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Congressional Testimony of John S. Smith, Eyewitness to the Sand Creek Massacre

Given on March 14, 1865

Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Massacre of Cheyenne Indians, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, 1865

Soon after gold was discovered near Pikes Peak in Colorado in 1858, American legislators established the Colorado Territory. In order to encourage white settlement the government tried to negotiate a treaty that would place the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes living throughout the territory on a small plot of land in southeastern Colorado. Many tribes either rejected or ignored the treaty and continued to roam the prairies and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Territorial governor John Evans (1814–1897) encouraged white citizens "to kill and destroy, as enemies of the country, wherever they may be found, all . . . Indians," according to Don Nardo in The Indian...