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Interview -- Louis Kraft

Webmaster's Note:

Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway is a powerfully written, and moving account of the Sand Creek Massacre, as well as the Cheyenne way of life. Recently released from Oklahoma Press, it includes gold nuggets never released before, and which we discuss below.

Historian and author Louis Kraft, talks with us about his book, Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway, his process with research and writing of history.


December 2020

Bob Reece: Many books have been written about Sand Creek. Why this book, and why now?

Louis Kraft: This goes back to the former and great editor-in-chief at the University of Oklahoma Press (OU Press), Chuck Rankin. But first a little background. In the late 1990s Durwood Ball, who was editor-in-chief at the University of New Mexico Press (UNM Press), jumped on Gatewood and Geronimo when I offered it to him. Before it was printed in 2000 it had almost sold out in hardbound. By that time I had obtained permission to take the drafts of Lt. Charles B. Gatewood's aborted attempt to write a memoir about his time working with the Apaches and began to draft what would become Lt. Charles Gatewood & His Apache Wars Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, 2005). Durwood, who had become a friend, moved on to become editor of the New Mexico Historical Review (UNM) and David Holtby became the editor-in-chief at UNM Press. I had had a good deal with Durwood: 25 copies of the hardbound book, 10 of the softcover, and I retained all film and TV rights (which meant zilch as nothing ever materialized). David dragged me along until I delivered a final manuscript. He then sent me the contract and it was a joke—the number of book copies dropped considerably as did my royalties, and the film and TV rights became I think 70 percent for the press. I countered, Holtby stood firm, and I said adios.

By this time I knew Chuck, having met him at the beginning of this century, and presented the manuscript to him. He was interested but the two peer reviews were negative. I had the contact information of both reviewers, and questioned some of their comments. Both refused to reply, and Chuck sent me a short note that stated OU Press would not print my book. I used the review comments that I agreed with and sent the updated manuscript to the University of Nebraska Press. They liked the manuscript, their peer reviews were good, and I received the same deal that I had for G&G plus an advance.

During this time Chuck and I continued our relationship, and he even questioned why I moved the second Gatewood book to Nebraska. I told him that his letter that fired me was now in the Louis Kraft Collection at the Chávez History Library (Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe). This didn’t hurt our relationship and it morphed into what would be my next Indian wars book, Ned Wynkoop and the Lonely Road from Sand Creek (OU Press, 2011). When the Wynkoop book went into production in early 2011, Chuck approached me regarding writing about the Sand Creek massacre. I said "no," but he refused to drop the subject. See question 7 below for more information.

B.R. Regarding your first visit to SC: when was that, and what was that experience like for you?

L.K. I think that it was in 1987 I did a 16-day Custer trip with my daughter in the north. This included a private tour from his campsite, the forced march early on June 25, a visit to the Crow's Nest, and then the movement to the Little Big Horn River, with Jim Court in his van. At that time Jim was a former superintendent of the former Custer Battlefield National Monument and gave private tours. This included a confrontation with a Crow who didn't think much of him when we stopped to study and talk about Medicine Tail Coulee from within the village on the west side of the river. I thought that he was going to be attacked, and positioned myself behind the Indian in case I needed to break up a fight. Luckily Jim was able to soothe tempers with his words and nothing happened. Later that day we entered the national monument and discussed Reno and Custer’s fights on their battlefields.

Finally to your question; Jerry Russell and his Order of the Indian Wars organization held their annual event/convention in Colorado. As we would drive past their location on our trek home I called Jerry and asked if we could join his bus tour to the Sand Creek Massacre site that was then on private property, and afterward attend the banquet. He agreed. This was my first trip to what has become sacred land. My daughter and I dropped down from the bluffs (which are now proven to be south of where the actual village was) while one or more people discussed the massacre above us with those who had taken part in the entire convention and tours. What they said, I have no clue. What my daughter and I experienced was priceless, although I must state that I was one stupid cowboy. There were a lot of rattlesnakes below the bluffs on that day and I actually stalked a young one. No more need be said, other than we weren't bitten.

At this time I had absolutely no intention of writing about the massacre.

B.R. What a coincidence. I presented a paper titled, “Massacre at the Pueblo 1854” for that 1987 OIW convention in Pueblo, Colorado. In addition, I was on that same bus trip to Bent’s Fort – where we were served lunch – and finally to Sand Creek.

Sorry, I digressed. What are some of the important aspects of the Cheyenne and their lifeway that you learned or experienced during the research and writing of your book?

