White American Atrocity on American Indians

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

1864

The Long Walk to Bosque Redondo - Under the military leadership of Kit Carson, the federal government forced 8,000 Navajo men, women, and children to walk more than 300 miles from their ancestral homeland in northeastern Arizona to a newly-designated reservation at Bosque Redondo in northwestern New Mexico. The march ended in confinement on barren lands, as well as malnutrition, disease, and hunger. For four years they endured life in this desolate area under virtual prison camp circumstances. In 1866, the Navajo signed a treaty allowing them to return to their traditional homes to begin rebuilding their communities. In return, the Navajo were forced to promise to remain on the reservation, to stop raiding white communities, and to become ranchers and farmers. In 1868, the government finally returned the Navajo to their homeland.

On June 11, rancher Nathan Hungate, his wife and two little girls were slaughtered in Chivington, Colorado by Indians.

On November 29, 750 Colorado volunteers of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry, under the command of Colonel John Chivington (a Methodist pastor), attacked a Cheyenne and Arapaho village at Arapaho in retaliation for the Hungate's. The soldiers scalped the victims, then sliced off women's breasts, cut out their vaginas, cut the testicles from the men, cut off fingers, raped dead women in relays, and used baby toddlers as target practice. 163 Indians were killed; 110 of them were women and children. The dead were left to be eaten by coyotes and vultures. On the way back to Fort Lyon, the soldiers wore the sliced breasts and vaginas atop their hats or stretched over saddlebows. Weeks later, soldiers paraded through Denver, waving body parts of the dead. After two congressional hearings, Colonel Chivington was driven into exile, and Colorado Governor John Evans was removed from office.

above from [Native American Timeline - Page 3 At http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-timeline3.html ]

This incident is called Sand Creek massacre. Quote:

The Sand Creek Massacre (also known as the Chivington Massacre, the Battle of Sand Creek or the Massacre of Cheyenne Indians) was an atrocity in the Indian Wars of the United States that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 700-man force of Colorado Territory militia attacked and destroyed a village of friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped in southeastern Colorado Territory,[3] killing and mutilating an estimated 70 to 163 Indians, about two-thirds of whom were women and children. The location has been designated the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site and is administered by the National Park Service.

Source seems to be: 《United States Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1865 (testimonies and report)》. See: John Chivington.

I first heard of this while in American History class at Foothill College around 1992.

also of interest: Scalping, quote:

Scalping is the act of removing the scalp, or a portion of the scalp, either from a dead body or another living person. The initial purpose was to provide a trophy of battle or portable proof of a combatant's prowess in war. Eventually, in the US, the act became motivated against Native American peoples primarily for financial reasons; payment received per “Indian” scalp acquired.

Although scalping in the United States is often associated with frontier warfare in North America, it actually has a historical basis throughout the world long before Columbus arrived. The earliest being in Eurasia in prehistory. There is no precedence of Vikings being scalped when they arrived in the Americas nearly 500 years before Columbus. The act of scalping in the modern era was practiced by colonists, frontiersmen as well as Native Americans, across centuries of violent conflict. Some Mexican (e.g., Sonora and Chihuahua) and American territories (e.g., Arizona) paid bounties for enemy Native American scalps.[1] Contrary to popular belief[citation needed], scalping was far from universal amongst Native Americans.[2]