Take No Prisoners

The late November dawn broke cold and foggy. Below the barren Southeastern Colorado plain, some 600 Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians were camped in a ravine alongside a dry streambed called Big Sandy Creek. Six hours later, a quarter of them—mostly women and children—were dead at the hands of a Colorado volunteer militia. In time, the name Sand Creek would become synonymous with massacre. The 1864 massacre at Sand Creek, more than any other Indian conflict at that time, set the stage for the