The destruction of the stage route was not the first, though it was the most general hostility which marked the commencement of a new Indian war. Since the spring of 1864 events had occurred which in the absence of a more rigorous control than the Indian Department possessed, were likely to lead to trouble. The Cheyenne had been dissatisfied with the Fort Wise treaty ever since its conclusion. The Sioux were carrying on a prolonged war. The Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa were ready to be started on the war-path. It was the old story of too much compression and isolated attacks going unpunished. Whatever the merits of an original controversy, the only way to keep the savages under control was to make fair retribution follow close upon the commission of an outrage. But the punishment needed to be fair. In April, 1864, a ranchman named Ripley came into one of the camps on the South Platte and declared that some Indians had stolen his stock. Perhaps his statement was true; but it must be remembered that the ranchman whose stock strayed away was prone to charge theft against the Indians, and that there is only Ripley's own word that he ever had any stock. Captain Sanborn, commanding, sent out a troop of cavalry to recover the animals. They came upon some Indians with horses which Ripley claimed as his, and in an attempt to disarm them, a fight occurred in which the troop was driven off. Their lieutenant thought the Indians were Cheyenne. A few weeks after this, Major Jacob Downing, who had been in Camp Sanborn inspecting troops, came into Denver and got from Colonel Chivington about forty men, with whom "to go against the Indians." Downing later swore that he found the Cheyenne village at Cedar Bluffs. "We commenced shooting; I ordered the men to commence killing them.... They lost ... some twenty-six killed and thirty wounded.... I burnt up their lodges and everything I could get hold of.... We captured about one hundred head of stock, which was distributed among the boys." On the 12th of June, a family living on Box Elder Creek, twenty miles east of Denver, was murdered by the Indians. Hungate, his wife, and two children were killed, the house burned, and fifty or sixty head of stock run off. When the "scalped and horribly mangled bodies" were brought into Denver, the population, already uneasy, was thrown into panic by this appearance of danger so close to the city. Governor Evans began at once to organize the militia for home defence and to appeal to Washington for help.