Captain McLain relatively had been more successful in recruiting for
his First Colorado Battery, and in the meantime had completed a four-gun
organization, with George S. Eayre as First Lieutenant, and H. W. Baldwin
as Second. His guns were four field-pieces that had been sent from Xew
Mexico to Denver by Colonel Canby. When fully equipped, "McLain's
Battery", as it became commonly and proudly known, presented a fine ap-
pearance, and its men proved themselves to be most courageous and ef-
ficient soldiers. The battery, also, was sent to Fort Leavenworth, and later
bore a conspicuously gallant part in military operations in Missouri and
eastern Kansas.
About the 1st of April (1863), an order was received by Colonel
Leavenworth to send six companies of the Second Colorado to Fort Leaven-
406 HISTORY OF COLOEADO
worth ; the other companies of the regiment to remain at Fort Lyon for the
present. The six, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Dodd, left
Fort Lyon on the 6th of th»t month, and marched eastward by way of the
Arkansas Biver trails. Upon his arrival at Fort Eiley, 135 miles to the
west of Fort Leavenworth, Dodd received orders to proceed with his com-
mand directly to Fort Scott, in the southeastern part of Kansas. Here, the
Colorado troops, together with a detachment of the Seventh Kansas Volun-
teer Cavalry (colored), were made the escort of a long wagon-train laden
with supplies and bound for Fort Gibson, in the Indian Territory. On the
way thitlier the escort encountered and routed, on July 1st, at Cabin Creek,
a small stream in the Indian Territory, a Confederate force of much greater
strength, a part of which consisted of more or less civilized Indians of the
Territory, and the whole commanded by Standwatie, a Confederate Cherokee
Indian leader who held a Brigadier-General's commission. In this engage-
ment, the first in which they had participated, the Colorado volunteers bore
the leading part. The Union loss in killed and wounded was twenty-three,
while Standwatie left behind him forty dead and seven prisoners.
At Fort Gibson, the Colorado companies were attached to the command
of General James G. Blunt, wlio was preparing to move against General
Douglass H. Cooper, who was advancing up the northward side of the Ar-
kansas Eiver with an army of about 6,000 men, consisting of Confederate
Indians and odds and ends of white troops. Leaving Fort Gibson with a
force of about 2,500 men and twelve light pieces of field-artillery, General
Blunt encountered and attacked Coopers army on the 17th of July, at
Honey Springs, near the mouth of Elk Creek, an affluent of the Arkansas,
in the Indian Territory. In a furious onslaught, though of but two hours'
duration, and tliat became known as the "Battle of Honey Springs", the
Union troops completely routed and scattered Cooper's motley army of white
and red warriors, that so greatly outnumbered them. Cooper left 150 of
his men dead on the field, and had about 400 wounded, while nearly 100
others had been made prisoners. The Confederate commander also was
compelled to destroy liis wagon-train and supplies to keep them from falling
into Blunfs hands. The Union loss was seventeen killed and some sixty-
wounded. About five weeks later. General Blunt advanced upon the town
and military post of Fort Smith, Arkansas, which he entered and occupied
on September 1st.
Meanwhile, Colonel Leavenworth had been placed in command of the
various detachments of troops, including those of his regiment which had
been left at Fort Lyon, that now were guarding the Arkansas Eiver trails
against Confederate raiders and Indian pillaging-expeditions, with his head-
quarters at Fort Larned, on Pawnee Creek and about ten miles westward
of the site of the present town of Larned, Kansas. In September, Leaven-
worth was suspended, and in the next month dismissed from the service, for
the "offense" of having enlisted, without specific authority to do so, a com-
pany of volunteers to serve as artillerymen. Although he was quickly re-
instated, he was so greatly incensed by the affair that he resigned his com-
mission; whereupon Lieutenant-Colonel Dodd was appointed to succeed
him as Colonel of the Second Colorado. However, though through no fault
of his. Colonel Dodd did not long hold the position.
The five companies taken to Fort Leavenworth in the spring of 1863 by
Lieutenant-Colonel Curtis, and which historically as well as oiBcially con-
HISTORY OF COLORADO 407
stituted Colorado's Third Regiment of Tohinteer Infantry, had remained at
that post onl}' a few da3's. On April 26th, they were sent to St. Louis, upon
a river steamer, and on their arrival there went to Sulphur Springs, some
twenty miles to the southward of that city. In the last half of May, they
were ordered to Pilot Knob, Missouri, where they became a part of General
Schofield's Army of the Frontier, although they had come from far beyond
the frontier. In June, they were directed to proceed to Yicksburg, but as
the order was revoked before they had had time to get under wa}', they con-
tinued under Schofield's command throughout that summer and autumn.
