The Point of Rocks on Beaver Creek, where the eight hundred Indians were in camp, is about one hundred miles northeast of Colorado City. It is practically certain that the Indians we captured on Monument Creek two or three weeks previous were from that camp and had been sent out to secure information concerning the settlers of this region, preparatory to the raid they were then planning. There is every probability that an awful calamity would have befallen the settlers of this county had not the discovery, capture, and escape of these scouts aroused our people to a full realization of their impending danger. Had the news brought by the messenger from the Governor been our first warning, it would have been impossible after his arrival to have brought any considerable portion of our scattered settlers into Colorado City before the appearance of the Indians. Governor Evans, in telling of this incident in his evidence before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, in March, 1865, expressed the opinion that had the plan of the Indians been carried out without previous notice having been given to the settlers, it would have resulted in the most wholesale and extensive massacre that has ever been known. It was most fortunate for our people that timely notice was given in such an effective manner, because in those days news traveled slowly. Weekly mails were then the only method of disseminating news, as telegraph lines had not yet reached this part of the Territory, nor was there a newspaper published in the county; consequently news of Indian raids and outbreaks in other parts of the Territory often was a week or more in reaching El Paso County. Early realizing that they must depend upon their own resources, so far as I can see, the people of El Paso County took all necessary precautions, and acted wisely in every emergency. One day early in September, 1864, a company of the First Colorado Cavalry on its way from one of the forts in New Mexico to Denver stopped for the noon meal at Jimmy's Camp, about ten miles east of Colorado City. Not having seen any Indians on the march, both officers and men were exceedingly skeptical as to there being any in this region, and had made sport of the settlers for being so unnecessarily alarmed. Upon making camp, the soldiers turned their horses, numbering from seventy-five to one hundred, out to graze, placing only one trooper in charge of them. The horses in their grazing gradually drifted farther and farther away from camp, until finally when they were almost half a mile distant, a band of Indians suddenly came tearing out of the timber just above and almost before the soldiers realized it they had rounded up the herd and were off over the hills, yelling back taunts as they rode away. The soldiers came marching into Colorado City on foot the next day, a dejected lot, and as they passed, it gave the settlers great pleasure to jeer at them. CHAPTER IV THE THIRD COLORADO AND THE BATTLE OF SAND CREEK