In early September 1868, settlers around Colorado City faced a new wave of deadly raids as bands of Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors swept through the region. The attacks came after the U. S. government had supplied the tribes with arms and ammunition under the promise they would be used only for hunting—a promise that was broken in bloodshed.
With no help forthcoming from the federal government, the people of El Paso County were left to defend themselves against the raids that threatened to wipe them out. On September 3, 1868, around noon, a band of 40 to 50 Indians came dashing down the valley of Monument Creek, capturing all loose horses in their path. The first white man they encountered was Robert F. Love of Colorado City.
Rather than attempting to flee, Love dismounted and kept his pony between himself and the Indians, pointing his revolver in their direction to show that he was armed. After maneuvering around him for a time, the Indians passed on, apparently convinced that attacking him would cost them casualties. Soon after leaving Love, a few of the Indians crossed Monument Creek to the house of David Spielman, on the west side about half a mile above the Mesa Road Bridge in what is now Colorado Springs. Spielman had just finished moving his family to Colorado City and, being tired, had lain down behind the open front door and fallen asleep.
The Indians looked in through the open doorway but fortunately did not see him. They went to the corral, took a horse Spielman had purchased only the day before, and then rejoined the main body. Shortly afterward, Charlie Everheart, a young man of about 18, started from his home just west of Monument Creek to look after his father’s cattle grazing on the plains now covered by Colorado Springs. Mounted on a small pony, Everheart knew the Indians were in the country and was on the lookout.
When he saw the band coming into open view to the north of him, he turned his pony toward home and urged it to its highest speed, but his horse was no match for the Indians’ mounts. They soon overtook him near the intersection of what is now Platte and Cascade Avenues, where a shot from one of the Indians caused him to fall from his horse. An Indian then ran a spear through his body and scalped him, taking all the hair from his head except a small fringe around the back. The whole occurrence was witnessed from a distance by several people, and an hour or so later, once the Indians had gone, a party brought his mutilated body to Colorado City.
After killing Everheart, the Indians saw further down the valley a lone sheep herder generally known as Judge Baldwin, and the whole band immediately started after him. Baldwin tried to escape—having no spurs or whip, he took off one of his long-legged boots and used it to urge his mount to its utmost speed. But his horse was inferior to those of the Indians, and they had no difficulty overtaking him. They shot him, and he fell from his horse near the site of the present Fourth Street Schoolhouse.
The bullet struck Baldwin in the shoulder and, as he was leaning forward, passed upward through his neck and came out through his jaw. Dazed and delirious, he used the boot to fight off the Indians. They evidently thought the wound mortal and, without wasting more ammunition, one of their number proceeded to take his scalp. The Indian ran the knife around the back of Baldwin’s head, severing the scalp—and then discovered that Baldwin had been scalped at some previous time.
For some reason, probably superstition, the Indians abandoned the idea of scalping him and rode off, leaving their victim to die on the prairie. It was a fact that Baldwin had been scalped by Indians in South America some years before. After leaving Baldwin, the Indians divided into two bands. One went in a northeasterly direction and crossed Shook’s Run near where Platte Avenue now intersects it, where they were joined by other Indians who had evidently been in concealment nearby.
It is said that during all this time, two or three Indians stationed on the hill where the deaf and blind institute is now located directed the movements of those doing the killing, using flags in a wigwag manner similar to that used in the army at the time. These signal men fell in with the others as they came along, and all rode rapidly eastward, soon disappearing on the plains. The other party continued down the valley of the Fountain, and just below where the Rio Grande bridge now crosses Shook’s Run, they came upon two small boys, the sons of Thomas H. Robins, who lived on the south side of the Fountain not far away.
The boys, aged 8 and 10, were looking after their father’s cattle. They had evidently seen the Indians coming from a distance, as they were using every possible endeavor to escape. But they had not gone far when the Indians were upon them. One of the boys fell on his knees and lifted up his hands as though begging the Indians to spare his life, but the appeal was ignored.
Two Indians reached down, each seized a boy by the hair, held him up with one hand, and shot him with a revolver held in the other, then flung the lifeless bodies to the ground. The Indians continued down along the edge of the bluffs north of Fountain Creek. At the south side of the present Evergreen Cemetery, they attempted to capture horses at the Enos Ranch, but the presence of armed men caused them to desist after a few feigned dashes in that direction. Half a mile below, they met Solon Mason, a ranchman from the lower end of the county, accompanied by two or three other armed men.
After two or three shots were exchanged, the Indians gave them a wide berth. At a ranch just below, occupied by George Banning, the Indians secured a few horses, after which they struck out over the plains to join the other bands. The narrator of this account, Irving Halbert, had been in a harvest field that morning, binding wheat behind a reaper near the present Broadmoor area. Around 2:00 in the afternoon, a horseman named Mr.