On October 11th (1863), an order was issued directing that Colorado's
Second and Third regiments of infantry be consolidated and reorganized
into a regiment of cavalry, which was to be designated as the Second Regi-
ment of Colorado A^olunteer Cavalry. As we have seen, six companies of
the Second had been with General Blunt, and the others had been on duty
at stations and posts on the Arkansas River, while the Third was attached
to General Schofield's Army of the Frontier. The order also directed that
the two should be assembled at Benton Barracks (at St. Louis), and there
be transformed into a new fighting-organization — change that was most
heartily welcomed by almost every man in both. But circumstances pre-
vented an immediate compliance with the instructions, and therefore it was
not until near .the end of the autumn that the regiments were brought to-
gether at St; Louis, the Arkansas River detachments of the Second being
accompanied by about 150 Colorado volunteer recruits.
The reorganization was effected in the following January, with Major
James H. Ford, of the old Second, as Colonel ; Colonel Theodore H. Dodd of
the old Second, as Lieutenant-Colonel ;. Samuel S. Curtis, Lieutenant-Colo-
nel of the old Third, Captain J. Xelson Smith, of the old Second, and Jesse
L. Pritchard, as Majors. The companies of the Second became Companies
A, B, C, D, E, F, and 6 of the new regiment; and those of the Third, Com-
panies H, I, K, L, and M. So the Second and Third regiments of Colorado
Volunteer Infantry passed out of existence.
The Second Colorado Volunteer Cavalry, which moved to Kansas City
late in that January, began its career with 1,340 men— the full quota — and
was finely mounted and equipped. Colonel Ford was assigned, with head-
cjuarters at Kansas City, to the command of a sub-district covering three
western border-counties — Jackson, in which Kansas City is situated, and
Cass and Bates, lying, in their order, nest south of Jackson. Ford's force,
consisting of his own regiment, a Missouri regiment of infantry, a body of
Missouri militia, and two companies of Minnesota infantry, was stationed
in detachments at various places in his district, and until the end of the
summer of 1864 actively was engaged in worrying and dangerous service
against daring bands of Confederate guerrillas that infested that section of
Missouri, and who were almost as ruthless as wild Indians in their ravag-
ing forays. "Words can not do justice to the horrors of such warfare ; nor
can the tragedies which cruelty, violence, rapine, and the worst passions of
civil war evoked in partisan warfare, ever be fully known."
When, in September, 1864, General Sterling Price, at the head of a
Confederate army of about 15,000 veteran troops, moved from Arkansas into
Missouri, bent upon the conquest and occupation of the last-named State,
the Second Colorado Cavalry and McLain's Colorado Battery were among
the forces assembled to meet him, the two Colorado organizations being at-
4()S HISTORY OF COLORADO
tached to the command of General Blunt. On September 27tli, Price at-
tacked a small body of Federal troops stationed at Pilot Knob and com-
pelled them to evacuate the town and retreat to St. Louis. Following these,
Price advanced to the outer defenses of that city, where he received a severe
repulse and was diverted from liis boasted purpose to capture the city and
thence carry the war into Illinois. He now marched his army westward, to
Jefferson City, and after having been defeated there in an attack upon its
entrenched defenders moved on up the Missouri, on the south side of the
river, with an avowed intention to occupy Kansas City and then to take Fort
Leavenworth.
General S. R. Curtis, in command of the Department of Kansas and
the Indian Territory, with lieadquarters at Fort Leavenworth, in the mean-
time had collected at Kansas City and Independence all available troops
within reach to check Price's advance, and had sent General Blunt with his
small force to Lexington, Missouri. Price's army appeared before Lex-
ington on October 20th, and immediately attacked Blunt, who held the Con-
federates off until nightfall. In the night of the .30th, Blunt withdrew from
Lexington and fell back to the Little Blue River, about six miles east of In-
dependence, where, on the 21st, he was engaged by nearly the whole of
Price's army. The Second Colorado Cavalry and McLain's Battery were in
the thick of the desperate fighting on that day and suffered serious losses,
and among the killed was Major J. Nelson Smith, of the cavalry. Blunt
again fell back, to the Big Blue River, a few miles west of Independence,
where he joined the main body of General Curtis' army, which had been re-
enforced by General Alfred Pleasanton's cavalry, that had followed Price
from St. Louis and passed his army by a detour. Here, on October 3 2d,
another severe battle was fought, with disastrous results for the Confederates.
General Price now was in a perilous situation, from which he sought
to extricate his army and find a way back to Arkansas. Having, in the night
of October 32d, gained a position near Westport, he was attacked furiously
by the Union troops on the next day, and by sundown was in fuU and badly
demoralized retreat southward, with his antagonists in hot pursuit. In
the night of October 24:th-25th, he was beset in Linn County, Kansas, at the
Marais des Cygnes River, by Curtis' cavalry and artillery, which included
the Second Colorado and McLain's Battery, and driven from his encamp-
ment. On the 25th, the Confederates made a stand at Mine Creek, several
miles farther south, but were again driven on. In the continued pursuit
the Union troops reached Fort Scott in the forenoon of the 27th, and after
a short halt there the chase was resumed. The retreating Confederates
were brought to bay, for the last time, at the Missouri village of Newtonia,
soutlieast of Fort Scott. Here, on October 28th, a battle, that was next
to the most severe of the campaigTi, was fought, in which the Second Colo-
rado had forty-two men killed in the saddle. Price's army was driven from
the field, and was jiursued by the Second Colorado and other cavalry or-
ganizations to the Arkansas River, where the long chase was abandoned.
Wien Price crossed that river, the number of his troops had been reduced
by killed, wounded, missing, prisoners, and desertions, to less than .5,000.
He had destroyed a large part of his equipment to prevent its capture by
Curtis, and had left the line of his retreat from Westport littered with the
debris of a routed army.
In the last month of 1864, the Colorado volunteers who had been with
HISTOEY OF COLOEADO 409
(jenerals Blunt and Curtis were sent to Fort Eiley, Kansas, there to be re-
fitted for service against tlie plains Indians. Most of tiiem were engaged
in duty liere and tliere on tlie Santa Fe Trail, in Kansas, until the following
spring, when they became a part of a large force organized for a proposed
great campaign that was intended to subdue the Indians then ranging south
■of the Arkansas Eiver — a programme that was countermanded from Wash-
ington after all preparations for it had been made. The two Colorado or-
ganizations were continued in service on the central plains until into the
autumn of that year, when they were mustered out.
In the winter of 1864-05, six companies of emergency-volunteers were
enlisted in Colorado for a term of three months, for duty against the In-
dians, and collectively were designated as the Third Eegiment of Colorado
Volunteer Cavalry. Some further account of this organization, as well as
an outline of the service it rendered, appears in the next chapter.
Although Colorado escaped invasion by any duly organized Confed-
erate force, the Territory was raided in the summer of 1864 by an inde-
pendent mounted band of Texan guerrillas under the leadership of James
Eeynolds, who had been a miner in our South f ark in 1859-60. With
twenty-one subordinates, Eeynolds entered southeastern Colorado late in
July, after having captured and plundered two wagon-trains on the Santa
Fe Trail, in northeastern New Mexico. Avoiding Fort Lyon, the bandits
hastened up the Arkansas Eiver, left Pueblo and Caiion City unmolested,
and proceeded into the South Park, where they began to plunder ranchmen,
miners, stage-coaches, and mails. Eeynolds had boasted that before leaving
the Territory he would treat Denver City as Quantrell had dealt with the
town of Lawrence, Kansas. But his band soon was beset and dispersed by
determined parties of Colorado citizens. The first of these to encounter the
outlaws, killed one of them and wounded Eeynolds, who, with the other
survivors, fled from their camp on foot, leaving their horses and plunder in
the hands of their assailants. A day or two later, one of the Texans was
taken prisoner, and shortly afterward Eeynolds and five more of his men
were captured near Caiion City. The others succeeded in getting out of the
Territory and were heard of no more. The prisoners having been taken to
Denver, later were started from that city for Fort Lyon, under a strong mili-
tary guard. The troops presently returned to Denver and reported that all
the captives had been killed by them, near the head of Cherry Creek, while
attempting to escape. But, as the members of the escort were significantly
reticent as to the particulars of the affair, it was generally believed that the
Texans had been deliberately executed, either by shooting or by lynching
with ropes.
