Sand Creek

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At dawn on November 29, 1864, a volunteer Denver militia swept down on a sleeping Cheyenne and Arapaho village camped on the Big Sandy River in southeastern Colorado, exacting brutal revenge for a year-long campaign of terror waged by tribal warrior societies on the Kansas and Colorado plains. When the smoke cleared, Colonel John M. Chivington’s troops returned to Denver, waving Indian scalps and body parts to an adoring crowd that hailed their conquering heroes as saviors of the territory. Chivington claimed his militia decimated the entire Cheyenne and Arapaho nations – some five to six hundred warriors among them, including the fearsome Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. His actions prompted the Rocky Mountain News to hoist Chivington among the greatest American military leaders of the time, an endorsement that would surely catapult the former Methodist preacher to lofty political office.But the Dog Soldiers were still alive. In fact, few if any of the warriors guilty of the violent depredations on the Plains were anywhere near Sand Creek when the civilian militia attacked. Union soldiers accused Chivington of conducting a wholesale massacre of Indian prisoners camped under the protection of the army, claiming the majority of the 160 killed were women, children and elderly. Within months, Chivington’s renowned "Battle of Sand Creek" descended into a broiling kettle of accusation and recrimination, turning soldier against soldier, and Indian against Indian.Sand Creek dramatically reassembles the labyrinth of power, politics and controversy that ignited the most notorious event in the history of the American West. Kevin Cahill’s spellbinding narrative examines the massacre at Sand Creek, from its early roots predating the Civil War, to the subsequent government investigations after Chivington’s attack, which entangled both soldiers and Indians in a web of political deceit and murder. Cahill’s insightful resurrection of the true-life Indians, soldiers and settlers provides a poignant perspective on the monumental struggle for life on the 1860s Plains. Sand Creek is a balanced and remarkably accurate real-life western adventure unlike anything ever written about the Sand Creek Massacre.FROM COLORADO COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE, NOVEMBER 2011:The white settlers of Kansas and Colorado have their guns at the ready. Everybody has heard the stories or been victims themselves: supply trains and stagecoaches attacked and looted, farmers and ranchers butchered and scalped, women and children taken as slaves or brutally murdered. Now the Indians are amassing for war. What the settlers don’t hear are the voices of those within the tribes who want peace. True, there have been warriors killing out of anger for wrongs committed and promises broken, but their actions are not condoned by all the Indian nations or their chiefs. Black Kettle, the leader of the Cheyenne nation, tries again and again to convince the leaders of the white army that his people do not want war. But tribal political structures mean nothing to most white men. Misunderstandings on both sides escalate tensions and bloodshed until history is tragically determined by their fatal encounter on the banks of Sand Creek.Brilliantly written and thoroughly researched historical detail comes to life with novelistic flair in Kevin Cahill’s Sand Creek. Informative without being boring or dry, this novel is remarkably unbiased in presenting the story of the Sand Creek Massacre, revealing in detail how fear, misunderstanding and a few violent men on both sides led to so many lives being lost...

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