Ochinee (died November 29, 1864), also known as Lone Bear and One-Eye, was a Native American Peace Chief of the Cheyenne tribe. He was the father of Amache Prowers, a tradeswoman, advocate and leader among the Southern Cheyenne. Ochinee, who had worked to create peace for the Cheyenne, died during the Sand Creek massacre on November 29, 1864.
Ochinee, a sub-chief, [1] helped negotiate a treaty between the government, Cheyenne, and Arapaho to safely camp along Sand Creek during the winter of 1864–1865. [2] Ochinee went to Fort Lyon on September 4, 1864 with his wife to deliver a letter to Major Ned Wynkoop from Black Kettle and other chiefs. Nervous soldiers tried to shoot him when he approached the fort. The letter conveyed that Cheyenne people were fearful of raids and were starving. Black Kettle released white people that the Cheyenne had taken captive and asked to discuss a solution for peace. [3] Ochinee, his wife Minimic, and a man that had accompanied them, were put under guard and taken on a four-day ride with 127 soldiers and taken to an encampment of Arapaho and Cheyenne people on the Smoky Hill River. [3] [4] Wynkoop encouraged tribal chiefs, including Black Kettle and Arapaho Chief Niwot (Left Hand) to travel with him to Denver to meet with Territorial Governor, John Evans and Colonel John Chivington. [3] The delegation left for Denver for the September 28 meeting at Camp Weld. [3]
With other members of the delegation, [3] he met with the Territorial Governor, John Evans. Colonel John Chivington certified that Ochinee was a man of good character and a "friendly Indian." [5] Before the attack, the John Wesley Prowers family, including his daughter Amache Prowers, were held hostage [2] to prevent them warning Cheyenne at the Sand Creek winter camp site of the eminent attack. [6]
On November 29, 1864, the Cheyenne encampment at the Sand Creek was attacked by 600 soldiers of the Colorado Volunteer Cavalry and Ochinee and 160 other people, most of whom were children and women, were killed. [7] The troops were led by Colonel John Chivington upon the orders of John Evans, the territorial governor of Colorado. [7]
Grandfather Ochinee (One-Eye) escaped from the camp, but seeing all that his people were to be slaughtered, he deliberately chose to go back into the one-sided battle and die with them.
His wife was able to escape. [9] Amache went later to the Congress with her husband and testified to seek justice for the Cheyenne. [10] Cheyenne men sought retribution after the Sand Creek massacre. Called Cheyenne dog soldiers, they looted and terrorized the area. [11]
Ochinee's wife, Amache, and her two oldest daughters each received reparations by the United States government in the form of 640 acres of land along the Arkansas River, which she used to expand her family's cattle ranch. [7] [10] [12] [lower-alpha 1] The rest of Ochinee's family moved to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. [5] [lower-alpha 2]
Ochinee's wife was Minimic. He had a daughter, Amache, who married a white man, John Wesley Prowers. [1] Minimic taught Amache how to make tepees from buffalo hides; how to make and decorate clothing from hides, beads, and animal teeth; and how to select wild plants for medicine, dyes, and food. [11]
The Achonee Mountain in the Indian Peaks Wilderness was named after him. [8]
The Arapaho are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota.
The Sand Creek massacre was a massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people by the U.S. Army in the American Indian Wars that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 675-man force of the Third Colorado Cavalry under the command of U.S. Volunteers Colonel John Chivington attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 69 to over 600 Native American people. Chivington claimed 500 to 600 warriors were killed. However, most sources estimate around 150 people were killed, about two-thirds of whom were women and children. The location has been designated the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site and is administered by the National Park Service. The massacre is considered part of a series of events known as the Colorado Wars.
John Milton Chivington was an American 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, and was then appointed a colonel of cavalry during the Colorado War.
Black Kettle was a prominent leader of the Southern Cheyenne during the American Indian Wars. Born to the Northern Só'taeo'o / Só'taétaneo'o band of the Northern Cheyenne in the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota, he later married into the Wotápio / Wutapai band of the Southern Cheyenne.
John Evans was an American politician, physician, founder of various hospitals and medical associations, railroad promoter, governor of the territory of Colorado, and namesake of Evanston, Illinois; Evans, Colorado; and Mount Evans, Colorado.
The Colorado War was an Indian War fought in 1864 and 1865 between the Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and allied Brulé and Oglala Sioux peoples versus the U.S. army, Colorado militia, and white settlers in Colorado Territory and adjacent regions. The Kiowa and the Comanche played a minor role in actions that occurred in the southern part of the Territory along the Arkansas River. The Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux played the major role in actions that occurred north of the Arkansas River and along the South Platte River, the Great Platte River Road, and the eastern portion of the Overland Trail. The United States government and Colorado Territory authorities participated through the 1st Colorado Cavalry Regiment, often called the Colorado volunteers. The war was centered on the Colorado Eastern Plains, extending eastward into Kansas and Nebraska.
