Tour Entertains Eads Babe Ruth Tournament Players Including Team From Lamar
By Mike Bowen, co-author, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site
Over 25 years before Chuck and Sheri Bowen discovered the Lost Sand Creek Site, Chuck presented his first Sand Creek tour in the summer of ‘70.
He was not yet aware of the massive discovery he and Sheri would make in the ‘90s. He also wasn’t aware that the Sand Creek Battle Ground monument, that once stood at the National Park Service Sand Creek site, marked the wrong location.
From our book:
Bill and Tootie Dawson bought the traditional Sand Creek site in 1965 from our neighbor Levi Rutledge. Perhaps an attempt to help get my mind off the tragedy of losing my brother, Bill asked me if I would be interested in leading a tour sometime between the end of July and the first of August at his place on Sand Creek. I accepted and asked for the help of Sheri, her sister, and our friend, Mary. We used our journalism class skills to make a newspaper as if reporting breaking news to tell the Sand Creek story. The tour was organized to entertain the baseball players in the upcoming Babe Ruth tournament in Eads. This experience proved invaluable for Sheri and me (We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site).
The Babe Ruth tournament was held in Eads, CO Thursday, July 30 – Sunday, August 2, 1970, and the Sand Creek tour was offered for the baseball players. Lamar played in the tournament and notable players included Greg Harms, Harry Eisenhauer, Jr., David Vickers and John Northrup. See the picture in this blog that shows results from the tournament.
Chuck led the tour with Sheri’s assistance. He graduated high school two months prior. They provided tour guests with handouts made from the newspaper they created in their journalism class.
The tour was led at the bluff where the National Park Service Sand Creek site is located. The massacre story claims that Black Kettle’s village was camped below this bluff. However, no period artifacts have ever been found there. If that story was true, that area would have been littered with bullets, cannonball shell fragments, kettle fragments, arrowheads, knives, and much more.
Chuck Bowen, with the assistance of his wife Sheri, discovered over 4,000 village and battle artifacts on the Bowen family ranch, all starting nearly two miles up the creek from the NPS bluff. The actual location shows the Indians were camped out in the open prairie along the north bank of the creek where they could see an approaching enemy coming from miles away. George Bent said the Indians spotted the soldiers as a “long black line”—read about this in our book.
Bowen’s village discovery site matches the description of the village location made by soldiers including Silas Soule and Irving Howbert. Read Howbert’s account in chapter five of our book. See more on Soule here: Soule.
A few things can be learned from Bowen’s discovery of the village site and running battle locations:
- The village site and battle areas are separate locations.
- Very little fighting took place in the village.
- Running battle areas stretched near and along the creek for several miles and started on the opposite side of the creek from the village.
- The village site covered about three miles, with tipis scattered around small pools of water fed by underground aquifers. Extra space between each tipi was also needed for a horse to be tethered—it was not three miles of tipis right next to each other. There was ample space between each tipi. More can be learned about this in our book.
Another part of the massacre claim is the village was just women, children and elderly. We know from the artifacts the battle areas stretched several miles, and there’s no way that women, children and elderly fled up the creek on foot several miles from soldiers on horseback.
Multiple eyewitnesses including Major Anthony, Silas Soule and George Bent have all said there were many warriors in the village. George Bent wrote in a letter to a historian that the Cheyenne had guns they had taken during raids (Bent to Hyde, 5-4-1906).
Captain Silas Soule, First Colorado Cavalry, testified under oath that the Indians were given back their weapons when they left Fort Lyon before heading to Sand Creek—he said he knew this because he was the one to return them (Report on the Conduct of the War, 38 Congress, 2nd session, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1865).
Bowen discovered hundreds of bullets at Sand Creek, and not all of them would have been fired by soldiers. Bullets would have also been fired at soldiers.
Very little about Sand Creek is agreed upon, but one of those points is that the engagement lasted about 6-8 hours. Indian elderly, women and children would not have been able to elude soldiers for 6-8 hours. Sand Creek was a running battle between soldiers and warriors—there were over 70 soldier casualties.
The idea warriors were off hunting is a myth—multiple eyewitnesses claimed many warriors were in the village, and Silas Soule testified that Major Anthony ordered the Indians to camp at Sand Creek as it was a good place to hunt buffalo (Report on the Conduct of the War, 38 Congress, 2nd session, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1865). In reality, the Indians would set up a village where there would already be good hunting. Watch our Silas Soule video here: Soule.
William Breakenridge, Sand Creek soldier with the Third Colorado Cavalry, and later a Deputy Sheriff in Tombstone, AZ, said Sand Creek was the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians’ “hunting camp.” Two soldiers, Soule and Breakenridge, who did not know each other, both said Sand Creek was the Indians’ hunting camp. The Deputy Sheriff witnessed the shootout at O.K. Corral. See our blog here: Breakenridge.
Anyone that believes the claim the warriors needed to go hunt somewhere else hasn’t spent any or much time on that part of Sand Creek—it is still a great place for hunting, and as Soule testified, there would have also been buffalo.
Soule also testified that he accompanied a group in December 1864 that went back out to Sand Creek and he counted, “69 dead Indians,” (Report on the Conduct of the War, 38 Congress, 2nd session, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1865). The NPS claims over 250 Indians were killed without any citation for that number.
We’re certainly not defending a massacre against defenseless women and children—we’re debunking it. The massacre story is based on oral history which cannot be verified. The running battle story by Irving Howbert and other soldiers is verified by over 4,000 pieces of physical evidence Bowen discovered at the Lost Sand Creek Site.
Detailed maps of artifacts found at the Lost Sand Creek Site are in our book, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site.
The massacre story needs that bluff for a dramatic backdrop, but this isn’t a movie—it’s real life. The story is intended to tug at the heartstrings and create an emotional reaction. We shouldn’t allow emotions to cloud our minds from truth.
We need to preserve accurate history. When it’s not preserved, it’s not taught honestly. We don’t have a dog in this fight. We’re about telling the truth, and the truth is found in the story of the artifacts.
Learn more in our book. Click the Buy the Book tab at the top right of the page.
Let’s pursue and share the truth. Truth wins.
