Sand Creek: The Colorado War, 1851-1865
By Daniel R. Whitcomb
Length3h 47m
About this audiobook
A dog could drag eighty pounds. A horse could drag three hundred and cover twenty miles before breakfast. For a century the Tsitsistas, the Cheyenne, and their Arapaho allies had been remaking their lives around that difference, and by the 1840s the country between the Platte and the Arkansas was theirs: camps of hundreds strung along the Smoky Hill, horse herds in the thousands, and buffalo robes dressed by women's hands and weighed at the counter at Bent's Fort.
In 1851 a great treaty council near Fort Laramie recognized that country as theirs. Then gold was found at the foot of the Rockies in 1858, and within a few years Colorado had a territorial governor, John Evans, towns full of miners, and Cheyenne and Arapaho bands pressed onto shrinking ground and short of food. When the Hungate family was killed near Denver in June 1864 and their bodies were displayed in the town, panic swept the territory. Governor Evans raised a regiment of hundred-day volunteers, and Colonel John Chivington, the district's commander and a man with political ambitions, took it into the field.
That autumn Black Kettle's Cheyenne and a smaller Arapaho band camped on Sand Creek, believing they were under the Army's protection, with an American flag flying over the lodges. At dawn on November 29, 1864, Chivington's seven hundred men attacked. More than a hundred and fifty people were killed, most of them women, children and old people, and soldiers carried trophies from the bodies back to Denver.
The war on the plains widened after it. In 1865 a congressional committee condemned the attack, but Chivington had already left the Army, and he was never tried.
Audiobook details
GenreHistory
Length3 hrs 47 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 18, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapter 1: The Horse Nations
2Chapter 2: The Treaty at Fort Laramie, 1851
3Chapter 3: Gold at the Foot of the Mountains
4Chapter 4: John Evans and the Politics of Hunger
5Chapter 5: The Hungate Killings, June 1864
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter 6: The War on the Platte and the Republican
7Chapter 7: Under the American Flag at Sand Creek
8Chapter 8: Chivington's March
9Chapter 9: The Morning of November 29, 1864
10Chapter 10: The Aftermath: Scalps, Trophies, and Widows
11Chapter 11: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1865
12Chapter 12: The Widening Plains War
13About the Author
More from Daniel R. Whitcomb
The Great Law of Peace: The Iroquois Confederacy and the Making of the NortheastDaniel R. Whitcomb4h 12m$6
Crazy Horse and the End of Lakota FreedomDaniel R. Whitcomb4h 32m$6
The Medicine Line: Native Nations and the U.S.-Canada BorderDaniel R. Whitcomb4h 52m$6
The Long Hunter and the Shawnee Towns: Simon Kenton's Kentucky WarDaniel R. Whitcomb4h 45m$6
The Yakama War and the Puget Sound War: Kamiakin, Leschi, and the Fight for the NorthwestDaniel R. Whitcomb3h 42m4.6 (10)$6
The Makah: Whaling, Treaties, and the Fight for the SeaDaniel R. Whitcomb4h 19m$6
The Pawnee: Earth Lodges, the Stars, and the ScoutsDaniel R. Whitcomb4h 2m$6
Seven Cargoes: How Corn, Horses, and Disease Remade Native AmericaDaniel R. Whitcomb5h 20m$6
Powder River: Red Cloud's War and the Fight for the Bighorn CountryDaniel R. Whitcomb4h 19m$6
Fallen Timbers: Little Turtle, St. Clair, and the Fight for OhioDaniel R. Whitcomb5h 6m4.3 (57)$6
The Black Hawk War: The Last War East of the MississippiDaniel R. Whitcomb4h 6m$6
A Brief History of IntelligenceMax S. Bennett12h 18m4.6 (6.6K)$29 · $0.00
Ghosts of HiroshimaCharles Pellegrino8h 59m4.5 (877)$23
Lily's PromiseLily Ebert, Dov Forman8h 54m4.6 (16.1K)$29 · $0.00
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
Across the RiverKent Babb11h 40m4.6 (927)$29 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m4.6 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
BeyondStephen Walker15h 39m4.6 (3.2K)$33 · $0.00
Kings and PawnsHoward Bryant10h 9m4.6 (678)$29 · $0.00
No EscapeNury Turkel9h 30m4.6 (809)$28 · $0.00
Jubal Stone: U.S. Marshal: Blood Trail To Hell: A Western Adventure NovelCasey Nash3h 42m4.6 (3.2K)$18 · $0.00
Fall and RiseMitchell Zuckoff17h 23m4.6 (9.8K)$40 · $0.00
The SurvivorJosef Lewkowicz, Michael Calvin9h 22m4.6 (2.5K)$29 · $0.00
Always FaithfulThomas Schueman, Zainullah Zaki12h 12m4.6 (977)$29 · $0.00
The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 (Annotated)Alexis de Tocqueville17h 25m4.6 (1.2K)$2 · $0.00
All the Gallant MenDonald Stratton, Ken Gire5h 55m4.6 (11.8K)$24 · $0.00
Medgar and MyrlieJoy-Ann Reid10h 52m4.5 (27.8K)$29 · $0.00
The History of the Peloponnesian War (Annotated)Thucydides24h 3m4.6 (1.1K)$2 · $0.00
Where the Birds Never SingJack Sacco10h 31m4.6 (3.8K)$29 · $0.00
Serviceman J: The Untold Story of an NZSAS SoldierJamie Pennell5h 51m4.6 (452)$24 · $0.00
Valley of the BirdtailAndrew Stobo Sniderman, Douglas Sanderson10h 1m4.6 (2.4K)$29 · $0.00
You may also like
By the Fire We CarryRebecca Nagle8h 15m4.5 (5.5K)$26 · $0.00
In the Midst of Civilized EuropeJeffrey Veidlinger14h 45m4.4 (444)$33 · $0.00
It Wasn’t about SlaverySamuel W. Mitcham Jr.6h 21m4.4 (1.7K)$17
Blood DiamondsGreg Campbell7h 3m4.1 (1.9K)$17 · $0.00
The History of the Peloponnesian WarThucydides21h 50m4.2 (52.7K)Free
The Tuscarora WarDavid La Vere9h 53m4.1 (335)$20
Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black HawkSauk chief Black Hawk5h 9m3.9 (2K)$1.99 · $0.00
12 Years A SlaveSolomon Northup10h 8m4.3 (308.2K)$1 · $0.00
Games without RulesTamim Ansary14h 40m4.4 (2.4K)$23
The Complete Works of Flavius JosephusFlavius Josephus87h 16m4.4 (6.1K)$2 · $0.00
Bury My Heart at Wounded KneeDee Brown14h 21m4.4 (139.5K)$25
The Long Knives Are CryingJoseph M. Marshall III19h 2m4.5 (351)$32
Geronimo's Story of His Life (Illustrated Edition) (Annotated)Geronimo5h 30m4.2 (5.4K)$1.99 · $0.00
O Jerusalem!Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre23h 42m4.4 (7.7K)$30
History of the Black Hawk WarBlack Hawk, Charles M. Scanlan8h 55m$2 · $0.00
American GrammarJarvis R. Givens15h 38m3.7 (64)$33 · $0.00
The Yakama War and the Puget Sound War: Kamiakin, Leschi, and the Fight for the NorthwestDaniel R. Whitcomb3h 42m4.6 (10)$6
The Slaveholding Indians (Vol.1-3)Annie Heloise Abel36h 23m4.3 (31)$1 · $0.00
Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab ConflictMallika Kaur17h 18m4.5 (27)$25
The Birth of the WestPaul Collins21h 30m3.6 (443)$30