Seth of Colorado - James Otis |
The leading men of Colorado begged the government at Washington to send soldiers to the relief of the territory; but this was denied, not because the officials had no care concerning us, but owing to the great war which was then raging, when every soldier was needed elsewhere.
Word was sent to us that we must protect ourselves as best we could, regardless of the fact that many of those who should have been defending their own homes had answered the President's call for troops, and were fighting with the northern army.
I myself know little of what went on outside of Denver during those dreadful days, save as this rumor or that was brought in by frightened fugitives or panic-stricken prospectors.
Those in authority over us, however, knew all too well, that scores upon scores of people journeying in the valley of the South Platte were massacred by the savages; that the overland stages were ambushed by the fiends, the horses killed, and the mails destroyed; that lonely ranchers were murdered and their homes burned, and all communication between Colorado and the states in the east was shut off, so that the only word which could come to us from the Missouri River, or farther east, was sent around by water, and thence by way of Mexico or California.