News Miner 79
Silas Soule at Sand Creek, theocrats and transgender matters, youth mental health, Woodland Park, food deserts, and more.
Kevin Cahill on Silas Soule
Novelist Kevin Cahill, who has out a fictionalized account of the Sand Creek Massacre, sent in a nice letter about my article on Silas Soule (see also my notes about Soule’s grave). Cahill’s remarks follow:
Dear Ari,
Nice article about Silas Soule. It’s a shame he hasn't received as much recognition as his counterpart, Ned Wynkoop. You probably are aware that Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes honor Soule and Joseph Cramer every year during their annual Sand Creek Healing Run in November. I thought I might offer a few suggestions as answers to the questions you said you would pose to Soule if he were here, as I have some knowledge on the subject of the massacre.
Chivington carefully hid his plan to attack the largely peaceful Sand Creek village from his superiors—and from Governor Evans—in order to prevent anyone from warning Black Kettle of his intentions. Chivington suspected the soldiers of the First Regiment at Lyon would object due to their pledge to protect the Cheyenne/Arapaho village in exchange for the Indians’ compliance to terms of surrender stipulated by Major Wynkoop. Unfortunately, Wynkoop was dispatched to Fort Riley to answer for making this agreement without permission of his commander, General Samuel Curtis.
Major Scott Anthony was put in charge at Fort Lyon just days before the attack, and Chivington knew he could con Anthony into believing his intended targets were the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, Arapaho warriors, and Sioux warriors guilty of a summer-long reign of murder and abductions of white settlers on the Kansas and Nebraska plains. Chivington’s 100-days militia (Colorado Third Regiment) was nearing the end of its commission without a significant victory against the Dog Soldiers, and Chivington (whose own enlistment had run out two months previous) was desperate for a military victory that would solidify his political ambitions after he mustered out of the service.
To address your questions as to why Soule didn’t warn Black Kettle of the impending attack, and why did he not try to stop Chivington from riding out, or stop the attack, the answers are quite obvious. Captain Soule was not in charge at Fort Lyon; he was just one of several captains in charge of several First Regiment companies. When Chivington’s Third Regiment Volunteers unexpectedly appeared at Fort Lyon, they had abducted numerous settlers in the region, including the Bent family members, who might have tried to ride to the Sand Creek village to warn Black Kettle’s people. Chivington’s regiment—over 500 soldiers strong—commandeered Fort Lyon and picketed the gates with orders from Chivington to shoot any First Regiment soldier who tried to leave the post.
Although Major Anthony readily endorsed Chivington’s plan to join forces with the First Regiment in a campaign against the Dog Soldiers, he was actually not under obligation to obey any order given by Chivington because Chivington had no military authority over the Ft. Lyon command. Soule and the First Regiment officers certainly knew about this breach of military protocol and further suspected Chivington was lying and intended to attack the protected Sand Creek village, rather than face harder service in a winter drive into Kansas to take on the warrior clans. Many First Regiment officers voiced objections to Chivington, but it was Soule and Lt. Joseph Cramer who most vehemently opposed the colonel. Chivington in turn threatened Soule, and several officers later testified that they feared Soule would be killed by Chivington’s militiamen before they ever reached Sand Creek.
Chivington’s Third Regiment volunteers, a virtually untrained and undisciplined militia, outnumbered the First Regiment soldiers two-to-one. Soule simply had no numbers, nor the support of Major Anthony, to stop Chivington. He and the dissenting First Regiment officers had no choice but to ride to Sand Creek, and it was there where Soule and Cramer ordered their respective companies to stand down during the attack. Had they intervened during the attack, the militiamen would surely have killed them. The only chance that Chivington might have been stopped would be if Major Wynkoop had remained in charge at Fort Lyon, where he would undoubtedly have defied Chivington at the post before the Third Regiment rode the forty miles out to the Sand Creek village.
The worst of this was—Chivington had absolutely no authority to commandeer the First Regiment at Fort Lyon. Not only had his enlistment run out in September, but he was also not in command of soldiers in the Upper Arkansas District. Anthony knew this but went along with Chivington even though he knew Wynkoop had assured Black Kettle that the Sand Creek village was protected by the army while they awaited confirmation of a truce from General Curtis. History rightly crucified Chivington for his actions, but Anthony escaped largely unscathed other than an empty admonishment by the subsequent congressional investigations. Both mustered out of the service before they could be court-martialed for their offenses.
By the way, the men who later murdered Soule, Charles Squire and William Morrow, served in the Colorado Second Regiment and were never under Chivington’s command. Squire boasted of the murder but escaped from prison and prosecution, and Morrow was never apprehended. No evidence was ever presented to prove Chivington had anything to do with Soule’s murder, but Ned Wynkoop forever believed he was behind it.
