Sand Creek...
Genocide on the Great Plains
by James Horsley
Introduction
On the morning of November 28, 1864, troops commanded by Colonel John M. Chivington attacked a band of Plains Indians of the Cheyenne tribe under Chief Black Kettle while the Indian village was camped on Sand Creek in Colorado Territory. The camp was just outside a reservation established in 1861 by the treaty of Fort Wise. Two months earlier on September 28, 1864, Black Kettle and White Antelope had met with Colorado Governor John Evans and Colonel Chivington at Camp Weld near Denver to discuss peace. While no formal peace arrangement had been made, the Indians had turned in their arms at Fort Lyon, camping along Sand Creek.
When Black Kettle saw the soldiers charging his camp that morning, he raised an American flag plus a white flag in front of his tent to demonstrate his peaceful intent. The United States flag had been given to the Cheyenne by the government during treaty negotiations. White Antelope yelled in English, "Stop! Stop!" then, seeing that they did not stop their charge, stood with his arms folded as the troops galloped toward him, refusing to fight.
The soldiers killed about 150 Indian men, women and children, including White Antelope. It had been an orgy of killing. Many of the victims had been physically mutilated by the soldiers. According to Congressional testimony, White Antelope's scrotum had been cut off, later to be used as a tobacco pouch. Soldiers had cut out the vaginal area from slain Indian women. Clusters of women had been shot trying to surrender. Children had been shot and clubbed to death. Their village was burned and several hundred horses captured. (Hoig, 1981, p. 66) (United States Congress, 1865, p. 96)
On January 10, 1865, the House of Representatives directed the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to investigate the attack, generating a report that charged Chivington of deliberately planning and executing "a foul and dastardly massacre." (Prucha, 1976, p. 12) The attack on Black Kettle's band was officially recognized by the United States government as "gross and wanton outrages" against the Indians. In the treaty with the Cheyenne and Arapaho of 1865 a number of chiefs, including Black Kettle, were individually granted parcels of land in an attempt to repudiate Chivington's actions. Article VI of the treaty read:
http://www.dickshovel.com/was.htmlhttp://www.dickshovel.com/genosite.html*****************
General Custer in Virginia
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Confiscate their stocks and farms, Do it with a vigor,
snip...
General James Wilson, Commander of the Third Division of Cavalry had received orders to take command of the Cavalry Corps in the western theater of the war. Brig. General George Armstrong Custer was ordered to take command of the Third Division composed of two brigades of which the Twenty-Second New York was in the Second Brigade. Gen. Custer took command at Mt. Crawford and started his division on its return trip to Winchester the 5th of October. The cavalry burned all the hay, grain, barns and mills that could be found on their line of march back to Winchester and prior to leaving Mt. Crawford. Houses often caught fire from sparks but in most cases were not deliberately set. Nobody's grain or property were safe unless you were a proven Union man. Even the property of Mennonites and Dunkards were set ablaze and these families supplied no fighting soldiers to the South's cause. All grain in the fields were trampled into the ground by whole regiments. Orders were given to destroy the crops in the fields and the seeds for next Spring's planting as well. Seeds pounded into the ground by horse hooves protected them from burning, which sprouted in the Spring of 1865, after the war was over, resulting in a yield of crops for that Fall's harvest. To this day, the Old Order of Mennonites each August hold a special service to commemorate the event (2). The remnants of Early's army watched helplessly from the mountain ridges, one Georgian soldier writing: "We could see Yankees driving off horses, cattle, sheep and killing hogs. They burned barns, shocks of wheat, corn in the fields and destroyed everything that could shelter man or beast - soon the valley was black with smoke." Estimated losses in Rockingham County alone amounted to $25,000,000.00 in Confederate currency.
snip...
By the 8th of October, the destruction was complete from below Harrisonburg down the valley to Winchester. Corp. Dewitt Crumb of the "Two-Twos" reported "the smoke was so thick it stifled their breath and blinded their eyes." When Yankee troopers were asked why they were burning the barns and destroying crops, the cavalrymen replied "This is for burning Chambersburg!" Chambersburg, Pa. had been burned earlier that summer when the citizens couldn't come up with the money to save their town. When the burning of the valley was completed, General Sheridan reported to Grant; "A crow would need to carry its ration when it flew over the Valley of Virginia."More...
http://www.nelson.talkingrelics.com/about4.htmlThe Burning
http://www.angelfire.com/wv/wasec9/burning/burning.html****************
snip...
“Burnt District”
Gen. Philip Sheridan's campaign in the fall of 1864 was just the latest act in a Valley traversed by armies since the beginning of the war.
But Sheridan's destruction of the region's economic base found its way on to Rockingham County maps. The “Burnt District” is the area between the Rawley Springs Pike and Bridgewater and then from Mole Hill to the Valley Pike.
“Everybody knew somebody who had been hit hard by “The Burning,” Heatwole said. “It was not a raid. It was a really well-planned campaign within a campaign,” he said.
Sheridan, following Union commanding Gen. Ulysses Grant's directive, ordered barns full of harvest burned unless widows owned them. Soldiers also torched mills and killed or drove off livestock in the region from northern Augusta County north to Strasburg and on both sides of Massanutten Mountain. More...
http://www.dnronline.com/civilwar/part-2/arc-closer.htm 
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