Horrors of an Indian War

The Cheyennes, who up to this time had not molested us to any great extent, declared war against the white people. The Arapahoes, the Kiowas, and the Comanches all went on the warpath, infuriated by what had been done at Sand Creek, while the Sioux and the other tribes who had begun the troubles, joined with them until every redskin in Colorado was thirsting for the blood of the whites and, as it seemed to me, had fixed on Denver as the scene of their most barbarous outrages.

Read the account of the battle of Beecher Island, which can be found in your histories, if you would know how our people struggled in defense of the territory, for then it was that a company of fifty scouts under command of Colonel Forsyth was surrounded by more than a thousand Indians.

From the evening of the 16th of September until the morning of the 25th, those brave fellows, or what few were left of them, held that enormous body of savages at bay, the gallant defense costing the lives of eight of the scouts, while twenty of them were seriously disabled and the survivors on the verge of starvation before relief came.

I might go on and tell of this skirmish or that battle with the Indians, prolonging the story until it covered a full four years of time, without having told all that we did and suffered, in our efforts to hold fast to our homes in Colorado. Even then I would have set down only the outlines of the story, for scattered all over that country were settlers who sold their lives dearly, or who saved themselves and their families by acts of heroism such as seem hardly credible.

I ask you to read the story of those days for yourselves in the pages of history, if there is in your mind any desire to know at what price we held this territory that it might one day take its place as a state with a star of its own on the azure field of Old Glory.