It has been rather generally understood that tlie total of the contribu-
tions of soldiers to the United States military forces during the Civil War
by the State of Delaware was greater, in proportion to population, than the
number provided by any other division of the Union. The lack of accurate
data as to the population of each of the States and Territories during the
war-period makes impossible a precise determination of this question. But
the evidence at hand strongly supports the belief that that distinction should
be accorded to the Territory of Colorado. Delaware's population in 1860
was a little above 112,000, and was increasing. The total of that State's
enrollment of Union troops, including drafted men, was 13,670, but as
1,386 paid commutation and so avoided service, the net total was 13,284,
410 HISTORY OF COLORADO
which aggregate, when reduced to a three-years' standard, was the equivalent
of 10,322. As I have stated in the preceding chapter, Colorado's population
other than Indians at the time the Territory's First Regiment was organized
certainly was considerably less than 25,000, and which diminished at a
serious rate until about the close of the war. The total of the Colorado en-
listments — every man a volunteer — was 4,903, which number, when reduced'
to a three-years' standard, was equal to 3,697. Therefore, with a population
that averaged during the war-time less than one-fifth that of Delaware, the
number of Colorado's volunteers was more than one-third that of the Dela-
ware troops.
Turning to some of the western divisions of the Union, we find that the
number of Union troops from "Bleeding Kansas", that had in 1860 a popu-
lation of 107,000, but which increased rapidly in the war-period, was, re-
duced to three-years' standard, 18,706. It is probable that the average of
the Kansas population in the war-j'ears was not far from 175,000. Ne-
braska, having in 1860 a population of nearly 29,000, but which, as in
the case of Kansas, increased greatly during the war, contributed to the
Union Army 3,157 volutteers, or, when reduced to a three-years' standard,
2,175. New Mexico's population in 1860 was 83,000, and the number of
Union enlistments in that Territory was 6,561, or 4,432 when the total is
reduced to a three-years' standard. Utah sent no military organization to
the aid of the Union cause.
The fatalities among the Colorado volunteers aggregated far above the
average of those in the other Union organizations, and are to be classified
in the exceptionally high ratios of mortality. They consisted in the main
of killed in action and of later deaths from wounds received in battle, the
percentage of loss by disease being remarkably low. It is further to be said
that the Colorado troops were uncommonly willing, fearless and enthusiastic
soldiei's. Nearly all, by experience in the West, had become familiar with
the use of arms and the presence of danger before their enlistment; and
most of them had been engaged, since coming to the Pike's Peak country,
in occupations that had inured them to hardships and privations greater
than those that were usually imposed by service in the Union armies.
CHAPTEK XIX.
UPRISING OF THE PLAINS INDIANS IN THE SIXTIES. THEIR PURPOSES AND
PLANS. — PREPARATIONS FOR WAR BY THE TRIBES. — APPREHEN.SION IN
COLORADO. — INDIAN CONFEDERATION. PLUNDERING DEPREDATIONS. —
BEGINNING OF OPEN HOSTILITIES. — PANIC IN NORTHERN COLORADO
TOWNS. — ORGANIZATION OF MILITIA ORDERED. FIRST MASSACRE OF
SETTLERS. — ATROCITIES COMMITTED UPON THE OVERLAND TRAILS. —
GOVERNOR EVANS' "LETTERS OF MARQUE AND _REPRISAL". — THREATENED
DESCENT OF INDIANS UPON THE COLORADO TOWNS. — CONFERENCE AT
DENVER WITH INDIAN CHIEFTAINS. GENERAL CURTIs' INSTRUCTIONS. —
ORGANIZATION OF THE THIRD REGIMENT OF COLORADO CAVALRY. CON-
DITIONS UPON THE OVERLAND ROUTES OF TRAVEL. — CHEYENNE AND
ARAPAHOE INDIANS RETURN TO THEIR RESERVATION IN COLORADO AND
ESTABLISH A VILLAGE ON SAND CREEK. — WERE THEY NOW FRIENDLY
OR HOSTILE? — COLONEL CHIVINGTON's PREPARATIONS FOR AN "EXAM-
ple" of his method of fighting indians. — his attack upon the
village on sand creek. — its frightful results. slaughter of
indian men, women, and children. — barbarous treatment of
the bodies of the dead. — "was it a battle or a massacre ?"
public opinion of the affair. — its direful consequences. — plains
indians infuriated to the highest pitch. devastation of the
central plains. — communications with colorado cut off. — mar-
tial law in the territory. — colorado threatened by a horde of
indians. — communications reopened by general dodge. — progress
op the long war. — arapahoes and southern cheyennes repudiate
their peace treaty of 1867 and return to the war-path. — their
bloody depredations in colorado in the summer of 1868.
