The Indians of the Pike's Peak Region: Including an Account of the Battle of Sand Creek, and of Occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the War with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1864 and 1868Howbert, Irving
History
The Indians of the Pike's Peak Region: Including an Account of the Battle of Sand Creek, and of Occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the War with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1864 and 1868
Howbert, Irving
El Paso County, Colo. -- History; Indians of North America -- Colorado; Sand Creek Massacre, Colo., 1864
The Indians seemed to have established a camp at some secluded place
in the timber of the Divide, from which they went out in small parties
in every direction, killing and robbing when opportunity offered. Every
day during these two weeks, Indians were seen at various places on the
Divide and the eastern part of the county. By this time, however, our
people had taken their families out of danger and were so constantly on
the alert that the Indians, while having many opportunities for looting
and robbing the deserted ranches, had few chances for surprising and
killing defenseless people, who were the only ones they cared to attack.
Throughout the raid, those who had been able to make any kind of a defense
had been let alone. The Indians seemed unwilling to take any chances or
to waste their ammunition, unless they were certain of results.
A week or two after the beginning of the Indian troubles, the people
of El Paso County took steps to form a military company to be regularly
employed against the Indians, its members to serve without pay. It was
the intention to keep this company in the field until the Indians were
driven out of the region. About the fifteenth of September, eighty
mounted and well-armed men, who had enlisted for the purpose, and of
whom I was one, met at Husted's saw-mill on the Divide and perfected
a military organization by the election of the usual company officers,
A. J. Templeton being elected captain. The company took up its line of
march through the pinery to Bijou Basin; thence eastward past the place
where Simpson's party had been besieged two or three weeks before.
After examining with much interest the scene of this fight, we went
southeasterly to Big Sandy Creek, thence down the valley of that creek
to Lake Station on the Smoky Hill wagon road, about ten miles east of
the present town of Limon. On our march we saw no Indians, and, judging
from their trails and from other indications, we decided that they were
leaving the country. As we marched down the valley of the Big Sandy, in
the vicinity of the present towns of Ramah and Calhan, we saw hundreds
of dead cattle, most of them cows that had been killed by the Indians
only a day or two before. That these cattle had been wantonly killed,
was shown by the fact that no part of the animals had been taken for
food. In almost every instance they had been shot with arrows, many
of which were at the time sticking in the carcasses. Besides the dead
cattle, we saw hundreds of live ones scattered all over the hills and
down the valley, which had evidently been driven off by the Indians
from the ranches in El Paso and the surrounding counties. At a point
about ten miles down the valley from the present station of Limon, on
the Rock Island Railway, the trail of the Indians left the valley and
turned northeastward. At this place we were about seventy-five miles
southwest from the Beecher Island battle ground, on the Arickaree fork
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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