By Mike Bowen, co-author, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site
The location of Black Kettle’s village and Sand Creek battle locations in 1864 became missing sometime between 1868 and 1908. Just four years after Sand Creek, Lt. Bonsall traveled from Ft. Lyon to the site and measured the village location.
Bonsall documented the site on a strip map, but nothing was physically left behind to mark it.
In 1865 Colonel Chivington described the village as being in the area of the Big Bend of the Sandy and the fight was on the south branch of the Big Sandy (Report of The Secretary of War, 39th Congress. 2nd Session Special Orders No. 23, page 195).
Most believed he meant it was on the bend furthest to the south, so over time, the bend at what is now the National Park Service Sand Creek site, the bend furthest to the south, became accepted as the location of Black Kettle’s village and battle area.
In 1908 four veteran soldiers met to hold a reunion and mark the spot of the village and where they fought. It was unknown at this time where the village and battle ground were located. The veteran soldiers met in Kit Carson and made their way down Sand Creek. See chapter two in our book, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site, to see what they concluded.
Somehow Bonsall’s map went missing, and it’s likely most didn’t even know about it. But it’s also likely some were aware of its existence.
In 1913, historian George Hyde mails a map to George Bent, asking him to fill in details about the location of lodges at Sand Creek. The map is drawn with a pencil and shows a bend in the creek. However, there are some problems with the map—there is no legend or key, and there are two different sets of handwriting on it. It’s clear that what some claim to be the “Bent map,” is actually Hyde’s map with Bent filling in missing information. The bend on the map looks nearly identical to the bend at the NPS Sand Creek site. It was traced from the 1894 U.S.G.S. topo map. Another problem: the bend is only ¼ mile long and George Bent wrote in his letters that the Cheyenne villages were 2-3 miles long.
A stone marker was placed in 1950 at what we refer to as the traditional site and what is now the NPS Sand Creek site. The site was simply accepted but was never verified.
If the Bonsall map never went missing, it’s probable the stone marker doesn’t get placed. All someone had to do was measure six miles down the creek from Three Forks—it was something known at the time, as Bonsall used it to measure from to his camp no. 2.
It’s interesting the Bonsall map is mysteriously found in the 1990s, just as efforts get underway to determine the correct Sand Creek site location. The NPS tried to use the map at the onset of getting involved, claiming he rounded off his numbers and said it was actually about six miles. The distance from Three Forks to the NPS Sand Creek bluff is nearly eight miles.
Within Bonsall’s six miles from Three Forks to his Camp no. 2, he measured the village, from burned tipi remains . He didn’t measure the battle field—there would be no way of knowing what to measure. He didn’t see any artifacts, and we know from the artifacts Chuck found, the battle areas are spread out over several miles and in multiple directions.
When the NPS got involved in Sand Creek in the late 90s, they didn’t know where Three Forks was located—Chuck knew where Three Forks was before seeing the Bonsall map. He had access to 1936 aerial agricultural photo maps that clearly show a trail splitting off into three different directions—he viewed those maps about 1995. He first saw the Bonsall map about 1997. Three Forks is located on the Bowen Meadow Ranch.
For the NPS to say about six miles, an additional two miles to the bluff would have to be included. There’s no way Bonsall actually measured over eight miles and rounded down to six. The NPS could claim Three Forks is somewhere else but they still own the burden of proof concerning artifacts. Their alleged massacre location is void of period artifacts.
A big problem for the alleged massacre location: The spot on Bonsall’s map where he measured the village lines up with where Chuck found village artifacts on the family ranch, starting two miles up the creek from the bluff, the alleged massacre location.
Chuck meticulously documented the artifacts he found with GPS coordinates and a photo—the GPS coordinates have been uploaded into satellite imagery and they show how spread out the village was, about 2-3 miles long. They also show running battle areas scattered over several miles, starting on the opposite side of the creek from the village—very little fighting took place in the village.
We know from where artifacts were found, Bonsall’s numbers weren’t rounded off by much, if at all. The measurement of the village site on the Bonsall map lines up with the measurement of Chuck’s village site discovery, using satellite imagery to measure from Three Forks.
It’s incredible how modern technology verifies a strip map from 1868.
It’s possible that Bonsall, who was reporting to Fort Lyon, turned in his map and documents there, and when the Fort became no more, all of those files went to the archives. They were discovered in the 1990s in the National Archives. But the timing of the map’s discovery is suspect.
