Lawrence founder recognized this month for revealing truth about 1864 Sand Creek Indian massacre

When 16-year-old Silas Soule and his family moved to Kansas to help settle Lawrence in 1854, the Maine native quickly found himself in the thick of danger.

The new family home became an underground railroad station, and Soule was called upon to escort runaway slaves to freedom and to rescue captured abolitionists.

Ten years later, Soule, now a captain in the U.S. Cavalry, found himself in another American horror story.

A Cheyenne and Arapaho delegation at Camp Weld in Denver, Colorado Territory, September 1864. Kneeling, from left are: Maj. Edward W. Wynkoop and Captain Silas S. Soule. Seated, from left are: White Antelope, Bull Bear, Black Kettle (whose village was attacked at Sand Creek on Nov. 29), Neva and Notanee. Standing, from left are: unidentified soldier, unidentified, John S. Smith, Heaps of Buffalo, Bossee, Dexter Colley, and unidentified.

At the scene of what would become one of the bloodiest massacres in U.S. history, Soule’s commander ordered soldiers to kill the Indians camped along Sand Creek, about 30 miles west of the Kansas border in the Colorado Territory.

Soule and Lt. Joseph A. Cramer not only disobeyed the colonel, but ordered their battalions to stand down as the rest of the cavalry tortured and slaughtered 160 to 200 Indians, two-thirds of them women and children. Soule’s testimony in hearings several months later led to his own assassination in Denver, historians say.

This month, as part of the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and hundreds of Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians took part in ceremonies to commemorate Soule’s actions and those of others who sought justice after the massacre.

Hickenlooper, who read from a letter by Soule describing the massacre, also apologized for the actions of then Gov. John Evans and others who set up the situation that allowed such an atrocity to happen, he said.

“I am here to offer something that has been too long in coming,” Hickenlooper said during a speech Dec. 3 at the state’s capitol. “I want to say, I am sorry for the atrocity that our government and its agents visited upon your ancestors.”

Indian leaders invited Soule’s great-great-nephew Byron Strom, of Des Moines, a retired chemistry teacher, to read a letter his uncle wrote vividly describing the massacre as part of one of the ceremonies that took place at Riverside Cemetery where Soule is buried.

“I have to pay particular attention to my emotions when I read (the letter) as you can imagine,” Strom said. “It’s humbling. I wonder what, if I were in his shoes, what I would have done. It’s a difficult thing to go against your commander.”

Strom said he has two cousins, also descendants of the original Soule family, who still live in the Lawrence area. An aunt, Martha Smith, who lived in Vinland, died this year at age 108.

Hailed as ‘heroes’

The massacre was on Nov. 29, 1864. About 700 Indians were in the chiefs’ winter camp along Sand Creek that day. Many were women and children.

As Col. John Chivington, a Methodist preacher and abolitionist, and about 700 soldiers entered the village, they disregarded the greetings of welcome and white flags and began to fire indiscriminately at the Indians in the surprise attack.

From 160 to 200 Indians died that day. Another 200 were wounded. Many of those died later, historians say.

The soldiers mutilated the bodies, taking scalps and cutting off body parts. One toddler who was trying to follow his family was used as target practice. A soldier used an ax to cut off a woman’s arm, and then holding the other arm, he slammed the ax into her skull, witnesses told Congress.

The soldiers were hailed as heroes when they arrived back in Denver from the Battle of Sand Creek, and the body parts were put on display in the saloons.

It was initially believed that the soldiers had been in a true battle and had bested “brutal savages.”

But three weeks later, Soule and Cramer wrote letters to their commanding officer, Maj. Edward “Ned” Wynkoop, who had promised military protection to Indians but was at Fort Riley, Kan., when the massacre took place.

“The letters are terribly, terribly moving and disturbing,” said David Halaas, former chief historian of the Colorado Historical Society, now known as History Colorado. “These letters circulated in Washington, D.C., and pretty soon people began questioning whether the stories about Chivington were true, was it a battle or was it a massacre.”

Soule’s letter said that at the Sand Creek campsite the soldiers turned into a mob, the massacre lasted six to eight hours and many Indians managed to escape — but about 160 did not.

“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,” Soule wrote. “It was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized. (The bodies) were all horribly mutilated. One woman was cut open and a child taken out of her, and scalped.”

Eventual understanding

The letters led to investigations by two congressional committees and an army commission, historians said. Soule was the first person to testify in the hearings.

On April 23, 1865, he was shot to death in Denver. Although Soule’s killer was known, he was never tried for the crime.

“It was instantly recognized that Soule was killed because of his testimony,” Halaas said. “He not only wrote the letters, but he testified before the Army commission.”

The Army committee on the conduct of the war condemned the military action, calling the surprise attack cold-blooded murder.

“They declared it a great shame of the United States,” Halaas said.

But Chivington had retired from the military, and no charges were ever brought against him or anyone else.

Soule’s letter, and Cramer’s, disappeared, and so did much of the memory of the massacre, said Halaas.

Instead, Chivington, when he died many years later, was given a hero’s burial.

A plaque in the Denver capital lists the Battle of Sand Creek as one of the major civil war battles in the Colorado Territory.

In 2000, U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell was trying to reestablish that Sand Creek was the site of a massacre. He had gotten the government to commission a study and now he was trying to get Congress to designate the Sand Creek battleground a historic site because of the massacre. But his bill was stalled.

Halaas was scheduled to testify in Washington about the massacre when Linda Reebek, of Evergreen, Colo., came to his office, he said. She had found some papers in an old trunk. Among the papers was an official transcript of the letters.

Halaas took them to Washington and read them in the hearing where several senators, including John Warner, were moved by the horror.

“The bill passed in four weeks,” Halaas said, and the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site became a part of the U.S. National Parks Service.

Honored for risk

Each year the Cheyenne and Arapaho, in remembrance of the massacre, hold a 200-mile relay run to remember Soule and Cramer.

“The Indians honor him because if it hadn’t been for what he did, some of them wouldn’t be here today because their ancestors would have been killed instead of saved,” Strom said.

Strom said Soule’s fate could have been different.

On Aug. 21, 1863, Soule’s family, including Soule’s older brother, who was Lawrence’s marshal, was living at 724 Rhode Island St., when Quantrill’s raiders descended on the city.

The family fled to the Kansas River bluffs to hide. One of Soule’s sisters was teaching school at Kanwaka and could see the town burning. From 185 to 200 men and boys were killed that day by the guerrilla fighters.

The Soules’ house partially burned. The family wrote him asking if he could return to Lawrence to help, Strom said. After much consideration, Soule decided to stay in Colorado.