Riggs came riding furiously from the east with the news that the Indians were raiding the settlements and killing people. He reported the deaths of Everheart, Baldwin, and the Robins boys, and believed many more had been killed, along with a large number of horses run off. Halbert immediately thought of his three young brothers, Edgar, Frank, and Charles, who were looking after their cattle near the mouth of Bear Creek. He secured permission to take a horse from the reaper and rode in search of them.
After a ride at top speed, he met the boys about three-quarters of a mile south of Bear Creek. The boys told Halbert that while eating their lunch in the milk house near their dwelling, they were alarmed by the excited barking of their dog. Looking across at the present site of Colorado Springs, they saw a group of horsemen whom they immediately knew to be Indians, pursuing another horseman they recognized as Charlie Everheart. Moments later, the Indians seemed to be grouped around some objects—doubtless when they were scalping young Everheart.
The boys then witnessed the Indians race down over the flats in their pursuit of Baldwin, and while this was in progress, they counted the horsemen and found there were 35 in the band. They ran up the hill to the east of the house, heard the shots, and watched Baldwin being shot. They then saw the band divide, one party going out on the plains and the other down the creek. Alarmed for their own safety, they had started to run to neighbors on Cheyenne Creek when Halbert met them.
By the time they reached Colorado City, the bodies of Everheart and the two Robins boys had been brought in. The party that went after Baldwin found him alive, but supposed him mortally wounded. It was thought he could not possibly live more than a day or two, but to everyone’s surprise, he began to recover and in about a month was apparently well again. The excitement throughout the county was intense.
The settlers knew the territorial authorities could give them no help and that the general government had turned a deaf ear to their appeals for protection. As in 1864, they realized they must rely solely upon themselves. They repaired their old fort around the log hotel and organized their forces for further attacks. Only a few hours after the raid, a messenger came in from Bayou Salado asking that men be sent to the relief of the Simpson party, which was surrounded by Indians near that point.
That night, ten volunteers, including Halbert, set out. For the expedition, a Mr. Hall loaned Halbert an excellent horse and a Colt rifle, a kind of gun built exactly on the principle of a Colt revolver, with the only trouble being one never knew just how many shots would go off at once. Early the next morning, they started out, following Monument Creek to the mouth of Cottonwood, then up that creek to where Teachout’s herd of horses had been captured.
They stopped briefly at the Nef Ranch, which they found deserted, and then went east along the route taken by the Indians when running off the Teachout herd. About half a mile from the Pinery, they saw a band of about 20 mounted Indians half a mile away on the south bank of Cottonwood Creek. Without a moment’s hesitation, the men wheeled about and made for the Indians as fast as their horses could go. Halbert warned them not to cross the ravine at the place where they had first seen the Indians, but the men were in such a state of frenzy that they would not listen.
They rushed to the bank of the ravine, which was so steep they had to dismount and lead their horses. By this time, the Indians had dismounted on a large open flat about three-quarters of a mile to the east, formed a circle with their ponies, and seemed to be awaiting the settlers’ attack. The settlers could see their guns flashing in the sunshine. Despite this unusual movement, they started toward the Indians as fast as their ponies could take them.
Evidently changing their minds upon seeing this approach, the Indians remounted and started in the direction of the Pinery as rapidly as they could go. Their horses were better and fleeter than those of the settlers, so the settlers were unable to head them off. When the Indians entered the edge of the timber, pursuing them further would only invite disaster. The party resumed its march toward Bayou Salado.
An hour or two later, they passed the extreme eastern edge of the Pinery, where the old government road crossed Squirrel Creek. Judging by the great number of fresh pony tracks, a large number of Indians must have passed only a short time previously. They reached Bayou Salado that evening just before dark, only to find that the besieged party had come in the day before, and that all the men except the wounded had returned to their homes. There being nothing further to do, they started for home early the following morning.
On their way, they found many Indian pony tracks along the eastern and southern edge of the Pinery, showing the Indians were still in considerable numbers, though they saw none during the day. For two weeks following the raid upon the present town site of Colorado Springs, the Indians had virtual possession of the northern and eastern portions of the county. During this time, they raided Gill’s Ranch east of Jimmy’s Camp and ran off his herd of horses, stealing up to the corral from the side opposite the guards, opening it, and letting the horses out before the men realized what was going on. About the same time, the Indians killed a demented man named Jonathan Lincoln at the Lincoln Ranch in Spring Valley on Cherry Creek, just north of the El Paso County line.