The missing Bonsall map allowed for the massacre claim to be pushed forward—the massacre story claims the Indians were camped below that bluff where they couldn’t see an approaching enemy. Six miles down the creek from Three Forks is his camp no. 2, which is about two miles up the creek from the bluff. And the village was documented up the creek a little ways from that camp. The Bonsall map is decisive evidence the Indians did not camp below that bluff.
The massacre narrative was being established during the hearings.
B. F. Wade, Chairman, Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, claimed in his report: all testimony shows the Indians were peaceful with the whites, Dog Soldiers were not at Sand Creek, Indians were “indiscriminately slaughtered” in the village then started flying over the plain “in terror and confusion,” to name a few (Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War 1865, Thirty-Eighth Congress, Second Session).
He does later admit in the report, “Some of the Indians had committed acts of hostility towards the whites” (Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War 1865, Thirty-Eighth Congress, Second Session). He contradicted himself when he opened with saying all of the testimony proved the Indians were peaceful. He lied in an official military report.
Major Anthony was familiar with Dog Soldiers that were in Black Kettle’s village at Sand Creek. George Bent was one of them that went on many raids, and he wrote about Little Bear’s Sand Creek account. Little Bear is the one that got up very early the morning of November 29, 1864 and went across the creek and up on a hill to get his horse. He looked south toward the lodgepole trail and saw a long black line—he knew it was soldiers several miles away. Little Bear had an encounter with Major Anthony on Ash Creek two months before Sand Creek—Anthony was the Commanding Officer of Fort Lyon.
“Sept 1864, the Cheyennes were under these chiefs: Black Kettle, White Antelope, and War Bonnet. Arapahoes: Little Raven, Spotted Wolf and Storm…Spotted Horse, Big Bear, and Little Bear charged these two Anthony’s men and killed them. Cheyennes and Arapahoes were all around Anthony by this time,” Bent said (Bent to Hyde, 1-29-1913). Major Anthony knew the Indians at Sand Creek were not peaceful.
The artifacts show the village and battle areas to be separate locations—there was very little fighting in the village. We also know from multiple eyewitnesses including Irving Howbert, Morse Coffin and Cheyenne Dog Soldier, George Bent, warriors were indeed in the village. Read our blog about that here: Warriors. It was also said that soldiers could not tell the difference between a warrior from his squaw from firing distance. “It was difficult to tell a squaw from a buck fifty yards away,” Lt. Templeton said (Memoirs of Lt. Templeton from the Pioneers Museum in Colorado Springs).
“I would respectfully request that some one friendly to the ‘poor red brethren,’ let us know, through your paper, by what means a warrior may be distinguished from his squaw. I have been among Indians of different tribes, and I think it an impossibility to distinguish one sex from the other at gun-shot distance. Yours, and friendly to the whites—Spakes” (Spakes, Rocky Mountain News (Daily), From Fort Lyon, July 19, 1865, page 2).
The major claim for Sand Creek being labeled as a massacre is alleging the soldiers performed a sneak attack, surrounded the village and killed the Indians as they awoke and came out of their tipis. If that was true, the Indians couldn’t then fly over the plains in “terror and confusion.” Soldiers surrounding the village and killing the Indians and the Indians flying up the plains on foot cannot both be true. In fact, neither of those claims are true. And as already stated, the location the Indians are alleged to have camped is void of period artifacts. It would have been littered with bullets, cannonball shell fragments, the .69 caliber lead balls that went into the cannonballs, and much more.
Wade and Tappan were setting the stage for the massacre narrative which would need a setting/backdrop for a village location where the Cheyenne and Arapaho couldn’t see the soldiers coming until it was too late.
Wade was working with Sam Tappan, who led the hearings. Tappan was known as Chivington’s enemy, documented by Irving Howbert. See our video from Howbert’s Sand Creek account here: Howbert
Howbert was an eyewitness and likely a witness Colonel Chivington would have called to testify. But Chivington was denied witnesses in Denver and only a few were allowed to testify on his behalf at all. This set the stage for a one-sided hearing, not a legitimate investigation. It wasn’t a sneak attack on a peaceful sleeping village. George Bent and Little Bear confirm the soldiers were seen off in the distance as a long black line, (Bent to Hyde 4-14-1906). For soldiers on a horse to appear as a long black line, they would be several miles away. Indians immediately began to flee.
