Although the East was the main theater of the Civil War, there were battles in the West as well. In 1862, Union forces defeated Texas troops at La Glorietta Pass, New Mexico, forcing the Confederates to withdraw from the New Mexico Territory. But it was not the conflict between North and South that produced most of the bloodshed in the West during this time. It was the clash between Indians and whites. The withdrawal of federal garrisons at the outbreak of the Civil War, together with the provocation of white encroachment, produced a rash of Indian uprisings. In the Southwest, the Apaches and Navajos raided frontier settlements until subdued and relocated by volunteers under Gen. James Carleton and Col. Kit Carson (1862-1864). Carson also led the 1864 campaign to halt Kiowa and Comanche attacks on the Santa Fe trail. In 1862 the Santee Sioux of Minnesota killed more than 600 settlers, after federal Indian agencies had failed to pay “annuities” due and needed for food. The Santee were captured, punished and removed from Minnesota to the Dakota Territory. Hostilities in Colorado led to one of the worst atrocities by whites — the San Creek Massacre of 1864. Promised military protection, chief black Kettle’s Cheyenne and Arapahoe encampment was attacked instead by Col. John Chivington’s Colorado volunteers. After the Civil War ended, the Indian Wars only intensified.

Tags: Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Civil War, Indian Wars, San Creek Massacre