The Indians of the Pike's Peak Region / Including an Account of the Battle of Sand Creek, and of Occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the War with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in 1864 and 1868

by Irving Howbert

In point of time, the Comanches were the next tribe of which we have any record, as inhabiting this region. These Indians also were a branch of the Shoshone nation. They led the procession of tribes that moved southward along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains during the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. When first heard of, they were occupying the territory where the Missouri River emerges from the Rocky Mountains. Later, they were driven south by the pressure of the Sioux Indians and other tribes coming in from the north and east. For a while they occupied the Black Hills, and then were pushed still farther south by the Kiowas. They joined their kinsmen the Utes in raids upon the settlements of New Mexico in 1716, and it was to punish the Comanches as well as the Utes, that the Governor of New Mexico, in 1719, led the military expedition into the country now within the boundaries of Colorado. In 1724, Bourgemont, a French explorer mentions them under the name of the Padouca, as located between the headwaters of the Platte and Kansas rivers, but later accounts show that before the end of that century they had been pushed south of the Arkansas River by the pressure of the tribes to the north.

During the stay of the Comanches in this region, they were for a time friendly with the Utes, and the two tribes joined each other in warfare and roamed over much of the same territory, but later, for some unknown reason, they for a time engaged in a deadly warfare. The old legend of the Manitou Springs mentions the possible beginning of the trouble. The incident around which the legend is woven, may be an imaginary one, but it is a well-known fact that long and bitter wars between tribes resulted from slighter causes. It is said that a long war between the Delawares and Shawnees originated in a quarrel between two children over a grasshopper.

The Comanches were a nation of daring warriors, and after their removal to the south of the Arkansas River, they became a great scourge to the settlements of Texas and New Mexico, finally extending their raids as far as Chihuahua, in Mexico. As a result of these operations, they became rich in horses and plunder obtained in their raids, besides securing as captives many American and Spanish women and children. One of their most noted chiefs in after days was the son of a white woman who had been captured in Texas in her childhood, and who, when grown, had married a Comanche chief. The Government arranged for the release of both the American and Spanish captives, but in more than one instance women who had been captured in their younger days refused to leave their Comanche husbands, notwithstanding the strongest urging on the part of their own parents.

Following the Comanches came the Kiowas, a tribe of unknown origin, as their language seems to have no similarity to that of any of the other tribes of this country. According to their mythology, their first progenitors emerged from a hollow cottonwood log, at the bidding of a supernatural ancestor. They came out one at a time as he tapped upon the log, until it came to the turn of a fleshy woman, who stuck fast in the hole, and thus blocked the way for those behind her, so that they were unable to follow. This, they say, accounts for the small number of the Kiowa tribe.

The first mention of this tribe locates them at the extreme sources of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, in what is now central Montana. Later, by permission of the Crow Indians, they took up their residence east of that tribe and became allied with them. Up to this time they possessed no horses and in moving about had to depend solely upon dogs. They finally drifted out upon the plains; here they first procured horses, and came in contact with the Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and, later, with the Sioux. The tribe probably secured horses by raids upon the Spaniards of New Mexico, as the authorities of that Territory mention the Kiowas as early as 1748, while the latter were still living in the Black Hills. It may not be generally known that there were no horses upon the American continent prior to the coming of the Spaniards. The first horses acquired by the Indians were those lost or abandoned by the early exploring expeditions, and these were added to later by raids upon the Spanish settlements of New Mexico. The natural increase of the horses so obtained gave the Indians, in many cases, a number in excess of their needs. Previous to acquiring horses, the Indians used dogs in moving their belongings around the country. As compared with their swift movements of later days this slow method of transportation very materially limited their migrations.

By the end of that century, the Kiowas had drifted south into the region embraced by the present State of Colorado, probably being forced to do so by the pressure of the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, who were at that time advancing from the north and east. As the Kiowas advanced southward, they encountered the Comanches; this resulted in warfare that lasted many years, in the course of which the Comanches were gradually driven south of the Arkansas River. When, finally, the war was terminated, an alliance was effected between the two tribes, which thereafter remained unbroken. In 1806, the Kiowas were occupying the country along the eastern base of the mountains of the Pike's Peak region. From Lieut. Zebulon Pike's narrative, we learn that James Pursley, who, according to Lieutenant Pike, was the first American to penetrate the immense wilds of Louisiana, spent a trading season with the Kiowas and Comanches in 1802 and 1803. He remained with them until the next spring, when the Sioux drove them from the plains into the mountains at the head of the Platte and Arkansas rivers. In all probability their retreat into the mountains was through Ute Pass, as that was the most accessible route. In the same statement Lieutenant Pike mentions Pursley's claim to having found gold on the headwaters of the Platte River. By the year 1815, most of the Kiowas had been pushed south of the Arkansas River by the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, but not until 1840 did they finally give up fighting for the possession of this region.

The Cheyennes and Arapahoes were of the Algonquin linguistic family, whose original home was in the New England States and southern Canada. When first heard of, about 1750, the Cheyennes were located in northern Minnesota. Later, about 1790, they were living on the Missouri, near the mouth of the Cheyenne River. Subsequently they moved west into the Black Hills, being forced to do so by the enmity of the Sioux. Here they were joined by the Arapahoes, a tribe of the same Algonquin stock, and from that time on the two tribes were bound together in the closest relations.

Beginning about 1800, these two federated tribes, accompanied by some of the Sioux, with whom they had made peace, gradually moved southward along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. Dr. James, the historian of Long's expedition which visited the Pike's Peak region in 1820, mentions the fact that about four years previous there had been a large encampment of Indians on a stream near Platte Cañon, southwest of Denver, which had assembled for trading purposes. It appears that the Cheyennes had been supplied with goods by British traders on the Missouri River, and had met to exchange these goods for horses. The tribes dwelling on the fertile plains of the Arkansas and Red rivers always had a great number of horses, which they reared with much less difficulty than did the Cheyennes, who usually spent the winter in the country farther to the north, where the cold weather lasted much longer and feed was less abundant. After many years of warfare with the Kiowas, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes were victorious, and by a treaty, made in 1840, secured undisputed possession of the territory north of the Arkansas River and east of the mountains. As this was only eighteen years before the coming of the whites, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes could not rightfully claim this region as their ancestral home. The country acquired by the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, through their victory over the Kiowas, embraced a territory of more than eighty thousand square miles. As in those two tribes there were never more than five thousand men, women, and children, all told, the area was out of all proportion to their numbers.

Early in 1861, the Government made a treaty with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes by which these tribes gave up the greater part of the lands claimed by them in the new Territory of Colorado. For this they were to receive a consideration of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to be paid in fifteen yearly installments, the tribes reserving for their own use a tract about seventy miles square located on both sides of the Arkansas River in the southeastern part of the Territory.

From the time of their first contact with the whites, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes were alternately friendly or hostile, just as their temper or whim dictated upon any particular occasion. With the old trappers and hunters of the plains, the Cheyennes had the reputation of being the most treacherous and untrustworthy at all times and in all places, of any of the tribes of the West. The Arapahoes, while occasionally committing depredations against the whites, were said to be somewhat different in temperament, in that they were not so sullen and morose as the Cheyennes, and were less treacherous and more open and trustworthy in their dealings. This estimate of the characteristics of the two tribes was fully confirmed in our contact with them in the early days of Colorado.