Blood at Sand Creek: The Massacre Revisited

Rating:
Summary: Apologists
Review: "There are no good guys or bad guys" is true over the course of HISTORY. It is not true of every EVENT in history. Germans are not bad guys, but Adolf Hitler was a bad guy. White Americans are not bad guys, but Colonel Chivington was a bad guy. Anyone who would defend this massacre and deny the THOUSANDS of reports from Indians AND white people describing the atrocities that happened there is no different than the people who defend and deny the Holocaust. This is a valuable book if you are a white supremacist or you like to hide your head in the sand. Otherwise there are hundreds of good books about the frontier wars that accurately describe both the good and bad behavior of Indian, white, and black people in early America, and are interesting to read, too.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good -Tells of the Real Sand Creek
Review: Blood at Sand Creek by Bob Scott tells the story of the Sand Creek Massacre (and the events leading up to and following it)through a non-politically correct viewpoint. The author doesn't try to portray the Plains Indians (Cheyennes in particular)as savages or "noble red men." He also doesn't absolve whites of guilt in the Indian Wars. In fact, neither side comes off very positively. Instead, Mr.Scott gives a balanced view through both Indian and white accounts, which are frequently quite different. His goal is to perhaps clear John Chivington of some of the enormous blame that has been laid on his shoulders. Scott acknowledges that the Cheyennes, Arapahos, Kiowas, and other Plains Indians were indeed hostile and committed numerous and terrible acts of torture, murder, rape, and theft and the fact that the U.S. Army could be quite brutal when dealing with the Indians. He supports his view that Black Kettle and his Cheyenne were indeed at least somewhat hostile and that Chivington was not the psychotic murderer that he is believed to be The author uses considerable evidence, with numerous accounts from both sides. Much of the incriminating evidence against Chivington is indeed questionable. (i.e. Jim Beckwourth was actually a murderer, horse thief, and prolific liar-not the hero he is made out to be.)It is true that there are numerous accounts of babies being butchered, genitalia taken as souviners, etc. However, none of these are documented in a manner that is historically acceptable. Unfortunately for revisionist "historians", as appealing as these stories may seem, historical sources need to be documented in a detailed manner. Oral history may sound good and can certainly be accurate, but it must be used carefully. Mr. Scott realizes that these accounts can be misleading or false. All in all, Scott's thesis is convincing and tears away the politically-correct nonsense about helpless women and children being slaughtered at Sand Creek. However, it will never be a popular idea. The history found in modern textbooks is very politically correct. The winners don't always write the history. The idea of Indians as killers and rapists is distasteful to modern readers and historians. The Indians Wars were a very complex series of cultural conflicts-the primitive nomads vs. the modern might of the whites. There were no bad guys or good guys, just two very different cultures colliding in violent wars where there could only be one winner. Mr. Scott is able to present a balanced account with no bad guys-there will always be plenty of misdeeds and glory for both sides.

Rating:
Summary: Ignorance is bliss
Review: Bob Scott's book is a good example of horrible historical research. If you want to argue that John Chivington was not an awful person and that he was justified, so be it. However, use more resources than basic encylopedias. During the course of the book, Scott contradicts himself, ignores reams of testimony that don not back his case, and gets facts wrong. If you want a better researched, more fair-minded read, check out Stan Hoig's book or David Svaldi's on sand Creek.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Not for the politically correct.
Review: Bob Scott, a fairly new writer in the western history field, has researched the battle at Sand Creek and objects to the politically correct perception that the white guys were the bad guys. This book will never be used as a PBS special because of the current love affair historians are having with Native-americans. While certainly not racist in tone, Bob presents a different perspective.

Scott's writing style is different from some histories in that while his detail is there and well documented, the book reads like a novel.

