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REBUTTAL TO HATCH RANT ABOUT IRVING HOWBERT

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Contributed by: Dave Hughes on 7/19/2008

This scurrilous letter was printed in the Gazette Telegraph newspaper yesterday. It was triggered by a short informative article written Sunday by Linda Navarro of the Gazette in response to a reader's question "Who was Irving Howbert?"

I wrote a strong Letter to the Editor in answer to Hatch, who writes pot boilers, full of inaccuracies, and political correctness.

Below Hatch's letter is my Letter. The copy I sent to the Gazette to be printed is 400 words, a shorter version.

IRVING HOWBERT SCHOOL
Why is a school named after Howbert?

extracts

... As an author and historian who has written extensively about the Sand Creek Massacre, I'm appalled that a school was named after Irving Howbert. ("Did You Ever Wonder? Who was Irving Howbert?" Life Section, July 13). When speaking about the namesake of their school, the students should have been told: "Children, Irving Howbert Elementary School needs to be renamed. Mr. Howbert was not the kind of person that a place for children, or a place for any decent people, should be named after. He was a member of a murderous mob known as the Colorado Volunteer Cavalry who participated in the slaughter and perverted mutilations of more than 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians, mostly defenseless women and children, at Sand Creek, Colorado in the year 1864."

... There are those pseudo-historians and racists who shamefully defend Chivington's attack to this day. Anyone who disputes this unprovoked massacre as historical truth should research the subject thoroughly. I urge you to read the account of the massacre (and events preceding) from my award-winning book, "Black Kettle",..... Irving Howbert conveniently avoided the facts when he wrote his memoirs, which is not surprising given the nature of the merciless acts he witnessed, if not committed. And it doesn't matter in the least if he allegedly went on to become a respectable citizen.... The name "Irving Howbert Elementary School" is a grievous affront to decency, to historical truth,

Thomas Hatch
Ellicott, CO

Editor, Gazette

Thomas Hatch asked in his letter to the editor why is a Westside Elementary School named after Irving Howbert. I will tell your readers, even though I don't think Hatch wants an honest answer. For in his shameless promotion of his own book in your column he reveals his extreme prejudice against the white settlers in Colorado Territory who had to take up arms in 1864 to protect their families and property, against the marauding Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians. They had not only massacred the entire Hungate family, sealed off Denver from wagon traffic, killed scores of innocent settlers, but took their scalps back to their Sand Creek encampment which were readily discovered in the wake of the Sand Creek Battle.

Those 'peaceful' tribes also captured and enslaved white women and children. Black Kettle, Hatch's hero, was one of the worst offenders. Maybe he should study Greg and Susan Michno's voluminous 2007 study 'A Fate Worse Than Death' that details what those tribes did to women and children they kidnapped.

Even after the Sand Creek battle that General Curtis ordered in order to deter those tribes from more attacks, the Arapaho continued their depredations. They shot and killed the two young Robbins boys right here on Shooks Run, and scalped young Colorado City's Charles Everhart.

Their bodies were laid out in the 1859 Cabin in Bancroft Park. Those attacks forced the Colorado City settlers to make a fort, so women and children could hide out while their men folk stood watch. Young Irving helped fortify what is now 2818 West Pikes Peak where a State Marker for 'The Fort' still stands.

Irving Howbert, who was just one low ranking 18 year old Corporal in the 3d Colorado Cavalry, while his fellow soldiers suffered 25 killed and 51 wounded fighting those supposed 'defenseless' Indians proved to be an outstanding and very observant young man, who wrote down his eye witness account of what happened. He also wrote extensively what had happened before and after Sand Creek, which Hatch utterly ignores.

Irving Howbert became second only to General Palmer the most leading citizen of Colorado Springs. He was elected locally four times to public office even by those - including newer residents of Colorado Springs who well knew the Sand Creek story and controversies, living far closer in time to it than Hatch.

Hatch's charge of 'racism' is absurd. For, the 18 same Colorado City men who joined the 3d Colorado Cavalry, including Howbert, all of whom Hatch calls 'murderous' at Sand Creek, welcomed bands of Ute Indians larger than the entire population of Colorado City when they encamped for months right on Fountain Creek next to Colorado City without incident in both 1865 and 1867.

Its time that the School Children of El Paso County stop being brainwashed about what happened at Sand Creek in 1864, 7 years before Colorado Springs even existed.

And their teachers should educate themselves by reading the outstanding 2004 350 page "Battle at Sand Creek" by Greg Michno of Longmont, Colorado . He refuses to call it a 'Massacre.' It was a two sided battle. And consult Michno's 'Encylopedia of the Indian Wars 1860-1890."

Hatch is lucky his family did not homestead in Ellicott in 1864 or 1868 or he wouldn't be here today - as his great grandparents would have been murdered by the Cheyenne who killed isolated ranchers, included many in and around the Black Forest during those days during the Civil War when there were NO Federal troops out here in Colorado Territory to protect the settlers from Plains Indians who went on the warpath knowing the Federal Cavalry was back east fighting the Confederacy.

Today's children should read Irving Howbert's wonderful 300 page 1925 "Memories of a Lifetime in the Pikes Peak Region" that we of the Old Colorado City Historical Society have reprinted with permission of his 92 year old grandson, and proudly sell in our bookstore. In it Irving thoroughly justifies why the large Indian encampment of Arapahoe and Cheyenne at Sand Creek was attacked. But also tells of life in both early Colorado City AND Colorado Springs, where he became a titan of a civic leader.

Dave Hughes

P.S.
I too was brainwashed by my elementary school teachers in Colorado Springs 60 years ago that Sand Creek was just an unjustified 'massacre' against innocent Indians. Which is far, far from the truth as modern historians have stopped being politically correct, while unearthing the 'whole' story, including with metal detectors on the battlefields.

And the attacks by the Indians here in Colorado hits closer to home with me. My family homesteaded the Hughes Ranch on Comanche Creek east of Kiowa, Colorado. We bought a section of land in 1898 which had been owned by Henrietta Dietemann. She and her 5 year old son were killed by the Arapahoe in 1868, same time they killed the El Paso County Robbins Boys and Charlie Everhart, scalped and mutilated them right on Comanche Creek that ran through our property. It was called the 'Dietemann Massacre' and there is a stone monument to it in Kiowa, Colorado, today.

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