew. Afterward, both men wrote letters to their former commander Major Edward “Ned” Wynkoop, describing the horrors they had witnessed and condemning the leadership of Colonel John M. Chivington, the expedition’s commander. These letters led to investigations by two congressional committees and an army commission, which changed history’s judgment of Sand Creek from a battle to a massacre of men, women, and children. Several weeks after Soule testified before the commission, he was shot in the streets of Denver. His murderers, although known, were never

brought to justice. These graphic and disturbing letters disappeared, only to resurface in 2000 in time to help convince the U.S. Congress to pass legislation establishing the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. The power of these letters, then and now, lies in their simple honesty, their moral courage and the determination of two soldiers who wanted to see justice done.

*No photo of Lt. Joseph Cramer is known to exist at this time…..We arrived at Black Kettle and Left Hand’s Camp at day light. Lieut. Wilson with Co.s “C”, “E” & “G” were ordered to in advance to cut off their herd. He made a circle to the rear and formed a line 200 yds from the village, and opened fire. Poor old John Smith and Louderbeck ran out with white flags but they paid no attention to them, and they ran back into the tents. Anthony (indecipherable) with Co’s “D” “K” & “G”, to within one hundred yards and commenced firing. I refused to fire and swore that none but a coward would. For by this time hundreds of women and children were coming towards us and getting on their knees for mercy. Anthony shouted, “kill the sons of bitches” Smith and Louderbeck came to our command, although I am confident there were 200 shots fired at them, for I heard an officers say that Old Smith and any one who sympathized with the Indians, ought to be killed and now was a good time to do it. The Battery then came up in our rear, and opened on them. I took my comp’y across the Creek, and by this time the whole of the 3rd and the Batteries were firing into them and you can form some idea of the slaughter. When the Indians found that there was no hope for them they went for the Creek, and buried themselves in the Sand and got under the banks and some of the Bucks got their bows and a few rifles and defended themselves as well as they could. By this time there was no organization among our troops, they were a perfect mob – every man on his own hook. My Co. was the only one that kept their formation, and we did not fire a shot. The massacre lasted six or eight hours, and a good many Indians escaped. I tell you Ned it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized. One squaw was wounded and a fellow took a hatchet to finish her, she held her arms up to defend her, and he cut one arm off, and held the other with one hand and dashed the hatchet through her brain. One squaw with her two children, were on their knees begging for their lives of a dozen soldiers, within ten feet of them all, firing – when one succeeded in hitting the squaw in the thigh, when she took a knife and cut the throats of both children, and then killed herself. One old squaw hung herself in the lodge – there was not enough room for her to hang and she held up her knees and choked herself to death. Some tried to escape on the Prairie, but most of them were run down by horsemen. I saw two Indians hold one of another’s hands, chased until they were exhausted, when they kneeled down, and clasped each other around the neck and were both shot together. They were all scalped, and as high as half a dozen taken from one head. They were all horribly mutilated. One woman was cut open and a child taken out of her, and scalped. White Antelope, War Bonnet and a number of others had Ears and Privates cut off. Squaw’s snatches were cut out for trophies. You would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there, but every word I have told you is the truth, which they do not deny.

Editorials from Denver's Rocky Mountain News following the Colorado Third Cavalry's attack on Cheyenne and Arapaho 

Indians camped at Sand Creek, November 29, 1864.

Rocky Mountain News, December 17, 1864

THE BATTLE OF SAND CREEK.“….Their village consisted of one hundred and thirty Cheyenne and eight Arapahoe lodges. These, with their contents, were totally destroyed. Among their effects were large supplies of flour, sugar, coffee, tea, &c. Women's and children's clothing were found; also books and many other articles which must have been taken from captured trains or houses. One white man's scalp was found which had evidently been taken but a few days before. The chiefs fought with unparalleled bravery, falling in front of their men. One of them charged alone against a force of two or three hundred, and fell pierced with balls far in advance of his braves. Our attack was made by five battalions. The first regiment, Colonel Chivington, part of companies C, D, E, G, H and K, numbering  altogether about two hundred and fifty men, was divided into two battalions; the first under command of Major Anthony, and the second under Lieutenant Wilson, until the latter was disabled; when the command devolved upon Lieutenant Dunn. The three battalions of the third, Colonel Shoup, were led, respectively, by Lieutenant Colonel Bowen, Major Sayr, and

