The Soldier Officers Who Refused Genocide - Part 1

The forgotten story of the two Union officers who refused to murder a peaceful encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho people at Sand Creek.

The crackle of the wood and the smell of the smoke always bring the mind back to the night before—that freezing November evening in 1864, out on the high, wind-swept plains of Colorado.

Around a campfire just like this one, two young officers, Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, sat with their men. They were Union soldiers, volunteers who had signed up to fight in the Civil War. But the order that came down the line that night had nothing to do with the war. They were told that at dawn, they were going to ride out and launch a surprise attack on an encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho people sleeping along a bend in Sand Creek.

Both men knew the chiefs in that valley. They knew Chief Black Kettle had traveled to Denver under a promise of peace. They knew that above his lodge, Black Kettle had raised an American flag alongside a white flag of truce.

To ride in there with guns blazing wasn't a battle. It was a slaughter.

When the sun broke over the plains the next morning, the order to charge was given. But Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer did something that required a brand of courage few people ever have to find. They looked at their commanding officer, they looked at the threat of a firing squad for mutiny, and they chose to look after their own souls.

They ordered their companies to hold their horses.

As the rest of the regiment charged forward into the horrific violence that followed, Soule’s and Cramer’s men sat frozen in their saddles, weapons cold, refusing to fire a single shot. In the middle of madness, they drew a line in the dirt.

The wind gets a little colder when you think about what those two men were looking at through the dawn mist.

It wasn't a warrior outpost. It was a village of about 750 people, and nearly all of them were women, children, and old men. The young warriors were miles away, out hunting for food to keep the village alive through the coming winter. The people sleeping in those lodges were the most vulnerable—grandmothers, mothers, and little kids.

When the cavalry charged, Chief Black Kettle ran up an American flag and a white sheet on a pole right above his lodge. He was shouting to his people not to be afraid, that the soldiers wouldn't hurt them, because the government had promised them safety there.

But the horses kept coming.

What Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer witnessed next, and what they forced their men to watch without joining in, was pure madness. Soldiers were gunning down toddlers who ran out of the tents. They were murdering pregnant women. Old men who couldn't run were shot where they sat. When the shooting stopped, the soldiers took knives to the bodies, collecting trophies from the dead.

By the time the sun was high, around 230 innocent people lay butchered in the sand. Over half of them were women and children.

That is the horror Soule and Cramer refused to join. When Chivington screamed at them to charge, they looked past the uniforms and saw the human beings in that village. They knew that if they rode in, they would be stepping over the bodies of children.

So they stood their ground, held their fire, and saved the few they could—knowing they would have to carry the sights and sounds of that morning for the rest of their lives.

Their refusal to participate created a pocket of safety on the battlefield, a small window of hesitation that allowed several fleeing families to escape into the bluffs.

But the story didn't end when the smoke cleared. To be continued….