This isn’t from an opinion we made up, it’s from eyewitnesses.
We didn’t grow up learning the event was a battle—the only thing we knew was the massacre claim. We only learned the running battle account through discovery of artifacts and research of eyewitness accounts.
Due to being denied witnesses, Chivington wrote the Synopsis of the Sand Creek Investigation, to defend himself and his actions at Sand Creek, which included accounts from soldiers. See our blog about it here: Synopsis.
Also due to the one-sided hearings, soldiers Morse Coffin and Irving Howbert both wrote about Sand Creek, defending it as a battle. Howbert wrote two books, Memories of a Lifetime in the Pike’s Peak Region and Indians of the Pike’s Peak Region, and Coffin had his documentation initially published in the Colorado Sun. It was later published, verbatim, in a book, The Battle of Sand Creek.
There’s only one reason someone would be denied witnesses and the ability to defend himself, and that’s to stack the deck to determine the outcome before any investigation takes place. Any fair and honest investigation would have allowed Chivington to defend himself and be able to call the witnesses (eyewitnesses) he wanted. Most that testified for Tappan, claiming Sand Creek was a massacre, were not at Sand Creek. What was the Commission afraid of hearing? That their massacre narrative wasn’t true?
The Bonsall map going missing was just the start to the muddying of the waters and history being retold. It very much proves the location below the NPS bluff to not be correct—all someone has to do is measure six miles down the creek from Three Forks to what was Bonsall’s camp no. 2. It is about two miles up the creek from the bluff.
Even if the Bonsall map wasn’t put away on purpose, its disappearance still helped the massacre story move forward. There weren’t any other maps that contradicted the claim on their own. The Hyde/Bent map, for example, didn’t have a legend or a key. So there wasn’t any way to look at it at the time and know it was wrong. It’s the artifacts that disprove that map—they clearly show a village that is about 2-3 miles long and the Bent map shows a village with a bend only about ¼ of a mile long. Bent also wrote in a letter to Hyde the villages were 2-3 miles long, so if it had a legend, he would have known Hyde’s map was incorrect.
There wasn’t any physical evidence at the time. It was just a claim the Indians were massacred below what is now the NPS bluff, or what used to be called Monument Hill. But the monument is no more—it was taken down by the National Park Service. The monument was paid for by the people of Lamar, Eads and Chivington. The monument should be returned to the people, and since we discovered the real location of Black Kettle’s village and running battle areas, we would gladly see that the monument is placed in a good location and taken care of.
Most assumed the bend furthest to the south was the correct spot, since Chivington said the village was on the south branch of the Big Sandy, but people didn’t have any context to what he meant. The land had not yet been surveyed, so there weren’t any maps documenting the location. He was referring to a region, not a specific bend. Learn more about this in chapter five of our book, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site.
It’s also important to note that the alleged massacre location was never verified by an eyewitness. It wasn’t verified by artifacts. It was never verified at all.
The Lost Sand Creek Site, discovered by Chuck, with the assistance of his wife Sheri, is verified by over 4,000 battle and village artifacts, along with eyewitness accounts from soldiers including Irving Howbert and Morse Coffin.
Please help us keep accurate history alive. Our discovery has been silenced and minimized—the truth needs to be known. Knowledge is power.
The massacre claim was initially used to destroy Colonel Chivington as Lt. Colonel Sam Tappan was furious that he was passed up for a promotion by John Chivington, who had no previous military experience heading in Glorieta. Chivington was appointed Major to lead soldiers there and due to his great victory, he was promoted to Colonel from Major, skipping Lt. Colonel, all in just a few months. Tappan was next in line to become Colonel. He didn’t take kindly to a non military man with much less military experience and a lower ranking passing him up for a promotion.
The massacre claim is now being used to destroy patriotism. The goal is for people to visit the NPS Sand Creek site or see a Sand Creek exhibit at History Colorado and leave feeling ashamed of their white American ancestors and hating their country.
We are out to tell the truth. Most people that believe the massacre claim do so because that’s all they’ve heard, but a lie told a thousand times is still a lie. If we have to tell the truth a thousand times, or more, that is what we will do.
You can learn more about the discovery of the real location of Black Kettle’s village and running battle areas in We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site.
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