Captain Cree. The action was begun by the battalion of Lieutenant Wilson, who occupied the right, and by a quick and bold movement cut off the enemy from their herd of stock. From this circumstance we gained our great advantage. A few Indians secured horses, but the great majority of them had to fight or fly on foot. Major Anthony was on the left, and the third in the centre.Among the killed were all the Cheyenne chiefs, Black Kettle, White Antelope, Little Robe, Left Hand, Knock Knee, One Eye, and another, name unknown. Not a single prominent man of the tribe remains, and the tribe itself is almost annihilated. The Arapahoes probably suffered but little. It has been reported that the chief Left Hand, of that tribe, was killed, but Colonel Chivington is of the opinion that he was not. Among the stock captured were a number of government horses and mules, including the twenty or thirty stolen from the command of Lieutenant Chase at Jimmy's camp last summer. The Indian camp was well supplied with defensive works. For half a mile along the creek there was an almost continuous chain of rifle-pits, and another similar line of works crowned the adjacent bluff. Pits had been dug at all the salient points for miles. After the battle twenty-three dead Indians were taken from one of these pits and twenty-seven from another. Whether viewed as a march or as a battle, the exploit has few, if any, parallels. A march of 260 miles in but a fraction more than five days, with deep snow, scanty forage, and no road, is a remarkable feat, whilst the utter surprise of a large Indian village is unprecedented. In no single battle in North America, we believe, have so many Indians been slain. It is said that a short time before the command reached the scene of battle an old squaw partially alarmed the village by reporting  that a great herd of buffalo were coming. She heard the rumbling of the artillery and tramp of the moving squadrons, but her people doubted. In a little time the doubt was dispelled, but not by buffaloes. A thousand incidents of individual daring and the passing events of the day might be told, but space forbids. We leave the task for eye-witnesses to chronicle. All acquitted themselves well, and Colorado soldiers have again covered themselves with glory.”

5. Why do you think the eye witness account of Captain Soule is so different that the editorial written in the “Rocky Mountain News” ?https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/sioux-treaty

Sioux Treaty of 1868Background

"This war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land from us without price."

--Spotted Tail

The report and journal of proceedings of the commission appointed to obtain certain concessions from the Sioux Indians, December 26, 1876 The history of Native Americans in North America dates back thousands of years. Exploration and settlement of the western United States by Americans and Europeans wreaked havoc on the Indian peoples living there. In the 19th century the American drive for expansion clashed violently with the Native American resolve to preserve their lands, sovereignty, and ways of life. The struggle over land has defined relations between the U.S. government and Native Americans and is well documented in the holdings of the National Archives. (From the American Originals exhibit script.)

From the 1860s through the 1870s the American frontier was filled with Indian wars and skirmishes. In 1865 a congressional committee began a study of the Indian uprisings and wars in the West, resulting in a Report on the Condition of the Indian Tribes , which was released in 1867. This study and report by the congressional committee led to an act to establish an Indian Peace Commission to end the wars and prevent future Indian conflicts. The United States government set out to establish a series of Indian treaties that would force the Indians to give up their lands and move further west onto reservations.

In the spring of 1868 a conference was held at Fort Laramie, in present day Wyoming, that resulted in a treaty with the Sioux. This treaty was to bring peace between the whites and the Sioux who agreed to settle within the Black Hills reservation in the Dakota Territory.

The Black Hills of Dakota are sacred to the Sioux Indians. In the 1868 treaty, signed at Fort Laramie and other military posts in Sioux country, the United States recognized the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, set aside for exclusive use by the Sioux people. In 1874, however, General George A. Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills accompanied by miners who were seeking gold. Once gold was found in the Black Hills, miners were soon moving into the Sioux hunting grounds and demanding protection from the United States Army. Soon, the Army was ordered to move against wandering bands of Sioux hunting on the range in accordance with their treaty rights. In 1876, Custer, leading an army detachment, encountered the encampment of Sioux and Cheyenne at the Little Bighorn River. Custer's detachment was annihilated, but the United States would continue its battle against the Sioux in the Black Hills until the government confiscated the land in 1877. To this day, ownership of the Black Hills remains the subject of a legal dispute between the U.S. government and the Sioux.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/horrific-sand-creek-massacre-will-be-forgotten-no-more-180953403/

