Example Of A Research Paper Rough Draft: Sand Creek Massacre

Ashlee Flaviani

Professor Ball

June 11, 2016

Hist 1302

Research paper rough draft :

Sand Creek Massacre

Sand Creek was a “small village of about 800 Cheyenne Indians along southeast Colorado” (ushistory.com), the struggle was violent as the need for native land grew more essential. The need for land became such a necessity that logical compromise was no longer an option. Native Americans grew progressively violent when territory became the main question. “By the end of the Civil War the two sides had slipped down a downward spiral of vicious battles until the 1890s” (ushistory.com). The base for the Indian campaign had been selected about eighty miles southeast of the Bijou Basin. Several days were spent marching through

Black Kettle rose an American flag in hopes to make peace. Unfortunately, the Colorado Volunteers commander, Colonel John Chivington ignored the flag. He insisted the group “kill and scalp all, big and little.” The brutality was tremendous, as the Chivingtons troops committed a large number of scalping, and disembowelments. “Out of the one hundred and fifty Indians seventy percent were women and children”(wikipedia.com). Reports indicated the Cheyennes were shot while pleading for mercy and some while trying to escape. Furthermore, there was a great amount of mutilation to the dead bodies of Indians. The bodies were reported to have been cut up, scalped, half of the body was gone. “Chivington would then display his scalp collection as a badge of pride”(ushistory.com). The results of the Sand Creek massacre was a great loss of life, primarily amongst Cheyenne women and children, although the hardest hit was Black Kettle’s group. “After hiding all day above the camp, in holes dug beneath the bank of Sand Creek, the survivors lie there, many were wounded, moved upstream and would then spend their night on the prairie”(wikipedia.com). The few troops that were found alive set out towards the Cheyenne camp after a cold night without

“The Dog Soldiers sought for revenge on the settlers throughout the Platte valley, including an 1865 attack on what then became Fort Caspar, Wyoming”(wikipedia.com). Following the massacre, the few that survived arrived to the camps of Cheyenne on the Smokey hill and Republican rivers. “The war pipe was smoked and passed from camp to camp among the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors in the area. In January 1865, the three had planned to carry out an attack with one thousand warriors on the stage station and fort, called Camp Rankin”(wikipedia.com). “This attack was then followed by multiple raids along the south Platte both east and west, and a second raid on the town of Julesburg in early February”(wikipedia.com). These retaliations captures much loot and killed a tremendous amount of white settlers, including women and children. “Black Kettle still stuck to his word and stood for peace and refused to join the second raid or in the journey of the powered river country. Kettle decided to then leave the camp and returned with eighty lodges to the Arkansas river seeking peace with the