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354 and yet he says it was fear and not principle which prevented his killing them while they were completely in his power; and, when Colonel Chivington appeared at Fort Lyon on his mission of murder and barbarity, Major Anthony made haste to accompany him with men and artillery.”

The writer of this letter says that the evidence given in this “so-called investigation” was “largely false and infamously partial.” If this were the case, why did not all persons so “infamously” slandered see to it that before the year ended their own version of the affair should reach, if not the general public, at least the Department of the Interior? Why did they leave it possible for the Secretary of the Interior to incorporate in his Annual Report for 1865—to be read by all the American people—these paragraphs?

“No official account has ever reached this office from its own proper sources of the most disastrous and shameful occurrence, the massacre of a large number of men, women, and children of the Indians of this agency (the Upper Arkansas) by the troops under the command of Colonel Chivington, of the United States Volunteer Cavalry of Colorado. * * *

“When several hundred of them had come into a place designated by Governor Evans as a rendezvous for those who would separate themselves from the hostile parties, these Indians were set upon and butchered in cold blood by troops in the service of the United States. The few who escaped to the northward told a story which effectually prevented any more advances toward peace by such of the bands as were well disposed.”

And why did the Government of the United States empower General Sanborn, in the Council held October 12th, 1865, with the Arapahoes and Cheyennes, including the remnants of bands that had escaped from the Sand Creek massacre, to formally and officially repudiate the action of the United States soldiers in that massacre? General Sanborn said, in this council:

“We all feel disgraced and ashamed when we see our officers or soldiers oppressing the weak, or making war on those who are at peace with us. * * * We are willing, as representatives of the President, to restore all the property lost at Sand Creek, or its value. * * * He has sent out his commissioners to make reparation, as far as we can. * * * So heartily do we repudiate the actions of our soldiers that we are willing to give to the chiefs in their own right 320 acres of land each, to hold as his own forever, and to each of the children and squaws who lost husbands or parents;