Page:A Century of Dishonor.pdf/366

348 saddle-blanket entirely fringed around the edges with white women’s scalps, with the long, fair hair attached. There was an Indian saddle over the pommel of which was stretched skin stripped from the body of a white woman. Is it any wonder that soldiers flushed with victory, after one of the hardest campaigns ever endured by men, should indulge—some of them—in unwarranted atrocities after finding such evidence of barbarism, and while more than forty of their comrades were weltering in their own blood upon the field?

If “H. H.” had been in Denver in the early part of that summer, when the bloated, festering bodies of the Hungate family—father, mother, and two babes—were drawn through the streets naked in an ox-wagon, cut, mutilated, and scalped—the work of those same red fiends who were so justly punished at Sand Creek; if, later, “H. H.” had seen an upright and most estimable business man so crazy over the news of his son’s being tortured to death a hundred miles down the Platte, as I did; if “H. H.” had seen one-half the Colorado homes made desolate that fateful season, and a tithe of the tears that were caused to flow, I think there would have been one little word of excuse for the people of Colorado—more than a doubtful comparison with an inefficient and culpable Indian policy. Bear in mind that Colorado had no railroads then. Her supplies reached her by only one road—along the Platte—in wagons drawn by oxen, mules, or horses. That line was in full possession of the enemy. Starvation stared us in the face. Hardly a party went or came without some persons being killed. In some instances whole trains were cut off and destroyed. Sand Creek saved Colorado, and taught the Indians the most salutary lesson they had ever learned. And now, after fifteen years, and here in the shadow of the Nation’s Capitol, with the spectre of “H. H.'s” condemnation staring me in the face, I am neither afraid nor ashamed to repeat the language then used by The Denver News: “All acquitted themselves well. Colorado soldiers have again covered themselves with glory.”

Thus much of history is gone over by “H. H.” to present in true dramatic form the deplorable condition of the White River Utes, 1000 in number, who are now suffering the pangs of hunger and the discomfort of cold in the wilds of Western Colorado, without any kind agent to issue rations, provide blankets, or build fires for them. It is really too bad. A painful dispensation of Providence has deprived them of their best friend, and they are desolate and bereaved. He placed his life and its best