The Sand Creek Massacre is Tracking Me Down
I assume most of you, at least in the United States, have heard of the Battle of Wounded Knee, the final battle of the Plains Wars of the late nineteenth century and the focus of Native American activism in the 1970s.(1) But have you heard of the Sand Creek Massacre?
I stumbled across the story while working on a article on the ledger art of Howling Wolf (2) for MHQ. (It’s in the current edition, if you’re curious.) Ever since then, I’ve been stumbling across references to the event.
Here is the rough outline of what happened:
In November, 1864, a group of Cheyenne and Arapaho settled at Sand Creek, 170 miles southeast of Denver. The inhabitants had recently concluded peace negotiations with the governor of the territory and had every reason to believe they would be safe in their camp.
At dawn on November 29, 675 members of the Colorado volunteer militia led by Colonel John Chivington attacked the village. Adult male warriors of the tribes, taken by surprise, attempted to defend the noncombatants, mostly women, children and the elderly, many of whom fled into the dry stream bed for which the village was named. The soldiers followed them, shooting. At a point several hundred yards above the village, the Cheyenne and Arapaho dug pits and trenches to protect themselves. The militia positioned howitzers on the opposite bank and bombarded their improvised defenses. Over the following eight hours, the militia killed roughly one third of inhabitants of the village (estimates as to the size of the village and the number dead vary), most of them noncombatants. The next day the militia returned, set fire to the village, killed the wounded, and mutilated the bodies.
The events were horrifying, but not uncommon in the larger context of the Plains Wars. What made them extraordinary was their aftermath.At first, Chivington was praised for the attack, which was framed as a pacification effort. But a different story began to emerge as soldiers who were opposed to the day’s actions filed reports that described the massacre in chilling detail. In response, Congress began an investigation of the events. A Congressional committee eventually ruled that Chivington had “deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre” and surprised and murdered in cold blood” Native Americans who’s “Had every reason to believe that they were under [government] protection. The only reason Chivington wasn’t court-martialed is that he has already resigned his commission.
The deaths at Sand Creek were also the death to any hope of peace on the Plains. Many young warriors of the Plains nations saw the massacre as proof that treaties with the United States meant nothing. (A not unreasonable conclusion based on years of evidence.) Formerly divided nations united in opposition to the United State’s western expansion. Sand Creek was the first step on the path to Wounded Knee. (3)
Today Sand Creek is a historic site maintained by the National Park Service.
It is clear to me that there is a great deal I don’t know about this event, including how it fits into the larger stories of the Plains Wars and the American Civil War. I do know the place to start: Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre. One more book on the To-Be-Read list. One more topic I want to know more about..
(1) Though I must admit that is the sum total of what I know about Wounded Knee. I somehow failed to read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—which I’ve now added to the the TBR pile.
(2) Not to be confused with blues artist, Howling’ Wolf. Though both of them had good reason to howl.
(3) Am I the only one seeing parallels to the Amritsar massacre here?
Remembering the Amritsar Massacre: A Bloody Step Toward Indian Independence
World War I brought India one step closer to demanding its independence from Great Britain.
Indian regiments sailed overseas and fought alongside their Canadian and Australian counterparts. (If you visit the memorial gateway at Ypres, you will see how many of them died in defense of the empire.) Indian nationalists loyally supported the British government during the war, fully expecting that British victory would end with Indian self-rule on the dominion model.
Instead of self-rule, India got repressive legislation. The Rowlatt Acts, passed by India’s Imperial Legislative Council in March, 1919, continued the special wartime powers of the Defense of India Act. The new act took powers originally intended to protect India against wartime agitators–including the right to imprison those suspected of “revolutionary conspiracy” for up to two years without trial–and aimed them at the nationalist movement.
Indian members of the legislative council resigned their seats in protest. Mahatma Gandhi took the protest further, declaring a national day of work stoppage in the first week of April as the first step in a full-scale campaign of non-violent, non-cooperation against the so-called “Black Acts”.
