The desire of the Government to make farmers of these Indians was reiterated in this treaty, and evidenced by pledges of purchase of stock, agricultural implements, etc.; mills, also, and mechanic shops they were to have, and an annuity of $30,000 a year for fifteen years. There was this clause, however, in an article of the treaty, "Their annuities may, at the discretion of the President of the United States, be discontinued entirely should said Indians fail to make reasonable and satisfactory efforts to improve and advance their condition; in which case such other provision shall be made for them as the President and Congress may judge to be suitable or proper." Could there be a more complete signing away than this of all benefits provided for by the treaty?
Lands were to be assigned to them "in severalty," and certificates were to be issued by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, specifying the names of individuals; and that the "said tracts were set apart for the exclusive use and benefit of the assignees and their heirs." Each Indian was to have forty acres of land, "to include in every case, as far as practicable, a reasonable portion of timber and water."
The tenth Article of the treaty provided that the annuities now paid to the Arapahoes and Cheyennes should be continued to them until the stipulations of such treaties or articles of agreement should be fulfilled; and the seventh Article provided that the President, with the assent of Congress, should have power to modify or change any "of the provisions of former treaties" "in such manner and to whatever extent" he might judge it to be necessary and expedient for their best interests.
Could a community of people be delivered up more completely bound and at the mercy of a government? Some of the bands of the Cheyennes who were not represented at this council were much dissatisfied with the treaty, as evidently they had great reason to be. And as time went on, all the bands became dissatisfied. Two years later we find that, instead of their being settled on those farms "in severalty," the survey of their lands has been just completed, and that "a contract will soon be made for the construction of a ditch for the purpose of irrigating their arable land." "It is to be hoped," the Superintendent of the Colorado Agency writes, that "when suitable preparations for their subsistence by agriculture and grazing are made, these tribes will gradually cease their roaming, and become permanently settled." It would seem highly probable that under those conditions the half-starved creatures would be only too glad to cease to roam. It is now ten years since they were reported to be in a condition of miserable starvation every winter, trying to raise a little corn here and there, and begging to have a farmer and a blacksmith sent out to them. They are now divided and subdivided into small bands, hunting the buffalo wherever they can find him, and going in small parties because there are no longer large herds of buffaloes to be found anywhere. The Governor of Colorado says, in his report for 1863, that "these extensive subdivisions of the tribes caused great difficulty in ascertaining the really guilty parties in the commission of offences." Depredations and hostilities are being frequently committed, but it is manifestly unjust to hold the whole tribe responsible for the acts of a few.
Things grew rapidly worse in Colorado. Those "preparations for their subsistence by agriculture and grazing"—which it took so much room to tell in the treaty—not having been made; the farmer, and the blacksmith, and the grist-mill not having arrived; the contract not having been even let for the irrigating-ditch, without which no man can raise any crops in Colorado, not even on arable lands—many of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes took to a system of pilfering reprisals from emigrant trains, and in the fights resulting from this effort to steal they committed many terrible murders. All the tribes on the plains were more or less engaged in these outrages; and it was evident, before midsummer of 1864, that the Government must interfere with a strong hand to protect the emigrants and Western settlers—to protect them from the consequences of its own bad faith with the Indians. The Governor of Colorado called for military aid, and for authority to make a campaign against the Indians, which was given him. But as there was no doubt that many of the Indians were still peaceable and loyal, and he desired to avoid every possibility of their sharing in the punishment of the guilty, he issued a proclamation in June, requesting all who were friendly to come to places which he designated, where they were to be assured of safety and protection. This proclamation was sent to all the Indians of the plains. In consequence of it, several bands of friendly Arapahoes and Cheyennes came to Fort Lyon, and were there received by the officer in charge, rationed, and assured of safety. Here there occurred, on the 29th of November, one of the foulest massacres which the world has seen. This camp of friendly Indians was surprised at daybreak, and men, women, and children were butchered in cold blood. Most of those who escaped fled to the north, and, joining other bands of the tribe, proceeded at once to take most fearful, and, it must be said, natural revenge. A terrible war followed. Some of them confederated with the Sioux, and waged relentless war on all the emigrant routes across the plains. These hostilities were bitter in proportion to the bitterness of resentment felt by the refugees from this massacre. "It will be long before faith in the honor and humanity of the whites can be re-established in the minds of these barbarians," says an official report, "and the last Indian who escaped from the brutal scene at Sand Creek will probably have died before its effects will have disappeared."[[10]]