L.K. Really not much that I didn't know, have in house, or would mine at the George Bird Grinnell Collection, then housed at the Braun Research Library (Southwest Museum, Los Angeles). I had been seeking information there dating back to the mid-1990s. Over a decade ago, the Southwest Museum merged with the Autry Museum in Los Angeles (don't remember the name at the time of the merger, but the museum's current name is Autry Museum of the American West). Both museum archives shutdown in late 2014–early 2015 and will reopen in late 2020 or 2021 in Burbank, California (about six miles from my house). The new state of art 100,000 square foot archive is called the Resources Center of the Autry. Grinnell’s collection is large, and I think that it is more valuable than his two classic books on the Cheyennes.

I've been studying the Cheyenne Indians since the mid-1980s when I began writing articles and giving talks about them and their relationship with the white man. In 1992 The Final Showdown was published. It was a novel about race relations in Kansas in 1867 as the story led up to the Medicine Lodge Peace council that fall. Most of the characters actually lived, such as Black Kettle and Stone Forehead. I spent a lot of time dealing with their culture and thought I would be a novelist, but a follow-up contracted western book was canceled by the publisher and Dick Upton, of Upton and Sons, Publishers, and I had been discussing the possibility of me writing a nonfiction book about George Armstrong Custer. Custer and the Cheyenne: George Armstrong Custer’s Winter Campaign on the Southern Plains was published in 1995, and it led up to the Custer-Cheyenne mystic and chief Stone Forehead confrontation on the Staked Plains of Texas after the battle of the Washita wherein Custer ended his participation in that war in March 1869 without further bloodshed. ... The talks and articles continued, and it was shortly after this time that I began meeting Cheyennes at events I spoke at. As the years passed, some of them joined my small but growing number of friends that I saw whenever possible, and who helped me at times. Alas, this is where I had the ten-year detour with the Gatewood/Apache books, and other than research, the Wynkoop/Cheyenne project (I already had about 30,000 words) went on forced leave. This is the book that Chuck Rankin contracted with me I think in 2005, and it continued through the creation of the Sand Creek book.

Although my research on the Cheyennes has been ongoing for a long time I don't mentally think, "Ah-ha! That’s new!" Honestly, there are hundreds (thousands?) and probably more new facts that I've learned about the Cheyennes over my lifetime. "But what?" is the question, and at this point in time I don't have an answer.

B.R. Many characters of the SC story appear in your pages. Who did you find most interesting? Who had the most tragic story? Who did you find most frustrating?

L.K. This is not a good question for me, for the simple reason that when I first began to research Ned Wynkoop in the 1980s it was because I wanted to find an Indian agent who was stealing from his wards to become a villain in a novel I intended to write. My research proved without a doubt that he wasn't getting rich by defrauding the Cheyennes and Arapahos. The novel was never written. At the same time I was hooked on Wynkoop. I think that my first article on him was printed in 1987 (LBHA's Research Review), and my first talk was at the OIW 1989 SoCal symposium. ... Wynkoop has been key to my Cheyenne Indian wars writing life. Without him, and Custer's 1867-1869 connection with the Cheyennes, there would have never been a Sand Creek book.

The most interesting are two people. One, Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle was present at the massacre, while the other Arapaho Chief Little Raven smartly chose not to believe the white man's words and wasn't present. Both of these men became the leading Indians in the Sand Creek book, but although I thought Black Kettle would be my go-to person Cheyenne-wise there were a hell of a lot of gaps in what I knew about him. For the record, many of Black Kettle's words have been recorded, but for some reason don't make it into nonfiction books. Little Raven was a total surprise. Because of this, I didn't have much in regards to his life, and more important his words to the white man have been totally ignored, for he was verbal. Little Raven was a true discovery for me, as he had mostly been dismissed as a fat chief whose lone concern was his multiple wives. Good grief, what a joke.

I think that 2nd Colorado Territorial governor John Evans was the most tragic, for the 1865 investigations into the attack linked him with Colonel John Chivington for all time and made him guilty for the massacre. He did make a damning proclamation during the summer of 1864, that gave whites an open ticket to attack and kill Indians, but he was in the East long before Chivington attacked the Sand Creek village and knew nothing of it until Chivington wired him of his glorious victory that December. As far as I'm concerned, he was a good man who tried to make Colorado a central hub in the expansion to the Pacific coast. The goal was to deal with him fairly. If I lived in Denver in 1864 and knew Evans, I think that I would have respected and liked him.

Most frustrating was obtaining proof that sworn testimony by mixed-blood Cheyennes George Bent and his sister Julia Bent Guerrier actually existed. Historian Dee Cordry, whose book on the Cheyennes when it is published is going to be mandatory reading for anyone interested in the Tsistsistas, the "Called-out People." These documents, which Dee had shared with me, but without citations, even though we knew where they should be housed. An Oklahoma historian and expert in the state's archives, Bill Welgy, did research for me eventually informed me, along with another person that I only had one contact with, that these archives had been shut down to researchers like myself to protect whites who had stolen Indian land in the past. That should have killed this oh-so important information that we had in hand, but Dee's best friend, Harvey Pratt, is a direct descendant of Julia and her husband mixed-blood Cheyenne Edmund Guerrier. He had documents and allowed us to use him as the citation.