United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians (1980)

Facts of the case In the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the United States granted the Sioux Indian Nation the Great Sioux Reservation, including the Black Hills of South Dakota. Congress reneged in 1877, passing an act that reclaimed the Black Hills. The Sioux Nation requested compensation in 1920. The United States Court of Claims ruled against the Sioux Nation in 1942. Congress then established the Indian Claims Commission in 1946. The Commission ruled that the Sioux Nation was not barred by the Court of Claims decision and ruled that Congress used its powers of eminent domain in 1877 and the Sioux were therefore entitled to compensation. The Court of Claims maintained that the Sioux were barred by their first case. Congress amended the Indian Claims Commission Act in 1978, removing the judicial bar. The Court of Claims then held that the Sioux were entitled to $17.1 million.Question (1) Was Congress' 1978 amendment a violation of separation of powers? (2) Was the reclamation of land in 1877 a taking of property requiring compensation under the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment?

No and yes. In an 8-1 decision, the Court held that Congress did not violate the doctrine of separation of powers and affirmed the Court of Claims decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Harry A. Blackmun noted a similar situation in Nock v. United States, where a congressional exemption from a judicial bar was ruled not to be in violation of separation of powers and upheld by the Court. Additionally, since Congress "had not made a good-faith effort to give the Sioux the full value of the Black Hills," Congress' 1877 action qualified as use of its eminent domain power under Three Tribes of Fort Berthold Reservation v. United States. Therefore, the Sioux were entitled to compensation under the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Justice Byron R. White wrote an opinion concurring in part and in the judgment.

Why the Sioux Are Refusing $1.3 BillionArts Aug 24, 2011 3:57 PM EST RAPID CITY, S.D. | Pine Ridge Reservation stretches across some of the poorest counties in the United States. Plagued by an unemployment rate above 80 percent, arid land, few prospects for industry, abysmal health statistics and life-expectancy rates rivaling those of Haiti, it’s no wonder outsiders ask: Why do the nine tribes constituting the Great Sioux Nation, including those on Pine Ridge, staunchly refuse to accept $1.3 billion from the federal government?The refusal of the money pivots on a feud that dates back to the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed by Sioux tribes and Gen. William T. Sherman, that guaranteed the tribes “undisturbed use and occupation” of a swath of land that included the Black

Hills, a resource-rich region of western South Dakota. But in 1877, one year after Gen. George Armstrong Custer’s infamous defeat at the hands of Crazy Horse at Little Bighorn and without the consent of “three-fourths of all adult male Indians” stipulated by the treaty, the government seized the Black Hills, along with their gold, and began profiting from the protected land. Driving from nearby Rapid City to the reservation on Pine Ridge, it’s easy to see why the tribes want to reclaim some of that unused land — and why it was parceled as it was. Unlike the barren stretch of land that encompasses the reservation, the Black Hills are green, resource-rich, and thick with the smell of Ponderosa trees. Stretching across western South Dakota to neighboring Wyoming, they’ve been a draw for tourists and investors alike. In addition to gold, timber and minerals have been extracted, reaping profits for people other than the Sioux. Fast forward to 1980. The Supreme Court agreed with the Sioux: The land, long since settled, had been taken from them wrongfully, and $102 million was set aside as compensation. The trust’s value continues to grow well beyond $1 billion, but the Sioux have never collected. One key problem: The tribes say the payment is invalid because the land was never for sale and accepting the funds would be tantamount to a sales transaction. Ross Swimmer, former special trustee for American Indians, said the trust fund remains untouched for one reason: “They didn’t want the money. They wanted the Black Hills.” “The Sioux tribes have always maintained that that confiscation was illegal and the tribes must have some of their ancestral lands returned to them, and they’ve maintained that position since 1877,” said Mario Gonzalez, general counsel for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who has devoted much of his career to the issue. “It’s a tough, tough group up there. I’m amazed that they have been willing to sit on the money this long without taking the money,” Swimmer said. But it’s not the resources alone that have fueled their determination all these years — a key reason for their lingering stand is that “the Black Hills has always been a spiritual place for tribal nations,” said Lionel Bordeaux, president of Sinte Gleska University on the nearby Rosebud Reservation. “The Sioux Indians are very attached to their lands and particularly the Black Hills because that’s the spiritual center of the Sioux nation,” said Gonzalez. To  this day, sacred sites and religious narratives often center around the Black Hills. “It really saddens me that we’ve got some tribal members that want to accept the money and they don’t realize the harm they’re going to do; they don’t really understand why we say the Black Hills are sacred,” said former Oglala Sioux Tribe President Theresa Two Bulls. Nonetheless, leaders say the effort to reclaim portions of the Black Hills is now both principled and pragmatic: they “understand that times have changed, that they cannot remove non-members of the tribe from these lands,” said Gonzalez, and are asking instead for some combination of federally owned, unused land and joint management or rental agreements. Excluded from the debate are landmarks like Mount Rushmore, Ellsworth Air Force Base and privately owned or residential land.