The 3rd Colorado Cavalry Regiment was a Union Army unit formed in the mid-1860s when increased traffic on the United States emigrant trails and settler encroachment resulted in numerous attacks against them by the Cheyenne and Arapaho. The Hungate massacre and the display in Denver of mutilated victims raised political pressure for the government to protect its people. Governor John Evans sought and gained authorization from the War Department in Washington to found the Third. More a militia than a military unit, the "Bloodless Third" was composed of "100-daysers," that is, volunteers who signed on for 100 days to fight against the Indians. The unit's only commander was Col. George L. Shoup, a politician from Colorado. The regiment was assigned to the District of Colorado commanded by Col. John M. Chivington.
William Wells Bent was a frontier trader and rancher in the American West, with forts in Colorado. He also acted as a mediator among the Cheyenne Nation, other Native American tribes and the expanding United States. With his brothers, Bent established a trade business along the Santa Fe Trail. In the early 1830s Bent built an adobe fort, called Bent's Fort, along the Arkansas River in present-day Colorado. Furs, horses and other goods were traded for food and other household goods by travelers along the Santa Fe trail, fur-trappers, and local Mexican and Native American people. Bent negotiated a peace among the many Plains tribes north and south of the Arkansas River, as well as between the Native American and the United States government.
The 1st Colorado Cavalry Regiment was formed in November 1862 by Territorial Governor John Evans, composed mostly of members of the 1st Colorado Infantry Regiment and of C and D Companies of the 2nd Colorado Infantry Regiment. It was formed both to protect Colorado against incursions from the Confederate forces and to fight the Native Americans who already inhabited the area.
Samuel Forster Tappan was an American journalist, military officer, abolitionist and a Native American rights activist. Appointed as a member of the Indian Peace Commission in 1867 to reach peace with the Plains Indians, he advocated self-determination for native tribes. He proposed the federal government replace military jurisdiction over tribal matters with a form of civil law on reservations, applied by the tribes themselves.
The Treaty of Fort Wise of 1861 was a treaty entered into between the United States and six chiefs of the Southern Cheyenne and four of the Southern Arapaho Indian tribes. A significant proportion of Cheyennes opposed this treaty on the grounds that only a minority of Cheyenne chiefs had signed, and without the consent or approval of the rest of the tribe. Different responses to the treaty became a source of conflict between whites and Indians, leading to the Colorado War of 1864, including the Sand Creek Massacre.
Edward Wanshear Wynkoop was an American US Army Colonel during the American Civil War. He was a founder of the city of Denver, Colorado. Wynkoop Street in Denver is named after him.
Chief Niwot or Left Hand(-ed) was a Southern Arapaho chief, diplomat, and interpreter who negotiated for peace between white settlers and the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush and Colorado War.
George Bent, also named Ho—my-ike in Cheyenne, was a Cheyenne-Anglo who became a Confederate soldier during the American Civil War and waged war against Americans as a Cheyenne warrior afterward. He was the mixed-race son of Owl Woman, daughter of a Cheyenne chief, and the American William Bent, founder of the trading post named Bent's Fort and a trading partnership with his brothers and Ceran St. Vrain. Bent was born near present-day La Junta, Colorado, and was reared among both his mother's people, his father and other European Americans at the fort, and other whites from the age of 10 while attending boarding school in St. Louis, Missouri. He identified as Cheyenne.
Howling Wolf was a Southern Cheyenne warrior who was a member of Black Kettle's band and was present at the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. After being imprisoned in the Fort Marion in Saint Augustine, Florida in 1875, Howling Wolf became a proficient artist in a style known as Ledger art for the accounting ledger books in which the drawings were done.
Mochi was a Southern Cheyenne woman of the Tse Tse Stus band and the wife of Chief Medicine Water. Mochi, then a 24-year-old, was a member of Black Kettle's camp and was present on the morning of November 29, 1864, when John Chivington and over 650 troops of the First Colorado Cavalry, Third Colorado Cavalry and a company of the 1st Regiment New Mexico Volunteer Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's winter camp at Sand Creek on the plains of eastern Colorado Territory.
The Hungate massacre involved the murder of the family of Nathan Hungate along Running Creek on June 11, 1864. It was a precipitating factor leading to the Sand Creek massacre of November 29, 1864.
Fort Weld, also called Camp Weld, began as a military camp on 30 acres east of the Platte River in what is now the La Alma-Lincoln Park neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. It was named for Lewis Ledyard Weld, the first Territorial Secretary. The central square of the post was used to practice drills of the troops. Buildings—soldier's quarters, officers' headquarters, mess rooms, a hospital, and a guard house—surrounded the square. The main entrance to the camp was on the eastern side of the post. It was established on September 1861 and abandoned in 1865.
Amache Ochinee Prowers, also known as Walking Woman (1846–1905), was a Native American activist, advocate, cattle rancher, and operator of a store on the Santa Fe Trail. Her father was a Cheyenne peace chief who was killed during the Sand Creek massacre on November 29, 1864, after which she became a mediator between Colorado territorial settlers, Mexicans, and Native Americans during the 1860s and 1870s. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2018.
John Wesley Prowers was an American trader, cattle rancher, legislator, and businessman in the territory and state of Colorado. Married to Amache Prowers, a Cheyenne woman, his father-in-law was a Cheyenne chief who negotiated for peace and was killed during the Sand Creek massacre.