Lincoln and a Mexican were out in the harvest field binding oats when they saw the Indians approaching. The Mexican saved himself by flight, but Lincoln folded his arms and calmly awaited the coming of the Indians. Without hesitation, they killed him, took his scalp, and departed into the recesses of the adjacent Pinery. They also killed John Chateau on East Cherry Creek, John Grief and Jonathan Tolman on East Bayou, and raided the John Russell ranch at the east head of Cherry Creek, running off 16 horses.
Around this time, a small band of Indians, while prowling near the town of Monument, threatened the house of David McShane when all the men were away, with only Mrs. McShane and some neighboring women and children inside. Having the true pioneer spirit, the women, under Mrs. McShane’s leadership, put up such a strong show of defense that the Indians abandoned the attack in short order, apparently glad to get away unharmed.
Soon after, they burned Henry Walker’s house, about a mile east of the present Houston station on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. The Indians seemed to have established a camp at some secluded place in the timber of the Divide, from which they went out in small parties in every direction, killing and robbing when opportunity afforded. By this time, the settlers had taken their families out of danger and were so constantly on the alert that the Indians, while having many opportunities for looting deserted ranches, had few chances for surprising and killing defenseless people—the only ones they cared to attack. About the 15th of September, 80 mounted and well-armed men, including Halbert, met at Husted Sawmill on the Divide and perfected a military organization, electing A.
J. Templeton as captain. The company marched through the Pinery to Bayou Salado, then eastward past the place where Simpson’s party had been besieged, and south-easterly to Big Sandy Creek, then down the valley to Lake Station on the Smoky Hill Wagon Road, about 10 miles east of the present town of Limon. On the march they saw no Indians, and judging from their trails and other indications, they decided the Indians were leaving the country.
As they marched down the valley of the Big Sandy in the vicinity of the present towns of Rama and Calhan, they saw hundreds of dead cattle, most killed by the Indians only a day or two before. That the cattle had been wantonly killed was shown by the fact that no part of the animals had been taken for food. In almost every instance they had been shot with arrows, many of which were still sticking in the carcasses. Besides the dead cattle, they saw hundreds of live ones scattered over the hills and down the valley, evidently driven off by the Indians from ranches in El Paso and the surrounding counties.
At a point about 10 miles down the valley from the present station, the trail of the Indians left the valley and turned northeastward. The settlers were then about 75 miles southwest of the Beecher Island battleground on the Arikaree Fork of the Republican River, where Colonel George A. Forsyth and his 50 followers were at that very time making a heroic defense against an overwhelming number of Indians under the command of the famous Chief Roman Nose. Although the settlers knew nothing of the affair until later, the trail of the Indians led across the country in a direct line toward the battleground.
No doubt they had been summoned by runners to aid their people, and probably this was the reason for their leaving El Paso County. Captain Templeton, on account of his small force, deemed it imprudent to pursue further. An additional reason for turning back was that the supply of provisions was about exhausted; on the way homeward, they had to live entirely on the meat of cattle they killed, broiling the meat on sticks before campfires and eating it without salt. Halbert called this fare about the nearest to a starvation diet he had ever experienced.
The company reached Colorado City in due time without having seen an Indian during the whole campaign. Whether the settlers were the cause of the Indians leaving the region, or whether it was a coincidence, the evidence was that the Indians were gone, and with winter approaching there was little to fear during the remainder of the year. With no further use for its services, the company was disbanded. It had been a strenuous period from the first appearance of the Indians about the 20th of August until this time.
At least a dozen persons had been killed in El Paso County and the country adjacent on the Divide. Many houses had been destroyed, crops were lost through the inability to harvest grain, and probably 500 horses and at least 1,000 head of cattle had been driven off, making an aggregate loss of property extremely heavy for a sparsely populated county. The contest was an unequal one from the start. The settlers were armed with a miscellaneous lot of guns, most of them muzzle-loading hunting rifles, while the Indians were armed with breech-loading guns using metal cartridges.
Fortunately for the settlers, the Indians’ ammunition was of poor quality, as proved in the fight east of Bayou Salado and elsewhere. Judging by the careful manner in which they used their ammunition, the supply was probably not very large. This undoubtedly saved the lives of many of the settlers. It was noticed from the first that the Indians never wasted their ammunition and seldom attacked an armed person.
During all the time the Indians were murdering people, stealing stock, and destroying property, the general government did not make the slightest attempt to give the settlers protection, although attention was repeatedly called to their desperate condition. A week or two after the troubles began, the territorial authorities at Denver supplied a limited number of old Belgian muskets with necessary ammunition, but these guns were so much inferior to those in the hands of the Indians that they were of very little use. With this one exception, the early settlers were left entirely to their own resources from the beginning of the Indian troubles in 1864 until the end, which did not come until the building of the railroads into the territory. Every appeal to the general government for protection was received either with indifference or insult.
