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Contributed by: YourHub on 4/30/2007

SAND CREEK One man's battle Most people call what happened that day in 1864 a massacre. But a firsthand account from a soldier simply calls it war. By DAVE PHILIPPS THE GAZETTE

This morning in a grassy valley in eastern Colorado, members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes and officials from the National Park Service will formally dedicate the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.
At the same time, the Old Colorado City Historical Society will rerelease an out-of-print book that argues that the massacre wasn't a massacre at all.
"I realize even suggesting that isn't very popular, but things aren't as simple as they are made out to be," said Dave Hughes, 78, a longtime member of the society.
In "Memories of a Lifetime in the Pikes Peak Region," published in 1925, author and Colorado Springs pioneer Irving Howbertdetailed his role as one of the soldiers at Sand Creek.
His book is part of a 143-yearold debate over whether the November morning in 1864 when a group of 700 cavalry volunteers attacked a village of 500 Arapahos and Cheyennes, killing at least 150 people, was a heartless, gruesome slaughter or an unfortunate but legitimate clash in an ongoing war.
The consensus is that it was a slaughter. Following the battle, ghastly reports turned up of women and children shot, raped, mutilated and scalped. The commander, Col. John Chivington, was said to have led the troops into battle with the command, "Kill them big and small; nits become lice!"
But Howbert, who was a member of Chivington's command that day, wrote that he shot several men but saw none of the atrocities commonly ascribed to his unit.
"Few events in American history have been the subject of so much misrepresentation," he wrote, arguing that the accounts of butchery were nothing but lies told by officers and traders with vendettas against Chivington.
The volunteers attacked the tribes, Howbert wrote, to stop constant raiding. In the months leading up to Sand Creek, a family northeast of Colorado Springs was killed and mutilated by tribe members. War parties stole horses and livestock. The people of Old Colorado City were so frightened that they built a log fort around the town's hotel where the women and children slept.
"Modern residents of the Pikes Peak region often have a hard time relating to the fears settlers had in 1864 . . . of Indian raids that deprived them and their family of their lives and property," Howbert's grandson, Irving HowbertII, wrote in a new introduction to the book.
Hughes said: "The pioneers weren't lily white. But they honestly feared for their lives. They were dealing with an insurgency. For them, Sand Creek wasn't a massacre."
In his book, Irving Howbertwrote that he and 16 other men from El Paso County joined the cavalry to "punish the Indians" and stop the raids.
When the command came to charge, Howbert wrote, his battalion captured the tribes' horses so they couldn't escape. Before he reached the village, he wrote, "firing had become general."
The soldiers turned rifles and cannons on the village. The tribes returned fire from along the creek. Fighting lasted all day. By all accounts, at least 150 Cheyennes and Arapahos died, the majority women and children; 300 others escaped. Only 10 soldiers were killed.
Howbert acknowledged the killing of women, writing that the volunteers shot at "every Indian in range of our guns." He said "It was utterly impossible . . . to distinguish between the sexes, on account of similarity in their dress."
He did not mention any rapes or cruelty.
After the survivors fled, the soldiers torched the Indian camp. Many whites along the Front Range celebrated it as a victory.
But back East, two congressional investigations looked into Sand Creek. Several dozen people detailed countless atrocities, and one of the inquiries concluded that Chivington "surprised and murdered, in cold blood, the unsuspecting men, women, and children on Sand creek, who had every reason to believe they were under the protection of the United States authorities, and then returned to Denver and boasted of the brave deed he and the men under his command had performed."
Thom Hatch, an Ellicottbased historian who wrote "Black Kettle," an award-winning biography of the principal Cheyenne chief at Sand Creek, said the facts are undeniable.
"Howbert had to be blind to not see the atrocities committed at Sand Creek," he said via e-mail, calling him "an embarrassment to this community."

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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments

Submitted By: Dave Hughes

posted on 8/7/2007 @ 2:31:59 PM

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Yes, it was too bad that Irving was buried across town in Evergreen, rather than in Fairview, close to where his family farm was and where he grew up. But his 91 year old grandson, is making up for it, becoming a lifetime member of the Old Colo City History society - and is travelling with us to the Sand Creek battlefield in September.

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Submitted By: dianne hartshorn

posted on 8/6/2007 @ 10:29:07 AM

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Did you know that Mr. Howbert is buried at Evergreen Cemetery

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Submitted By: Dave Hughes

posted on 5/1/2007 @ 4:28:30 PM

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Well, Irving Howbert was not blind. In fact you should go to the Old Colorado History Society Web site and buy the 300 page Howbert Book "Memories of a Lifetime in the Pikes Peak Region" http://history.oldcolo.com and read his 38 page "Defense of Sand Creek". He was THERE. Hatch was NOT!

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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments