|
The Colorado War was fought from 1863 to 1865 and was an Indian War between the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, against white settlers and militia in the Colorado Territory and adjacent regions. The Kiowa and the Comanche played a minor role in actions that occurred in the southern part of the Territory along the Arkansas River,〔Page 199, Berthrong, ''The Southern Cheyenne''〕 while the Sioux played a major role in actions that occurred along the South Platte River along the Great Platte River Road, the eastern portion of the Overland Trail. The United States government and Colorado Territory authorities participated through the Colorado volunteers, a citizens militia while the United States Army played a minor role. The war was centered on the Colorado Eastern Plains. The war included an attack in November 1864 against the winter camp of the Southern Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle known as the Sand Creek massacre. The battle, initially hailed in the United States press as a great victory, was later publicly condemned as an act of depraved genocidal brutality. The massacre resulted in military and congressional hearings which established the culpability of John Chivington, the commander of the Colorado Volunteers, and his troops. ==Description== The war was fought over the ability of the North American Plains tribes - mainly the Cheyenne and Arapaho - to maintain control of the bison migration grounds on the Great Plains in the upper valleys of the South Platte, Republican, Smoky Hill and Arkansas River valleys, at the edge of the plains where they met the Rocky Mountains. In the first Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), the Eastern Plains between the South Platte and Arkansas Rivers had been designated as lands inhabited by the Cheyenne and Arapaho, leaving out all of the territories inhabited by the Northern Cheyennes (now designated as Lakota or Crow lands) as well as the Sutaio and Hotamitaniu hunting grounds between the Pawnee Fork, the Smoky Hill, the Solomon and Republican Rivers in what would later become Kansas, now designated as Pawnee lands. Ignoring much of the actual territorial claims of the various tribes which were often overlapping, the 1851 treaty acknowledged that the tribes did not abandon any further territorial rights not mentioned in the treaty and gave US citizens a right of passage through tribal territories but no right to settle there. The area was of little use to the American colonists before 1859, when the Colorado Gold Rush brought the first large numbers of settlers to the Colorado Piedmont along the mountains, inundating the designated Native American lands with settlers and prospectors. The new settlers, in fact illegal squatters, demanded that the US government extinguish the still existing Native American title, and in the autumn of 1860 federal agents reopened negotiations with factions of the two tribes at a council on the Arkansas River. At the council, in the Treaty of Fort Wise some of the Cheyenne and Arapaho agreed to accept a small Indian reservation along the Arkansas River between the northern boundary of New Mexico and Sand Creek.〔"Beginning at the mouth of the Sandy Fork of the Arkansas River and extending westwardly along the said river to the mouth of Purgatory River; thence along up the west bank of the Purgatory River to the northern boundary of the Territory of New Mexico; thence west along said boundary to a point where a line drawn due south from a point on the Arkansas River, five miles east of the mouth of the Huerfano River, would intersect said northern boundary of New Mexico; thence due north from that point on said boundary of the Sandy Fork to the place of the beginning."〕 Moreover, the tribes would be converted from nomadic hunting to a farming lifestyle. The new reservation, instead of being an open hunting territory, would be surveyed and divided among the tribal members, with each member receiving 40 acres (160,000 m²) of land. Moreover, the federal agents promised that each tribe would receive a US $30,000 subsidy for 15 years, as well as a grist mill, saw mill, and schools. The leader of the Cheyenne who signed the treaty was Black Kettle. The treaty text, which the Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs could not read, stipulated that the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations surrender all their lands except for said small reservation. The chiefs clarified that they could only speak for their bands but not for their nations as a whole. Later US attempts to obtain the signatures of additional chiefs failed when the initial signatories stated they had never known that the treaty said they surrendered their title to their lands and that the treaty was a swindle. The policy of promoting a peaceful transition to farming, to which the tribes supposedly agreed, was thwarted in many cases by mismanagement and malfeasance of the politically appointed federal agents. One notorious example was Samuel Colley, the federal agent of the Upper Arkansas during the early 1860s, who became known for his misappropriation of tribal goods, which he sold through his son Dexter, a trader. The conflict occurred during the last two years of the American Civil War. The same units of the 1st Colorado Volunteers of the US Army that fought in this war also spearheaded the Union counterattack in the New Mexico Campaign against the Confederate Army. The war was initiated in April, 1864 without warning by the whites, for the purpose of driving the Indians into a reservation by force, but following minor successes against small bands of surprised Indians it became a defensive battle against intense Cheyenne and Arapaho attacks on travelers on the Overland Trail along the South Platte.〔Pages 127 to 136, Hyde, ''Life of George Bent: Written From His Letters''〕〔Pages 149 to 203 Grinnell, ''The Fighting Cheyenne''〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Colorado War」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|