Buried Truth Exposed
Aloha,
Yesterday, I went with friends to see the movie Killers of the Flower Moon. And I find myself fighting back tears even now as I write this.
Yes, yes, masterful directing, acting, cinematography, and all the rest. It’s the true story – hidden for a hundred years – told through this film that moves me. A story of a native tribe of people who trusted outsiders and that trust was broken. Not being able to find the best adjective to describe this particular breaking of trust, I consulted a thesaurus and started with “despicable.” ALL of its synonyms apply.
Someone else had actually invited me to go see it when it first opened in theaters but I declined. I thought, “Mm, nope, not sure I want to feel that.”
I mean, as a kid, I had grown up thumbing through very graphic photo-journalism books of the holocaust forever housed on the living-room coffee table – my parents’ reminder to themselves and warning to me, “Never again!” Together with all the WWII movies I watched then, I knew exactly how to hide the persecuted if I wasn’t being persecuted and how to escape and save others if I was.
And starting when I was 13, I was drawn to all the movies that attempted to tell the genocidal truth of the colonists vs. the Native Tribes. One quarter of my blood is of Native American origin, after all (Diné and Siksikáwa).
Mm, yeah, not sure I want to feel what that film has to say.
Then there were the countless books in the house about great grandfather, Col. Edward Wanshaer Wynkoop. My father’s father even wrote a book about him that was never published but I had access to the manuscript. I immersed myself in all of Colonel Ed’s adventures and heroics beginning with becoming the first sheriff of Arapahoe County (now, the entire NE quarter of present State of Colorado) in 1858 and his officership as a Major in the First Colorado Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War in 1861.
As a result of his experiences in the Civil War, great grandfather encouraged the army toward peace efforts with the Cheyenne in 1864 and was unceremoniously transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas. Unbeknownst to great grantfather, though, war-like rumblings between the United States and the Indian Nations of the area had been stewing since 1861.
September 28, 1864. Front row, kneeling, left to right: Major Edward W. Wynkoop, commander at Fort Lyon and later agent for the Cheyennes and Arapahoes; Captain Silas S. Soule, provost marshal, later murdered in Denver. Middle row, seated, left to right: White Antelope (or perhaps White Wolf), Bull Bear, Black Kettle, One Eye, Natame (Arapaho). Back row, standing, left to right: Colorado militiaman, unknown civilian, John H. Smith (interpreter), Heap of Buffalo (Arapaho), Neva (Arapaho), unknown civilian, sentry. Another identification states that Neva is seated on the left and the man next to Smith is White Wolf (Cheyenne). Another Identification for back row starring 3rd from left: John Simpson Smith, Heap of Buffalo, Bosse, Dexter Colley, unidentified.
In 1851, the United States and seven Indian nations, including the Cheyenne and Arapaho, signed a treaty in which the United States recognized that the Cheyenne and Arapaho held a vast territory encompassing present-day southeastern Wyoming, southwestern Nebraska, most of eastern Colorado, and the westernmost portions of Kansas.
However, the discovery of gold in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in 1858, brought a flood of gold-rushers and immigrants across Cheyenne and Arapaho lands. The onslaught pressured federal authorities to negotiate a new treaty. Six chiefs of the Southern Cheyenne and four of the Arapaho signed the new treaty with the United States, leaving them with less than 1/13th the size of the territory recognized in the earlier treaty.
The Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors, angered by the chiefs actions, disavowed the treaty—which never received the blessing of the Council of 44, the supreme tribal authority—and refused to abide by its constraints.
In 1864, word was received that the plains tribes were going to “drive the whites out of the country.” Many skirmishes occurred until the day great grandfather arrived and was alerted by his friend, Captain Silas Soule, that a massacre was likely to happen any day and led by Col. John M. Chivington.
Many army officers, including Captain Silas Soule and my great grandfather, protested that attacking a peaceful camp would violate the pledge of safety provided to the Indians and would dishonor the uniform of the Army.
Despite the objections, Chivington gave the order to attack the following morning. The officers who had protested the attack refused to obey and told their men to hold fire.