Kind regards,
Kevin Cahill
Image of Silas Soule:
O’Rourke on the Truth and Liberty Coalition
The left-leaning Colorado Times Recorder is one of the few publication in Colorado covering right-wing, theocratic Christian nationalism in this state. Certainly the Times Recorder is doing the best job of it.
Last time, I mentioned Logan Davis’s review of Andrew Wommack and his theocratic “Seven Mountains Mandate.”
James O’Rourke also has an article about Wommack’s Truth and Liberty Coalition, with an emphasis on how that group has promoted the story of Erin Lee, who says her daughter was indoctrinated at a transgender event at school.
I met Lee and her husband at an Independence Institute event, and the couple struck me as basically sane and normal. It does seem like the school event, as they describe it, was inappropriate. However, I’m also aware that the story has been told from their perspective, and it’s very hard to verify factual details about the case.
Lee displayed extraordinarily bad judgment in collaborating with Wommack’s organization (as O’Rourke discusses).
Also, as O’Rourke discusses, Lee has taken to using defamatory language about transgender activists, calling them “predators” and likening them to pedophiles.
Sometimes Times Recorder reporters play guilt-by-association games, and sometimes they juxtapose facts to suggest a relationship without bothering to firmly make it. But they are also doing extremely important work exposing dangerous theocratic movements in Colorado.
Youth Mental Health
There’s a new report out from the Colorado Children’s Campaign (see also CPR) about (among other things) youth mental health in Colorado. Here I’ll highlight a few of the findings that struck me from the 171 page document.
One student reported:
In our generation, a lot of people are really isolated. Many of us don’t have good support systems, or even just a few people who truly know us...Though I have a few really solid connections, it’s been a real struggle for me to find. High school is such a tumultuous time. . . . Especially with COVID, distance grew between me and many people in my life. . . .
From 2013 to 2021, the “percent of Colorado high school students reporting sadness or hopelessness that lasted longer than two weeks and impacted usual activities” went up from 24% to 40%. Striking and upsetting.
The break-down by race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender is dramatic. Girls are a lot more depressed than boys (48% to 28%), and LGBTQ people are a lot more depressed than “straight” and “cisgender” people. For example, while 39% of cisgender students indicated signs of depression, 74% of transgender students did.
However, the percent who “seriously considered” or planned suicide went up only a bit, while the percent that “actually attempted suicide in the past year” held steady at 7%. That’s still a distressingly high number!
Although (or perhaps partly because) emergency room visits related to mental health went way up, the “teen suicide rate fell sharply [to 15 per 100,000] in 2022, after several years at historically high levels.” So we can take that as relatively good news.
So what is responsible for the relative decline in mental health among Colorado youth? Here is my take. Some of this probably is an artifact of kids being more likely to report depression. A lot of kids feel isolated and lonely, partly due to the pandemic, partly due to detrimental sorts of social media use. And some kids get locked into depressing narratives along the lines of “the world is going to end” or “white supremacy dominates America.” Yes, we face serious problems of climate change and racism, but there’s no sense in ignoring the good news and obsessing over doom-and-gloom.
Quick Takes
Republicans: Party leaders support the January 6 rioters. Disgusting.
Gadsden Flag: Fox News did a write-up about Jared Polis’s defense of the Gadsden flag, something I’ve discussed. See also CPR.
Woodland Park: CPR: “Colorado’s largest teachers union and its local affiliate have filed a federal lawsuit against the Woodland Park School District and the district’s board of education. . . . The lawsuit asks the court to strike down the policy that punishes school-based employees if they speak publicly as private citizens about matters of public concern about the school district as unconstitutional. It claims district employees have a federal right to make statements and social media posts about their employment as private citizens on matters of public concern and should not be disciplined, terminated or retaliated against.”
PrideFest: McKenna Harford and Ellis Arnold: “Despite protests, 2023 Douglas County PrideFest puts on a 'G-rated' show.”
Health Insurance: Krista Kafer is having a hard time keeping a health insurance policy under Colorado’s government-dominated system.
Short-Term Rentals: Some people in Jefferson County wish to punish the innocent on account of the guilty. Pointing to “parties, trash, and fires,” some residents want a “moratorium.” Counter-proposal: Hold specific property owners accountable for specific harms and leave everyone else the hell alone.
Food Desert: Luke Zarzecki worries about “food deserts” in Westminster. As I pointed out, the largest “possible ‘food desert” on Zarzecki’s map is in the middle of open space. Grocery delivery also is pretty common these days, although that typically involves an extra fee. The deeper problem here is poverty and the suboptimal behavioral choices that often accompany it, including (often) avoiding healthy foods even where readily available. (The main problem is “food desserts,” not “food deserts.”) I’m all for stocking food banks with healthy foods.