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Show 90 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS'. 700. I am inclined to think the latter number nearest correct. We captured a large number of ponies, mules and horses. From these I allowed the men of the command, whose horses had died or given out on the march, to choose another, and ordered the remainder of them to be turned over to Captain Louden Mullen, Assistant Quartermaster of volunteers at Denver, which was done, and Captain Mullen sold them at public auction and accounted for the proceeds in his returns to the Quartermaster's department. We burned the tepees or tents, destroyed their provisions, turned over to the hospital the robes and blankets we took, for the benefit of our sick and wounded, of whom we now had a large number. " Was Sand Creek a massacre ? If it was, we had massacres almost without number during the late rebellion. That there may have been some excesses committed on the field, no one will deny. Was there ever a battle fought in which no excesses were committed? We were on the ground, were 'wide-awal^e and duly sober;' there were not ten minutes at a time for ten hours that we were not overlooking the whole scene of strife, and after nineteen years, less two months and a half, we say unhesitatingly, that it was remarkably free from undue atrocities. I saw in a newspaper, within a month past, that Gen. S. R. Curtis, commanding the department,, denied all responsibility for the whole affair. Here is his last word by telegraph to the district commander: ' Pursue everywhere and punish the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Pay no, attention to district lines. No presents must be made and no peace concluded without my order.' It has been an open secret to the writer ever since the battle that the misrepresentation of this whole affair from the beginning, was a combination consisting of one man who was disappointed of promotion, and some others who were aspirants for office, and wanted several connected with the campaign out of their way. I heard a Judge of Common Pleas in Ohio, a Friend Quaker, and Colonel of an Ohio regiment during the rebellion, say only last week, when this subject was on the tapis, that he was expecting to be arrested pretty soon, and when asked why, he said, ' I captured three rebel soldiers who had Fort Pillow blazoned on the front of their hats. I sent them to the rear under guard of three soldiers The soldiers returned to camp, and I asked them what had become of the prisoners. They replied that they had tried to escape and they had shot them, and I knew very well that they had shot them because of their boast that they had participated in the Fort Pillow affair, and I did not arrest |