In October of the next year some of the bands, having first had their safety assured by an old and tried friend, I. H. Leavenworth, Indian Agent for the Upper Arkansas, gathered together to hold a council with United States Commissioners on the Little Arkansas. The commissioners were empowered by the President to restore to the survivors of the Sand Creek massacre full value for all the property then destroyed; "to make reparation," so far as possible. To each woman who had lost a husband there they gave one hundred and sixty acres of land; to each child who had lost a parent, the same. Probably even an Indian woman would consider one hundred and sixty acres of land a poor equivalent for a murdered husband; but the offers were accepted in good part by the tribe, and there is nothing in all the history of this patient race more pathetic than the calm and reasonable language employed by some of these Cheyenne and Arapahoe chiefs at this council. Said Black Kettle, the chief over whose lodge the American flag, with a white flag tied below, was floating at the time of the massacre, "I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man; but since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses, and everything else, it is hard for me to believe white men any more. *** All my friends, the Indians that are holding back, they are afraid to come in; are afraid that they will be betrayed as I have been. I am not afraid of white men, but come and take you by the hand." Elsewhere, Black Kettle spoke of Colonel Chivington's troops as "that fool-band of soldiers that cleared out our lodges, and killed our women and children. This is hard on us." With a magnanimity and common-sense which white men would have done well to imitate in their judgments of the Indians, he recognized that it would be absurd, as well as unjust, to hold all white men in distrust on account of the acts of that "fool-band of soldiers."[[11]]
By the terms of this treaty, a new reservation was to be set apart for the Cheyennes and Arapahoes; hostile acts on either side were to be settled by arbitration; no whites were to be allowed on the reservation; a large tract of country was to be "relinquished" by the Indians, but they were "expressly permitted to reside upon and range at pleasure throughout the unsettled portions of that part of the country they claim as originally theirs." The United States reserved the right to build roads and establish forts in the reservation, and pledged itself to pay "annually, for the period of forty years," certain sums of money to each person in the tribe: twenty dollars a head till they were settled on their reservation; after that, forty dollars a head. To this end an accurate annual census of the Indians was promised at the time of the annuity payment in the spring.
The Indians went away from this council full of hope and satisfaction. Their oldest friends, Colonel Bent and Kit Carson, were among the commissioners, and they felt that at last they had a treaty they could trust. Their old reservation in Colorado (to which they probably could never have been induced to return) was restored to the public domain of that territory, and they hoped in their new home for greater safety and peace. The Apaches, who had heretofore been allied with the Kiowas and Comanches, were now allied with them, and to have the benefits of the new treaty. A small portion of the tribe—chiefly young men of a turbulent nature—still held aloof, and refused to come under the treaty provisions. One riotous band, called the Dog Soldiers, were especially refractory; but, before the end of the next year, they also decided to go southward and join the rest of the tribe on the new reservation. Occasional hostilities took place in the course of the winter, one of which it is worth while to relate, the incident is so typical a one.
On the 21st of February a son of one Mr. Boggs was killed and scalped by a party of four Cheyenne Indians about six miles east of Fort Dodge, on the Arkansas River. On investigation, it appeared that Mr. Boggs had gone to the Indian camp without any authority, and had there traded off eleven one-dollar bills for ten-dollar bills. The Indian on whom this trick had been played found Mr. Boggs out, went to him, and demanded reparation; and, in the altercation and fight which ensued, Mr. Boggs's son was killed. This story is given in the official report of Lieutenant-colonel Gordon, U.S.A., and Colonel Gordon adds, "I think this case needs no further comment."
The Cheyennes did not long remain at peace; in the summer the Senate had added to this last treaty an amendment requiring their new reservation to be entirely "outside the State of Kansas, and not within any Indian territory, except on consent of the tribes interested." As the reservation had been partly in Kansas, and partly on the lands of the Cherokees, this amendment left them literally without any home whatever. Under these circumstances, the young men of the tribe soon began to join again with other hostile Indians in committing depredations and hostilities along the great mail-routes on the plains. Again they were visited with summary and apparently deserved vengeance by the United States troops, and in the summer of 1867 a Cheyenne village numbering three hundred lodges was burnt by United States soldiers under General Hancock. Fortunately the women and children had all fled on the first news of the approach of the army. Soon after this another council was held with them, and once more the precarious peace was confirmed by treaty; but was almost immediately broken again in consequence of the failure of the Government to comply with the treaty provisions. That some members of these tribes had also failed to keep to the treaty provisions is undoubtedly true, but by far the greater part of them were loyal and peaceable. "The substantial cause of this war," however, was acknowledged by the Indian Bureau itself to be "the fact that the Department, for want of appropriations, was compelled to stop their supplies, and to permit them to recur to the chase for subsistence."