Earlier this month I wrote about sometimes feeling
embarrassed to identify as a Christian. But I am embarrassed not only because of
things some Christian leaders do in the present but also because of what
some have done in the past. The Sand Creek Massacre is one sad example.
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The Bare Facts
There are background events that I don’t have
the space to elucidate here, but here are the bare facts of the Sand Creek
Massacre, which occurred 155 years ago yesterday, on November 29, 1864.
The Third Colorado Cavalry commanded by
Colonel John Chivington attacked a settlement of Cheyenne/Arapaho Indians at
Sand Creek, about 175 miles southeast of Denver. At Chivington’s insistence,
they murdered around 200 Native Americans, most of them women and children.
Prior to the massacre, Chivington reportedly
said, “Damn any man who
sympathizes with Indians! ... I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is
right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. ...
Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.”
This
was all done with the approval of Colorado Governor John Evans, who was also
the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Colorado.
The Embarrassing Facts
John Milton Chivington was born in 1821 into an
Ohio farm family. In 1844 he was ordained as a Methodist minister, serving in
that capacity in Illinois, Missouri, and then assisting in a Methodist
missionary expedition to the Wyandot Indians in Kansas in 1853. (The church I
now attend is in Wyandotte County.)
Gov. Evans was also a Methodist. He had joined
with other Methodists in 1850 to found Northwestern University in Illinois.
Then two years after becoming governor of Colorado in 1862, he and Chivington
founded Colorado Seminary, which later became the University of Denver.
The Sand Creek Massacre has, indeed, been an
embarrassment for the United Methodist Church, and five years ago they sought
repentance for that national disgrace (see here).
There were two Cavalrymen with the Third
Regiment, Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer, who refused to join in the massacre
and testified against Chivington—and Soule was shot in the back and killed in
April 1865 because of his testimony against Chivington.
It is also embarrassing to us Christians that
in contrast to Evans and Chivington, Soule was described as a “healthy skeptic”
rather than a religious believer.
Repenting of the Facts
This past Sunday Sarah Neher, the Director of Faith Formation and Youth
Ministries at Rainbow Mennonite Church, preached on “Deconstructing
Thanksgiving.” It was a bold, fitting sermon for the Sunday before the national
holiday and for the last week of National American Indian Heritage Month (here is a link to more about that).
Sarah said in her sermon,
This simple narrative [of the traditional Thanksgiving] sets the story like a fairytale. Casting Colonization as beneficial for everyone and that it was relatively peaceful. When in reality over the centuries since Europeans invaded Indigenous land, Natives have experienced genocide, the theft of their lands, and the attempted extinction of their culture.
Yes, the Sand Creek Massacre was simply the continuation of the “whites’”
treatment of Native Americans from the beginning—starting with the Pequot War
of 1636~38 and the Mystic Massacre of May 1637.
It was the continuation of words about “the merciless Indian Savages” included
in the Declaration of Independence of 1776.
Perhaps rather than observing the day after Thanksgiving as “Black
Friday,” those of us in the dominant culture should rather observe the days
following Thanksgiving as Repentance Weekend for the way our ancestors treated
the Native Americans.
That treatment has, indeed, been a national disgrace.
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For Further Information
Here
is the link to an article about the 21st annual Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual
Healing Run/Walk, currently in progress.
“Who is the
Savage” is an excellent 14-minute video about Black Kettle, the “peace
chief” head of the Sand Creek Native Americans in 1864.
And here
is the link to a Rocky Mountain PBS documentary on the Sand Creek Massacre.
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