America, The Imperfect (Part One)

 

As if through a glass, and darkly
The age-old strife I see —
Where I fought in many guises, many names —
but always me.

George S. Patton

Riding the Bikecentennial Trail on a ten speed during the summer of 1976, I left my overnight camp in Eads, Colorado and headed east into the freshening breeze (that would soon be a steady 15 mile an hour prairie wind). Several miles out of town I happened past the abandoned shell of the tumbled-down remains of a building with "Chivington School" written on its face. I stopped, to drink some water and have a handful of trail mix, and take the above picture.

That night, in my tent somewhere near the Kansas-Colorado border, I read about Chivington in the tiny guidebook issued by the Missoula company that had pioneered the route. It was not a happy story.

In 1864, fresh from an heroic [ed. note - some contemporaneous accounts suggest incompetent and overblown] performance in the 1862 Civil War Battle of Glorieta Pass near Sante Fe, New Mexico, Major John Chivington led 700 members of the Third Colorado Calvary in an attack on tribes of Cheyenne and Arapaho camped along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. Described variously as a Union Army or, a territorial militia, they perpetrated an early morning raid that the guidebook suggested was an "alleged" response to the theft of a number of head of cattle. The tribes had gained the permission of the US federal government to be exactly where they were - "It was reported" my little guidebook said, genteelly, "that an American Flag and a white truce flag flew in the camp."

Upwards of a hundred and fifty - mostly women and children - were murdered by Chivington and his men. The text daintily mentions the nine Colorado soldiers killed [one immediately assumes by friendly fire] and then enters into a discussion about slaughtered buffalo herds.

Fast forward to early summer, 2023. We are set up in the Hasty Campground of the John Martin State Park near Lamar. Intent on revisiting one of the memorable and haunting moments of my cycling journey we travel not just to the exceptionally defunct town of Chivington (est. 1887) but journey over miles of dirt roads to the battlefield itself. It is an emotional experience that is hard to describe.

An American flag flies over the "Visitor Center" at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site which is, more precisely, a prefab building that was probably transported there on a truck. The banner is oddly configured - there are not fifty stars yet here it is at an official US facility. A nearby plaque explains. It represents the flag that leaders of the tribes camping peacefully by Sand Creek were instructed to fly - that they were in fact flying the day of the assault - to signify that they were there with permission of the federal government. They were, in fact, involved in negotiations to reach a long-term agreement. There's more.

Two officers commanding companies of the 1st Colorado - Captain Silas Soule (son of Maine abolitionists) and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, a New Yorker - refused to fight and ordered their men not to fire on the inhabitants. Both wrote letters that, astonishingly, resurfaced only in the year 2000 detailing the attack, the presence of white traders who were also fired upon and of atrocities perpetrated on the living and the dead by Colorado soldiers. 

Captain Soule's letter is particularly disturbing, as he spares no one's sensitivities in reporting about women and children, on their knees pleading for their lives, hacked to death in the frenzy of indiscriminate killing. Captain Soule had accompanied Major Edward Wynkoop and was personally aware of the peace talks, and assurances of safety that had been extended by the US government. He later testified against Chivington, and was himself murdered on a street in Denver by assailants who were never brought to justice.

What is to be made of this? Aside from the obvious indignities - it took into the 21st Century for the facts of this horror to be accessible and acknowledged, for example - it is left to the individual to ponder what their heart says. All I know is that a visit to the battlefield did not settle the unease I have felt since taking the picture in July, 1976 during the celebration of America's Bicentennial, and Colorado's Centennial. Indeed, it only guaranteed further study, and a longer exploration of the battlefield itself.

As for the small collection of abandoned buildings called Chivington... It should keep it's name.

The decaying buildings (the two story school house is but a few rows of bricks on a crumbling foundation) should be allowed their ultimate ends. This forgotten place stands as a reminder that America is a great country, Colorado a magnificent place to live, to work and to raise a family, and they are greater still when all of our history is available to be understood, lest it be repeated.