John Chivington

John Milton Chivington (January 27, 1821 – October 4, 1894) was a Methodist pastor and Mason who served as a colonel in the United States Volunteers during the New Mexico Campaign of the American Civil War. He led a rear action against a Confederate supply train in the Battle of Glorieta Pass that ended the Confederacy's campaigns in the Western states, and was then appointed a colonel of cavalry during the Colorado War. Colonel Chivington gained infamy for leading the 700-man force of Colorado Territory volunteers responsible for one of the most heinous atrocities in American military history: the November 1864 Sand Creek massacre. An estimated 70 to 600 Cheyenne and Arapaho – about two-thirds of whom were women, children, and infants – were murdered and mutilated by Col. Chivington and the volunteer troops under his command. Chivington and his men also took scalps and many other human body parts as trophies, including unborn fetuses, as well as male and female genitalia. The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War conducted an investigation of the massacre, but while they condemned Chivington and his soldiers in the strongest possible terms, no court-martial proceedings were brought against him or them. The only punishment Col. Chivington suffered was public exposure and the end of his political aspirations. Three years prior to Sand Creek, on August 2, 1861, he became the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Colorado. Several Freemasons, some of whom were present at the Sand Creek Massacre, objected to Chivington's actions and publicly denounced them, while others supported him.