“We know that people are utilizing the Black Hills for their daily living, and it’s never been our intention to remove anybody,” Bordeaux said. “We have to coexist. But we would like to have some type of a co-management plan for certain parts of the Black Hills.” Tribal leaders are quick to point out that not only does the $1.3 billion represent a fraction compared to the monetary value of gold, minerals and timber extracted from it, it is based on value at the time of the treaty, not the present. And further, if distributed on a per capita basis across nine tribes, the money would soon be gone with little permanent benefit to the recipients. “If you took the money, it would be [a] pittance. Our numbers are too big in terms of population, and the dollars would be expended in a hurry…in a week, two weeks’ time, you’re broke, and you don’t have anything,” said Bordeaux. Two Bulls agreed. “If we accept the money, then we have no more of the treaty obligations that the federal government has with us for taking our land, for taking our gold, all our resources out of the Black Hills … we’re poor now, we’ll be poorer then when that happens,” she said. Leaders must continue to convince younger generations to adopt their long view. Tim Giago, who was born on Pine Ridge Reservation and has spent three decades as a journalist covering the issue, worries about that trend. “I think younger people aren’t as attuned to it. There are many that are, but then again we’re losing a lot of people.” The issue has been revived in recent years by an offer by President Obama to meet with the tribes if they could come up with a unified proposal to settle the issue in Congress. The most prominent attempt to do so in recent decades was a failed bill introduced by former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, which would have returned some of the land. But in the years since, the issue has been largely dormant, and the money in Washington untouched. The administration’s offer has raised a glimmer of hope that the issue could finally be resolved, 130 years later. Toward that end, tribal council leaders have been holding a series of meetings to try to come up with an agreement to take to Washington. The Hasapa (or Black Hills) Reparations Alliance was formed to bring the Sioux tribes together to formulate a plan that could be presented to the Obama administration. A series of meetings are underway this summer and fall in an attempt to reach a unified position. Edward Charging Elk, a member of the Rosebud Tribe, has put together one such proposal for a bill that he says is “realistic and doable” that focuses on three elements: the return of 1.3 million acres of the Black Hills, relabeling the trust money as back rent and then agreeing on the terms of future rent for the resources from the land to the tune of roughly $7 million a year. He hopes that plan will provide a vehicle for a mutually acceptable solution. “I think the work of disunity is over now. It’s a matter of rolling your sleeves up, following a very simple plan that everybody understands, and getting it into Congress,” Charging Elk said. Two Bulls sees the clock ticking as tribes scattered across the Dakotas and Nebraska try to unify. “There’s jealousy, there’s misunderstanding — instead of compromising, instead of discussing it and coming up with a solution, they all want

their own way and we’ve tried to explain to them that this is very important because we’re running out of time.” Giago has seen the “ebb and flow” of the conflict but says it is now at a critical juncture with President Obama nearing the end of his first term. “We have a very, very small window of opportunity to try to at least get a bill introduced, and I think we’re still too far away from that. I’m hoping they can pull it together and get a bill in, but it’s going to be a tight race.” And what if the latest round of negotiations doesn’t yield the long-awaited redress to the Black Hills land claim that the Sioux seek? Bordeaux takes the long view of the seemingly intractable fight over the Black Hills: “If it doesn’t happen, we’ve been here before, and we’ll just back up and regroup and go forward again.”“We won the battle against Custer,” he said. “But the war continues.”

6. The Supreme Court ruled that the Sioux deserve monetary compensation for the Black Hills in South Dakota. Should they take it? Why or Why not?