In September 1866, General William T. Sherman, commander-in-chief of the United States Army, stopped overnight in Colorado City on his way north from an inspection of forts in New Mexico. The settlers saw this as an opportune time to lay their situation before him. Halbert’s father, the Reverend William Halbert, was appointed spokesman of the committee that waited upon the general.
In his speech, the Reverend explained the settlers’ exposed and defenseless condition and suggested that a force of government troops be permanently stationed at some point on the eastern frontier to intercept any Indians attempting a raid. General Sherman received the appeal with utter indifference, replying that he thought the settlers were unnecessarily alarmed, that there were no hostile Indians in the neighborhood, and then sarcastically remarked that it would probably be very profitable for the people of the region to have government troops located nearby, to whom farmers might sell their grain and agricultural products at a high price. With this remark, he dismissed the committee, whose members left the room very indignant at the manner in which their appeal had been received. Later in the year, General Sherman evidently changed his opinion.
After the massacre of Lieutenant Colonel Fetterman and his entire command near Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, he telegraphed General Grant, saying, “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination. Men, women, and children. Nothing else will reach the root of this cause. ” Two years later, in 1868, Sherman came to Denver along the line of the Kansas Pacific Railway, then under construction, and was glad to have a strong escort to guard him through the region of hostile Indians.
Following that trip, he made a strenuous effort to punish the Indians elsewhere, but apparently made no attempt to protect the settlers on the eastern borders of Colorado. Halbert ventures that no civilized nation ever gave less attention to protecting its frontier people from the incursion of savages than did the general government. After the outbreak of the Indians in Minnesota in 1862, the government took prompt measures and punished the Indians unmercifully, but this was due to the fact that Minnesota at that time had two senators and several members of Congress able to bring the necessary influence to bear. During all of Colorado’s Indian troubles, the territory had only one delegate in Congress who had no vote and very little influence.
The whole eastern frontier of El Paso County faced the territory occupied by the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes—described by Halbert as the most crafty and bloodthirsty Indians upon the American continents. Bands of these Indians were at all times roaming around in the headwaters of the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers, making it easy for them to reach the settlements without being observed. Considering these facts, Halbert considered it a wonder the settlers were not wiped off the face of the earth. During the Indian troubles, a few settlers left the county and sought places of safety elsewhere, but the great majority pluckily stood their ground.
Ranchmen who had brought their families to Colorado City for protection left them there until the trouble was over, but went home as often as they could get two or three armed men to accompany them to harvest grain and take care of stock. Every time they did this, it was at the risk of their lives. As soon as it was definitely known that the Indians had left the county, most ranchmen moved their families back home. From previous experience, it was known that with winter coming on, there was little danger until the following spring.
By the spring of 1869, the government, in a winter campaign with troops under the command of General Custer, had administered such severe punishment to the Cheyennes and Arapahoes in the Battle of Washita and in other engagements that thereafter the people of El Paso County were unmolested by them, although spasmodic outbreaks occurred at various places out on the plains for several years afterward. Irving Halbert wrote his book, “The Indians of the Pikes Peak Region,” published in 1914, to explain his side of the Battle of Sand Creek after seeing the reputation of those who fought in the battle tarnished over the years. The Battle of Sand Creek occurred in 1864, and the Pikes Peak region did not experience any major Indian troubles until 1868, when Agent Wynkoop gave the Cheyennes and Arapahoes arms and ammunition. It is worth noting that the Utes did not engage in these brutal raids on the settlers of Colorado, and they were also routinely attacked by the Cheyennes and Arapahoes.
The transcript also provides a brief biography of Judge Baldwin, the man who avoided a second scalping. William H. Baldwin was born in Massachusetts in 1835, though an obituary published in the Gazette speculated he might have been born in Queens County, Ireland in 1827, a claim that cannot be corroborated. The title “Judge” was bestowed on him as he was the judge of sheep at the territorial fairs.
He was the town drunk in a town that was supposed to be free of billiard halls, saloons, and bawdy houses; nevertheless, there were billiard houses in Colorado Springs, and Baldwin frequented them. He was an owner of the area known as Templeton’s Gap and raised large herds of sheep in the area, but alcohol got the best of him and his pocketbook. In 1873, his herd was estimated at over 1,000 head, valued at about $4 per head. He had lived all over the world, including South America, where he had been scalped in a skirmish with a local tribe.
He avoided a second scalping when attacked by the war party traveling southeast of Colorado City on September 3, 1868. On November 3, 1873, Judge Baldwin met his untimely end: he was found at the bottom of a well in the slaughterhouse of Green and Stitzer on the east side of town, his pockets turned out and his wallet missing. It was deemed an accident.
He died a pauper with no family nearby.