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Colonel John Chivington (1821-1894), born in Lebanon, Ohio, was the hero of Glorietta Pass and the man responsible for the Sand Creek Massacre. After being drawn toward Methodism, Chivington decided to become a minister and was ordained in 1844.
During 1853, he worked in a Methodist missionary expedition to the Wyandot Indians in Kansas. Because of his outspoken hatred of slavery, in 1856, Chivington received a threatening letter from pro-slavery members in his congregation. As a result, the Methodist Church transferred Chivington to a parish in Omaha, Nebraska.
In 1860, when he was made the presiding elder of the Rocky Mountain District of the Methodist Church, Chivington and his family moved to Denver, Colorado.
While he received fierce loyalty from many of his men, one man, Silas Soule refused Chivington's orders to attack a peaceful Cheyenne settlement at Sand Creek. Soule commanded his men to hold their fire and watched with horror as Chivington's forces committed atrocities against women and children.
Although the massacre occurred during the Civil War, the nation was shocked at the brutality of the attack, the mutilation of corpses and the later display of body parts as trophies.
Soule and some of the men that he commanded testified against Chivington at an Army investigation of the incident. Chivington denounced Soule as a coward. Silas Soule was later murdered by a soldier who had participated at Sand Creek, and some believed Chivington may have been responsible.
The investigation of the massacre found no wrong-doing on Chivington's part, but the Congress refused to support an Army request to exterminate the Native population, probably in part resulting from the testimony against Chivington.
External link
- PBS Biography (http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/chivington.htm)
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