Mochi's War by Enss Chris

Author:Enss, Chris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: TwoDot
Published: 2012-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Colonel Chivington disagreed with Bishop Whipple and maintained that the United States Army needed to “enact God’s justice.” According to an interview Chivington’s third wife, Isabella, did with historian Fred Martin in 1902, the colonel never deviated from the notion that “Indians who had committed depredations should be killed.” The war department’s investigation into the Sand Creek Massacre ended with no charges being brought against Chivington or his troops. The military did turn its back on Chivington and his name became synonymous with torture and murder. Colonel Chivington dismissed any disparaging comments about his actions, standing by his decision and insisting to all who would listen that he was justified. “[The Indians] are guilty of robbery, arson, murder, rape and fiendish torture,” he continued to tell family, friends, and supporters. “I believe it right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians who kill and torture women and children.”[17]

From January 1865 to July 1869, Chivington crisscrossed the western territory in search of a place to settle, grieve the loss of his military career, mourn the deaths of his wife and son, and avoid any further backlash because of Sand Creek. He returned to Nebraska in the spring of 1868 to attend a religious conference. From there he traveled to Chicago, where he visited with his son Thomas’s widow, Sarah. The two became romantically involved and were married on May 13, 1869.[18] Sarah’s parents were distraught over their daughter’s relationship with her former father-in-law and made their feelings known in the June 13, 1868, edition of the Petersburg Index. “We, the undersigned, take this method to inform the public that the criminal act of John M. Chivington in marrying our daughter was unknown to us and a thing we very much regret,” Sarah’s father, John Lull, announced in the short article. “Had the facts been made known to me of the intentions some measures would have been taken to prevent the consummation of so vile and unnatural an outrage,” he continued. “Even if violent measures were necessary I would have stopped it. Hoping this may be a sufficient explanation for what has occurred, we remain, John and Almira Lull.”[19]

The Chivingtons divorced less than two years after they exchanged vows. Chivington abandoned his bride and fled to Canada without providing monetary support for her. “He left me with nothing,” Sarah explained to a pension examiner in Washington, D.C., via letter. “And I had no desire to live with a criminal.” Sarah and John Chivington’s divorce was finalized on October 25, 1871.[20]

By mid-1873, Chivington had met and married Isabella. She was a forty-four-year-old widow of a Union soldier. The pair lived on a farm in Clinton County, Ohio, then relocated to the town of Blanchester. It was there Chivington traded in his plow for a newspaper called The Press. For several years Chivington had been on the editorial staff of publications such as the Christian Advocate of St. Louis and the Nebraska Methodist Quarterly. He made time for the job no matter what else he was doing to support himself.

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