Forsyth's scouts. — their heroic conflict at beecher's island. —
last forays of plains indians upon colorado's soil.
The protracted war with the Iniliaus of the plains, that began late in
the spring of 1864, was in its origin a direct consequence of the conflict be-
tween the northern and the southern States of the Union. In the first year
of that momentous struggle, some of the chieftains of these Indians com-
menced to urge confederated action by all the tribes of the plains in an effort
to rescue their country from the clutches of the white people. They argued
that the great war which the divided whites were waging upon each other
threw open to the red men of tlie West an opportunity to overwhelm their
common enemies, to recover their invaded lands, and to restore the old con-
ditions. They were confident that this could be accomplished by the united
strength and valor of the warriors of the plains-country. The plans and
purposes of these leaders were the same as those which were attempted to be
consummated by "King Philip" in Xew England ; by Pontiac and Tecumseh
in the eastern parts of the Mississippi Valley: and as those that had been,
as I have remarked in an earlier chapter of this volume, proposed in the
Far West in the later years of the fur-trading period.
Some of the tribes favored confederation and the immediate inaugura-
tion of an exterminating war, but others either hesitated or were more or
less disinclined to join hands with men of their race that hitherto had
been their hereditary foes. But the greater obstacle in the way of such
411
n-l HISTORY OF COLOEADO
au uprising in that year was tlie unpreparedness of tlie tribes for a general
war against the white men, the number of firearms and quantit}' of am-
munition thej' possessed being far from sufficient to warrant them in enter-
ing upon the projected campaign; and it was rather difficult for them to
obtain these necessities for fighting at other than hand-to-hand. But the
proposition to wrest their country from the grasp of the white men pres-
ently took deep root in the mind of nearly all the roving Indians of the
Great Plains, and in the nest year they began quietly to prepare for an
effort to put it into effect.
As I have already told, our p)ioneers had no serious trouble with the
Indians of the plains during the years in which they established themselves
in the Pike's Peak country. The local tribes of the lowland — Arapahoe and
southern Cheyenne — were friendly, and remained so until after they had
been confined, in 1861, to a reservation that was of small area in comparison
with the wide range over which they had formerly roamed. But the Utes,
of the mountains, were sullen and apprehensive from the day on which our
pioneer miners first entered the recesses of the Epckies, although they did
not, as a tribe, arise against them. The prospectors who lost their lives at
Ute hands in the early years were covertly slain by petty bands acting upon
their own responsibility rather than upon that of their people as a whole —
which perhaps may seem to be a distinction without much practical differ-
ence. The Utes usually proved to be less efficient in warfare than the In-
dians of the plains.
By the end of the spring of 1862, it became apparent to observant white
men that the tribes of the central plains — the Arapahoe and Cheyenne as
well as the others — stealthily were making preparations for war, as they
were devoting much of their time and all their shrewdness to the acquisition
of rifles, muskets, and ammunition, by begging and stealing, or by purchase
when they had the means with which to buy. Their braves were willing to
trade a horse for almost anything in the form of a serviceable gun, depend-
ing on replacing the animal by the theft of another. But all professed
friendship for the whites, and were exceedingly careful not to betray their
purposes by thoughtless speech. When questioned as to the reason why they
-were so anxious to obtain such weapons, their usual answer was that they
needed them for killing buffalo, which the coming and going of so many
white men had made so wary that they could not easily be approached within
effective arrow-shot.
Although the plains Indians had not, since they began these prepara-
tions, committed any act more overt than that of stealing a horse occasion-
ally, Governor Evans, realizing the danger by which Colorado was threat-
ened, in a message to the Legislative Assembly, in July, of that year, most
earnestly recommended legislation providing for the enrollment and organ-
ization of militia; and with which the Assembly promptly complied. As
the situation had become more menacing by the beginning of autumn. Sec-
retary Elbert, then Acting Governor, early in September issued a proclama-
tion warning the people of the impending peril and urging them to organize
militia companies under the lately-enacted law. But no effective action was
taken in consequence of the legislation and proclamation during that year,
as it was a general belief that the Second Eegiment of Colorado Volunteer