The first implementation of the new laws occurred on April 10 in the Sikh city of Amritsar. The government of the Punjab arrested Indian leaders who had organized anti-Rowlatt meetings and deported them without formal charges or trials. When their followers organized a protest march, troops fired on the marchers, causing a riot. Five Englishmen were killed and an Englishwoman was attacked. (She was rescued from the rioters by local Indians.)
Brigadier General Reginald Dyer was called into Amritsar to restore order. The situation called for diplomacy and good sense. Dyer used neither. On April 13, he announced a ban on public gatherings of any kind. That afternoon, 10,000 Indians assembled in an enclosed public park called Jallianwala Bagh to celebrate a Hindu religious festival. Dyer arrived with a troop of Gurkhas and ordered them to block the entrance to the park. Giving the celebrants little warning and no way to escape, he ordered the soldiers to fire on the unarmed crowd. They fired 1650 rounds in ten minutes, killing nearly 400 people and wounding over 1000.
In Britain, Dyer was widely acclaimed as “the man who saved India.” The House of Lords passed a movement approving his actions. The Morning Post collected £26,000 for his retirement and gave him a jeweled sword inscribed “Saviour of the Punjab.”
The government of India censured Dyer’s actions and forced him to resign his commission, but did nothing to stop local officials from continuing to inflame public opinion. In the Punjab, which remained under martial law for months following the Amritsar massacre, government officials acting “in defense of the realm” repeatedly humiliated and offended the people under their rule with actions such as making Indians crawl through Jallianwala Bagh.
Instead of “saving India”, Dyer accelerated Indian nationalist activity. Many Indians who had previously been loyal supporters of the Raj now joined the Indian National Congress, India’s largest nationalist organization. Bengal poet Rabindranath Tagore resigned the knighthood he had received after winning the 1913 Nobel prize for Literature. Motilal Nehru, president of the Congress and father of the first president of independent India, declared that “all talk of reform is a mockery”. Attempts to become equal partners within the Raj were almost over. Soon the push for independence would begin.
Narrow entrance into Jallianwala Bagh
A Love Letter to Independent Bookstores
I’ve never seldom, met a bookstore (or book-selling venue) I didn’t like. I will happily browse through a big box store, a used bookstore, or the odd shelf of books in a flea market stall. In a strange town or foreign city, a bookstore visit will always make me happy, even if most of the books are in a language I can’t read. I’ve never come away from a library sale without an armload, or in the case of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference annual book sale, several canvas bags full.* But independent book stores have a special place in my heart.
Heritage Books in Springfield, Missouri, was my first bookstore crush. It was a small store in a strip mall within walking distance of my house. In retrospect I realize that the selection was both small and eccentric, but at the time it seemed as bounteous as the Strand Bookstore in New York, which boasts eighteen miles of books. In some ways both the smallness and the eccentricity were to my benefit as a novice book buyer. On those rare occasions when I had some money to spend on a book, I gave in to the delights of serendipity, finding books I didn’t know existed.
Today I live in Chicago, which is home to fabulous independent bookstores. Once again, I’m lucky enough to live within walking distance of my favorite stores: the very academic Seminary Coop Bookstore and its more commercial sibling, 57th Street Books. I browse. I chat about books with booksellers. I eavesdrop on the bookish conversation of others. I check to see if my own books are on the shelves. I check to see if my friends’ books are on the shelves. I attend an occasional reading when the stars are in alignment. I resist the temptation to buy books I don’t need, because at this point I already own several hundred books I have not yet read. And I give in to the temptation to buy more books because with bookstores it’s a case of use them or lose them.
In the United States, the last Saturday of April is Independent Bookstore Day–a nationwide party for book lovers. (If you’re reading this the day it comes out, that’s tomorrow.) If you’re lucky enough to have an independent bookstore near you, stop by and show them some love. Me? I’ll be heading to 57th Street Books and the Seminary Coop with a wish list and an eye for a serendipitous find.
*Held each year on the weekend around Columbus Day. It’s a dangerous event. See you there?