John Chivington

Colonel John Milton Chivington (1821-1894) was a 19th century United States Army officer noted for his role in the New Mexico Campaign of the American Civil War and in the Colorado War. He was celebrated as the hero of the 1862 Battle of Glorieta Pass, and later became infamous for his role in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre.

Biography

Chivington was born in Lebanon, Ohio. After being drawn toward Methodism, Chivington decided to become a minister and was ordained in 1844. During 1853, he worked in a Methodist missionary expedition to the Wyandot Indians in Kansas. Because of his outspoken hatred of slavery, in 1856, Chivington received a threatening letter from pro-slavery members in his congregation. As a result, the Methodist Church transferred Chivington to a parish in Omaha, Nebraska.

In 1860, when he was made the presiding elder of the Rocky Mountain District of the Methodist Church, Chivington and his family moved to Denver, Colorado. In 1861 he received a commission as a Major in the 1st Colorado Volunteers under Colonel John P. Slough. His heroics as the Battle of Glorietta Pass in the New Mexico Territory earned him great praise, and he was appointed colonel of regiment in April 1862.

After the stemming the Confederate advance, his unit was increasingly deployed against Native Americans in the conflicts that erupted on the Colorado Eastern Plains during the Civil War. In Novmeber 1864 he led the 1st Colorado Cavalry into southeastern Colorado from Bent's Fort to supervise the movement of Arapaho and Cheyenne bands under Black Kettle that were in the process of relocating from their previous reservation along the Arkansas River to a new reservation in Indian territory in present-day Oklahoma. The events during the expedition remain a controversial topic to this day because of the brutality of the raid by Chivington's troops against largely unarmed Native Americans along Sand Creek.

While he received fierce loyalty from many of his men, one man, Silas Soule refused Chivington's orders to attack a peaceful Cheyenne settlement at Sand Creek. Soule commanded his men to hold their fire and watched with horror as Chivington's forces committed atrocities against women and children.

Although the massacre occurred during the Civil War, the nation was shocked at the brutality of the attack, the mutilation of corpses and the later display of body parts as trophies.

Soule and some of the men that he commanded testified against Chivington at an Army investigation of the incident. Chivington denounced Soule as a coward. Silas Soule was later murdered by a soldier who had participated at Sand Creek, and some believed Chivington may have been responsible.

The investigation of the massacre found no wrong-doing on Chivington's part, but the Congress refused to support an Army request to exterminate the Native population, probably in part resulting from the testimony against Chivington.

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