11/30/2022
Indian History - Did you know?
1864
November 28, 8 pm: Col. Chivington departs Fort Lyon in Colorado, in the evening with detachments of the 1st and 3rd Regiments Colorado (US) Volunteer Cavalry. They ride north toward the Cheyenne and Arapaho camped at Sand Creek. His force numbers 675 men, and includes four 12-pounder mountain howitzers.
November 29: At dawn, Chivington orders troops to attack the village. Order breaks down within the military regiments. The soldiers murder/massacre over 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho, including about 150 women, children, and elderly. They mutilate many of the bodies. One Arapaho Chief and thirteen Cheyenne Council Chiefs are among the dead.
December 14-19: Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer of the 1st Regiment write letters to Maj. Edward Wynkoop, describing the attack at Sand Creek. Wynkoop has multiple copies of their letters made and he sends them to various military commanders and political figures. The letters are responsible in part for official investigations into the attack.
1866
April 1: Overriding President Andrew Johnson’s veto, Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill, which gives citizenship and its equal protection under federal law to all persons born in the US, but it explicitly excludes Indians.
1868
July 9: The 14th Amendment defines citizens as “All persons born or naturalized in the United States.” While it includes African Americans, the 14th Amendment does not include American Indians.
1887: The Dawes Act authorizes the President to survey “excess” American Indian Tribal lands in Oklahoma and divide them into allotments for individual Indians. It further promises citizenship for those Indians, who accept the allotments and live separately from the tribes.
1924
Inspired by the high rate of American Indian enlistment during World War I, President Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act. American Indians, the first peoples of this country, are the last to receive citizenship.
🪶It took 60 years after the Sandcreek massacre, to recognize us as citizens of our own country. My grandparents, when they were born in 1900 and 1904, were not citizens of the United States. 🪶 but each one of their sons served proudly in the military.