B.R. How do you decide the subject for your books? What was it about this subject that encouraged you to write?

L.K. Most of my subjects for books grow over the years, and I usually have a wealth of information in-house long before I decide to write the books. Actually a lot of the people I write about overlap.
We're back with Chuck Rankin, and let me say this—I think the world of him. Chuck refused to give up on me writing a book about the Sand Creek Massacre. I had all of the massacre books (hell, I designed Greg Michno's first Sand Creek book for Dick Upton). At the same time I had no desire to write about the sexual butchery of people who thought that they had been removed from the 1864 Cheyenne war. As time passed and Chuck and I talked the angle for the storyline changed. It opened our conversations to me writing about the key players in the Sand Creek tragedy: 1) The Cheyennes and Arapahos; 2) The whites that married into the tribes; 3) The whites that craved Indian land; 4) The offspring of white-Indian marriages; and finally 5) Whites who dared to speak out against the massacre. Chuck bought into this and between us we created a 37-page proposal that was accepted. In this proposal I made it clear that my epilogue would be the end portion of the book title ("the Tragic End of a Lifeway"), and that it would be long.

Short answer: Chuck Rankin. No Chuck, no book.

B.R. Once you make that final decision for subject, what are some of the processes you follow to complete the book?

L.K. My research dictates the flow of the text (and notes) in the book. The research is ongoing long before I sign a contract to write a book, and it continues throughout the creation of the manuscript.

B.R. It must be countless hours of research, notes, writing chapter after chapter. What keeps you going? What is your discipline to reach the final chapter?

L.K. My research directs the writing of the book. If what I thought I knew is no longer true while writing the book, the text in the book changes. ... I buy into each and every book project long before I sign the contract. I must do this for I have no desire to waste a year, three years, or six, and then learn that I should have never decided to write this book. Time is a precious thing that we can never get back. Knowing this, I make damn sure that my current manuscript is one that I will be in-tune with as much on the last day as on the first day of the project. It is a marriage that sometimes is not a smooth process, but it works for me.

I don't write from chapter 1 until chapter XX. Instead I write in the chapters with what I know, and this could be in chapter 5 or chapter 14. I don't begin to study the entire manuscript until I think I’m getting close to having a rough first draft (although I am constantly on the lookout for duplication and/or moving people and/or events to different chapters when I realize that I placed them in the wrong location. In the case of the Sand Creek manuscript, at least twice the manuscript zoomed to over 205,000 words. My contract stated 125,000-135,000 words. Oops, a major problem. I pitched Adam Kane, who replaced Chuck Rankin as editor-in-chief (I have nothing but praise for Adam), increased the word count to 150,000. I told him "no, " that I needed at least 165,000. Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway is a large book with many people and events spread over many years. Transitions are key to this and I spent a lot of time with them. Also, I enjoy every piece of creating a book from research, discovery, writing, editing, writing, fixing, polishing, using constructive criticism (and this includes written reviews), emails, phone calls, and when I’m lucky in-person discussions. But it doesn’t stop there, for I enjoy taking part in the entire production process.

B.R. What challenges did you encounter during your research and writing of this book?

L.K. This is an easy answer, for it was filling in the gaps to all the lives of the leading and supporting players in the Sand Creek story and making them to (hopefully) move forward while merging them with the events that drove the manuscript toward conclusion.

B.R. The story of SC is a tragedy tale filled with people fighting personal demons. What do you think motivated Chivington, Wynkoop, and Black Kettle?

L.K. John Chivington was an ambitious man. He was successful as a man of God, strongly stood against slavery, and insisted upon a commission in the Colorado Volunteers after the Civil War became reality in 1861. He rightly was honored for his leadership and actions in New Mexico in 1862, which stopped the Southern invasion of the Southwest (and most likely a strike against Denver and Colorado Territory). He also had political ambitions, was associated with John Evans, and William Byers, publisher-editor of the Rocky Mountain News. They shared similar visions for Denver and Colorado Territory's future. ... The Cheyennes and Arapahos lived in the land they craved, and had to be removed. The threat to people living on the frontier was real. He knew that some of the chiefs that had met with Evans in Denver in late September 1864 to discuss ending the war and the people who followed their lead were camped on Sand Creek. They were Cheyennes and Arapahos, and their people were still waging war. He had tasted victory on the battlefield in 1862 and wanted to increase his celebrity as a man of war. Due to the failure at the polls that killed the Colorado statehood movement he needed a victory over the Indians before the Third Colorado Volunteer Cavalry's enlistment ended (if you do the math it was close) for these reasons: 1) Secure a major victory over the enemy, which would make him a great Indian fighter; and 2) Show the Indians the futility of continuing the conflict and bow to the white man's demands. I don't think many people consider themselves evil, and certainly not Chivington, who believed his attack on the Sand Creek village was justified. To my knowledge he never changed his view of what happened on November 29-30, 1864.

