John Chivington

John Milton Chivington was a Methodist preacher who became a colonel of Colorado volunteers and commanded the troops responsible for the Sand Creek massacre, one of the worst atrocities in the history of the United States Army. Before the Civil War he had a reputation as an abolitionist willing to face down proslavery threats, reportedly preaching in Missouri with pistols on the pulpit. Offered a chaplaincy when the war began, he asked for a fighting commission instead. He earned genuine credit at Glorieta Pass in New Mexico in March 1862, where he led a detachment over rough ground to destroy the Confederate supply train. The stroke ended the Confederacy's campaign in the far west. Appointed to command the Military District of Colorado, he turned to the war with the Cheyenne and Arapaho on the plains. On 29 November 1864 he led some seven hundred volunteers against a camp on Sand Creek whose chief, Black Kettle, had been assured of protection and was flying both a United States flag and a white flag. Between seventy and six hundred people were killed, about two thirds of them women and children. The bodies were mutilated, and body parts were carried back to Denver as trophies and displayed on a theatre stage. Congress and the army both investigated and condemned him in the strongest terms. He had already resigned his commission, however, which put him beyond court-martial, and he was never prosecuted. He later abandoned an attempt at elected office in Colorado when the massacre was raised against him. The killings destroyed what remained of Cheyenne trust in negotiated agreements and helped set off a decade of war on the central plains.

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