Rating:
Summary: A n attempt to deny an aberrant and horrendous act of war.
Review: In 1864, when the Sand Creek massacre happened, most of the plain indian nations, including the Cheyenne nation, had already been the victims of enumerous massacres, broken treaties, invasion of remote and ancient tribal hunting grounds, mass deportation, restrictions to hunting and trapping, inhumane treatment and inhuman conditions on reservations. Mr. Scott starts his book with the massacre of a corporal, a driver and seven weakened soldiers sick with scurvy. This massacre became known as the Cottonwood Massacre. He then suggests that the nine men were massacred by Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. It is known now, that most propably southern Lakota (Oglala or Brule) were involved in this raid. These warriors had propably relatives that had also been brutally slaughtered by General Harney's troops in 1855, when he ordered his soldiers to surround and attack a peacefull mixed Oglala and Brule Lakota village by the Blue Water area in Nebraska. When this massacre was over, about one hundred women and children had been killed. This was just one of the unspeakable and enumerous massacres committed for 372 years before Sand Creek by europeans and caucasian americans against native americans, since Colmubus landed in October 21,1492. It is true that the Cheyenne, the Comanche, the Kiowa and many other plain indian nations sometimes killed, scalped and mutilated white people, raped white women, and ocasionally also killed white children, as Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, Russian and later American soldiers indiscriminately and repeatedely massacred, murdered, dismenbered, scalped,raped, deported, robbed and kidnaped more than two hundred million men, women and children native americans between October 1492 and December 1890. In 1864, the Cheyenne nations ancestral hunting grounds were being invaded. The Cheyenne were a nomadic,spiritual and warlike society, clashing with a sedentary agrarian caucasian society wich showed no respect for the natural enviroment around them, for the values and spirituality of the resident indian nations, while most of the time treating native americans as wild beasts. Mr. Scott reveals himself as a able researcher when it comes to present a report of the unfortunated settlers, trappers and soldiers killed by Cheyenne warriors in eastern Colorado, western Kansas and Southern Nebraska, but he did not care to present a list of the thousands of men, women and children Navajo, Apache , Blackfeet, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, Arapaho and Cheyenne killed approximately between 1780 and 1890. Mr. Scott, in this book, did not show to have any knowledge about the indian nation he is talking about. He wrote that chief Bull Bear, one of the four council chiefs of the Dog Soldier cheyenne died in Sand Creek, when any respected american historian such as George Bird Grinnel, Alvin M. Josephy Jr.,John Moore, William Chalfant and others, all know and have written that Chief Bull Bear was still leading Cheyenne Dog Soldier war parties in the early 1870s. He also refers that Roman Nose was a Chief and a Dog Soldier Cheyenne. In fact Roman Nose was a Northern Cheyenne, of the Omeheshes Cheyenne tribe and was only a proeminent warrior. He also suggets twice through obscure reports from soldiers present at the Sand Creek massacre, that probably 450 Cheyenne warriors were killed in Sand Creek. In 1864, the whole population of the Cheyenne nation was about 3600 people, including no more than 1000 able warriors, of wich probably half were in the north with the Omeheshes Cheyenne and the northern Sutaeo Cheyenne. So, it means, that according to Mr. Scott, the whole Southern Cheyenne male population was killed in Sand Creek. How come Mr. Scott at the end of the book refers that seven hundred southern Cheyenne Dog Soldier warriors participated in the battle of Beecher Island? Maybe someday we will have Mr. Scott writing a book entitled "Sand Creek 1864, the great Cheyenne Baby Boom". Then, Mr. Scott will eventually announce that for almost two hundred years the American Government had been hiding from the American Public that the Cheyenne population in 1864 was probably about fifty thousand people, including ten thousand warriors. Afterwards, he will most probably suggest that Genereal Lee was considering giving half of his weaponry to the Cheyenne nation, so they could invade Saint louis, Chigago and Tacoma Washington, because he keeps refering that the Confederates were turning the Cheyenne and other plain indian tribes against the Union in 1864. The whole book reveals that Mr. Scott did not care about doing any serious research about the Cheyenne nation or the Sand Creek massacre. He even suggests that almost no women or children had been killed in Sand Creek, when recognized and respected caucasian american historians like Dee Brown, Alvin Josephy, George Bird Grinnel and others have always given us the straight picture about the horrors that were commited against the Cheyenne Heviksnipahis and the Cheyenne Hisiometaneo at Sand Creek. Is Mr. Scott trying to call us all stupid? Everything in this book has something evil about it, as the massacre itself. Even the photo of chief Black Kettle was deformed to make him look like a demon, when compared with the original photo, that shows us the face of a kind and handsome man. It is a dangerous book for the people that never had the chance to do any research about native americans. Mr. Scott has the ability to start slowly portraying the Cheyenne people as a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, but maybe that is as far as he can get about native americans. This book is a shame, it is an indecent and racist attempt to cover one of the most horrendous act of war commited by the american army against native americans. Mr Scott uses obscure reports from soldiers present at Sand Creek, to finnaly have the demerit of suggesting that almost no Cheyenne children or women were assassinated in Sand Creek. You might expect me to teel you not to read this book, but on the contrary I will advise you to buy it and read it, to offer it to your family and friends and ask them to read it, because we all have in our hearts that angel that alaways let us know what is a lie and what is true, what is wrong and what is right. After all the suffering they endured, the Cheyenne American did not deserve to have to be the witnesses of such an aberrant book.

Rating:
Summary: "Politically Correct" Has Two Directions
Review: There are some books which glorify everything a Native American ever said or did, and blame all history's woes on evil white men. Those are usually called "politically correct," because they basically tell palatable lies to people who, for political reasons, prefer them to the truth.

There are also some books which vehemently deny that a white American could ever have committed an atrocity. These are equally politically correct; their palatable lies just service a different audience.

This book falls into the latter category. Sorry, but Scott plainly ignores a vast body of evidence against Chivington. Were all the thousands of people who reported seeing children's body parts displayed as trophies in on the great conspiracy? How about the dozens of oral histories provided to the descendants of soldiers, which mesh reasonably well with those of the Cheyennes?

There are plenty of historical acts of aggression, against Native Americans or anyone else, which could be reasonably argued to have been at some level justifiable. Scott chooses not to take any of them on. By refusing to accept that ANYTHING a white guy did could possibly be evil--even killing pregnant women and keeping the fetuses as souvenirs--Scott effectively puts himself in the same boat, if the opposite end, as the misty new-age folks who refuse to believe Native Americans knew what evil was before the Europeans got here.

Rating:
Summary: Poor Scholarship
Review: This book is so terrible I do not know why anyone would want to publish it. The author makes claims that are completely untrue, writes poorly, and does not adequately document his research. The author claims that Bull Bear, a chief of the Dog Soldiers, died at Sand Creek. This is completely untrue; Bull Bear was not even present at Sand Creek. The author claims that White Antelope was an Arapahoe chief, when he was actually a Cheyenne chief. How could someone miss such important facts? Scott claims that John Chivington never swore, even though his colleagues testified otherwise. Scott describes Chivington: "There could hardly have been a more unlikely frontier hero, with all of its macho implications, than John Milton Chivington. If a novelist had created Chivington, editors and publishers would have rejected him as being too improbable." What are statements like these doing in what is supposed to be a history book? In the bibliography, he cites Duane Schultz's book, Month of the Freezing Moon, but misspells his name as "David Schultz." In his bibliography he lists a number of encyclopedias but not enough primary sources.