“I refused to fire, and swore that none but a coward would, for by this time hundreds of women and children were coming towards us, and getting on their knees for mercy. I tell you Ned it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized. … I saw two Indians hold one of another’s hands, chased until they were exhausted, when they kneeled down, and clasped each other around the neck and were both shot together. They were all scalped, and as high as half a dozen taken from one head. They were all horribly mutilated. One woman was cut open and a child taken out of her, and scalped. … Squaw’s [private parts] were cut out for trophies. You would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there.” — Captain Silas Soule to Major Edward W. Wynkoop
“I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women cut all to pieces … With knives; scalped; their brains knocked out; children two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors … By whom were they mutilated? By the United States troops.” — John S. Smith, Congressional Testimony of Mr. John S. Smith, 1865
“I saw one squaw lying on the bank, whose leg had been broken. A soldier came up to her with a drawn sabre. She raised her arm to protect herself; he struck, breaking her arm. She rolled over, and raised her other arm; he struck, breaking that, and then left her with out killing her. I saw one squaw cut open, with an unborn child lying by her side.” — Robert Bent, New York Tribune, 1879
“There was one little child, probably three years old, just big enough to walk through the sand. The Indians had gone ahead, and this little child was behind, following after them. The little fellow was perfectly naked, travelling in the sand. I saw one man get off his horse at a distance of about seventy-five yards and draw up his rifle and fire. He missed the child. Another man came up and said, ‘let me try the son of a bitch. I can hit him.’ He got down off his horse, kneeled down, and fired at the little child, but he missed him. A third man came up, and made a similar remark, and fired, and the little fellow dropped.” — Major Anthony, New York Tribune, 1879
“Fingers and ears were cut off the bodies for the jewelry they carried. The body of White Antelope, lying solitarily in the creek bed, was a prime target. Besides scalping him the soldiers cut off his nose, ears, and testicles-the last for a tobacco pouch.” — Stan Hoig
“Jis’ to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds, up thar at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children. You call sich soldiers Christians, do ye? And Indians savages? What der yer s’pose our Heavenly Father, who made both them and us, thinks of these things? I tell you what, I don’t like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I’ve fought ’em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would.” — Kit Carson to Col. James Rusling
On behalf of the U.S. Army, great grandfather substantiated the later accounts of survivors and personally investigated Col. John M. Chivington’s conduct at Sand Creek, which led to Chivington’s condemnation.
A monument installed on the Colorado State Capitol grounds in 1909 lists Sand Creek as one of the “battles and engagements” fought by Colorado troops in the American Civil War. In 2002, the Colorado Historical Society, authorized by the Colorado General Assembly, added an additional plaque to the monument which states that the original designers of the monument “mischaracterized” Sand Creek by calling it a battle.
The site is now preserved by the National Park Service. The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site was dedicated on April 28, 2007, almost 142 years after the massacre. The American Battlefield Trust and its partners preserved 640 acres of Sand Creek and deeded it to the national historic site.
On December 3, 2014, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper formally apologized to descendants of Sand Creek massacre victims gathered in Denver to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the event. Hickenlooper stated, “We should not be afraid to criticize and condemn that which is inexcusable. … On behalf of the State of Colorado, I want to apologize. We will not run from this history.”
In October 2022, it was announced that almost 3,500 acres would be added to the National Historic Site to preserve for the tribes. “The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are excited to see the additional 3,478 acres to the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site which is providing security for the protection of our Sacred site,” said Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Governor Reggie Wassana in a statement. President Biden’s Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced of the preservation, “It is our solemn responsibility at the Department of the Interior, as caretakers of America’s national treasures, to tell the story of our nation. The events that took place here forever changed the course of the Northern Cheyenne, Northern Arapaho, and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.”
In a world where people allow their egos to have authority over them, we can expect more revelations like great grandfather’s story above, like what the movie exposed: more greed, more hatred, more aggression, more inflated levels of self-concern: MY wants, MY pleasures, MY needs, MY opinions, MY rights. Nothing good ever comes of living from ego; only struggle, anxiety, and suffering for ourselves AND others.
At the foundation of the 24 religions and belief systems that I studied over the past 49+ years, often hidden from the average believer, is the unshakable knowledge that the only thing that exists – the only thing – is that which we are constantly seeking (Happiness, Love, ALOHA, The Ultimate Understanding of The Universe, God, Goddess, Source Energy, Basic Goodness, The Tao, Spaciousness, All That Is, Allah, Yahweh, Quantum Field, Thisness, The One…). Call It whatever you want – It has no name. And It’s not a thing. It’s pure light – energy in motion that is conscious, loving, & constantly providing. It is ALL creation. What is It doing? It’s creating and experiencing things other than Itself. And we and all creation are the instruments through which It is creating and experiencing.
When one can truly understand the Ultimate Understanding of the Universe on a feeling level (which is not as difficult as your ego makes it out to be), one begins to experience and create peace – for oneself, others, and the planet. THAAAAAT is the aim of my little course. And it does that by pointing people in the direction of experiences that bring them to a profound feeling sense of being that which they are: the Divine.
This is what people are waking up to. May you be drawn in one way or another to experience being free of ego’s maniacal control and create peace for yourself, others, and the planet.
Aloha
Kit
