Results of the Sand Creek Massacre; the shaping of Wichita

Treaty with the Cheyenne and Arapaho: October 14, 1865 This treaty is one of a series of treaties that the US government signed with the Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Southern Arapahoe at the Little Arkansas River in October of 1865. It lasted less than 2 years, the reservations that were to be created by it never materialized and were reduced by 90% by the Medicine Lodge Treaty in October of 1867. The US government appointed Commissioners to manage the Indian Tribes and to negotiate peace in order to prevent attacks on settlers so that the military could be dismantled after the Civil War. The tribes and the US government both wanted peace. But the US government wanted to restrict Indians to specific areas and to regulate their movement outside these areas and the Indian tribes wanted unrestricted hunting (this treaty was before the invention of barbed wire which came in 1867 and therefore the areas involved would have been open range) and they wanted restitution for the Sand Creek Massacre (or Chivington) of 1864. (Nov. 1864, The Third Colorado Calvary, 647 men attacked a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho defenseless women and children, killing between 70 and 500) In response to the Sand Creek Massacre, the US government had created the “Blue Ribbon Commission”. The Blue-Ribbon Commission consisted of John B. Sandborn (not of Sandborn map fame), William S. Harney, Thomas Murphy, Kit Carson, Wiliam W Bent, Jesse H Leavenworth and James Steele. None of the commissioners were to have ties to the government and all were thought to be sympathetic or at least neutral to the Indians. (This is typical of blue-ribbon commissions—the best known of which is the Warren commission.) This treaty was entered into on the part of the US government by the Blue-Ribbon Commission and Black Kettle, Seven Bulls, Little Robe, Black White Man, Eagle’s Head, Bull that Hears, on the part of the Cheyenne and Little Raven, Storm, Big Mouth, Spotted Wolf, Black Man, Chief in Everything, and Haversack on the part of the Arapahos. (not sure on the spelling of Arrapahoe, this is how the treaty spells it but it is different elsewhere) Article One Article Two outlines that this is to be reparations for the Sand Creek Massacre. A grant of 327 acres land by patent is to be given to Black Kettle, Seven Bulls, Little Robe and Black White Man and a grant to the widows and orphans of the massacre in the amount of 160 acres of land. Lands granted will be selected by the Secr. Of the Interior (John Palmer Usher)