News of Sand Creek in Eastern North Carolina

Across the nation, Americans heard about and condemned the crime at Sand Creek. The outcry could be heard in eastern North Carolina, where in 1865 Meta Chestnutt was a toddler. For example, a piece in the Newbern Daily Times, published in nearby Craven County, called it "the Chivington massacre."[1] An article titled "The Indians" in the Daily North Carolina Times in August 1865 spoke of "the massacre of the Cheyennes by Colonel Chivington."[2] An editorial piece in the very same issue of the paper pointed to the Christianized character of Americans and what at least some thought at the time:

The best statistics in possession of the Indian Office at Washington shows the number of tribes now extant in the States and Territories of the Government to be seventy-eight, numbering in population three hundred and fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-two in the aggregate.

This furnishes a ruinous commentary upon the doctrine that 'all men are free and equal,' or else augurs a fearful accountability for the Anglo-Saxon race in America, at the final day of accounts. They are either not free and equal with the white man, or else the white man has committed great sin, for if equal they should now number several millions instead of only a third of one million.[3]

This was certainly not the only perspective on Indians reported in North Carolina newspapers in 1865. But it was one.

Notes

[1] Newbern Daily Times, May 12, 1865, 1.

[2] "The Indians," Daily North Carolina Times, August. 5, 1865, 2.

[3] Daily North Carolina Times, August. 5, 1865, 2.