Ned Wynkoop knew Chivington prior to his enlistment in the First Colorado Volunteer Regiment in 1861, but their religious and pro-Union views brought them closer together. Wynkoop stood behind Chivington when he was running for congress on the Statehood slate. After the Southern invasion had been stopped, the problem quickly turned to the Cheyennes and Arapahos. Wynkoop, like many who migrated to the frontier, did not have a positive view of Indians. By spring 1864 the Cheyenne war had become reality. At the beginning of early September 1864, and although a major in what was now the First Colorado Volunteer Cavalry commanding Fort Lyon in the southeastern portion of the territory, he had yet to personally engage the enemy. On September 3 he received two letters dictated by Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle. There was a huge village (perhaps 2,000 people) on a tributary of the Smoky Hill in Kansas and he and other chiefs wanted to discuss ending the current war. Black Kettle also threw in a carrot, and that was that there were white captives in the village that they would free. Wynkoop had two problems: 1) This could be a suicide mission, and his officers made this clear, and 2) It would take at least a week and probably longer to send a message to headquarters in Kansas and the same amount of time to receive an answer. A village of this size could not sustain its horse herds and people in the same location for any length of time. Wynkoop acted without orders, placed his small command at risk of death, but prevailed as seven chiefs, including Black Kettle, Arapaho Neva (Left Hand's brother), and Dog Man Bull Bear agreed to travel to Denver to speak with Governor Evans. He also received a teenager and three children captives. Evans had the same problem as Chivington, for he was responsible for the creation of the Third Colorado, and felt that the regiment had to score a major victory over the Indians. Both Chivington (who was present) and he felt that no peace had been agreed upon while Wynkoop, Byers, and others thought a temporary peace had been established until the military decided what to do with these people. In early November Wynkoop was replaced by Major Scott Anthony as commander at Fort Lyon and ordered to Kansas, where he anticipated being removed from the military. Soon after Chivington attacked the Sand Creek village. When Wynkoop heard what had happened he insisted upon a meeting with Major General Samuel Curtis, who commanded the Department of Kansas, was exonerated, and ordered back to Fort Lyon to resume command. He lashed out against the Sand Creek attack and the brutal murder of the people in the Sand Creek village for the rest of his life. This ended his relationship with Chivington, led to him becoming a hated white man on the frontier, and eventually becoming the U.S. Indian agent for the Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos.

Black Kettle was a renowned war leader, but all his raiding and war activity were against Mexicans, Kiowas, Comanches, Utes, and so on. He became the chief of the Wah´tapiu band of Cheyennes in 1855. This marked the end of his warrior days, and the beginning of his efforts to keep the peace with the white man, who within a few years would migrate to the gold region in what would become Colorado Territory in huge numbers beginning in 1859. This would put him at huge risk with whites, who considered him the chief of all the Cheyennes (which he wasn't and never would become), and his own people (especially those who stood firmly against the white invasion). His words spoken to white leaders were always about peace and the theft of Cheyenne land. In late November 1868, and just days prior to his death at the battle of the Washita, he, with other chiefs, braved the dead of winter to meet with Lieutenant Colonel William Hazen at Fort Cobb in Indian Territory. Hazen commanded the military district that had been recently created for the new reservation for Cheyennes, Arapahos, Kiowas, and Comanches. Black Kettle had heard that white soldiers were south of the Arkansas River hunting his people and wanted to move those who followed his lead onto the reservation and avoid another Sand Creek. Hazen considered him the leading war chief of the Cheyennes then in Indian Territory and refused the request. He returned to his village on the Washita River and his subsequent death.

B.R. One resource in your bibliography is Wynkoop's "Unfinished Colorado History", which is retained at the History Colorado Museum. Amazing topics came from this reference such as Chivington saving the Byers's family from the raging flood waters of the South Platte River in May, 1864.

I looked for it in some of the other SC books, and I could not find it in the bibliographies. Is this a gold nugget that you uncovered?

L.K. I found a shortened version of Wynkoop’s unfinished document at the Chávez History Library in the late 1980s (it also houses a Wynkoop archive as does History Colorado, but the Denver collection has the complete text of his unfinished memoir).* I've used it for articles, talks, and Ned Wynkoop and the Lonely Road from Sand Creek as well as Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway over the years. I can't say that I discovered it, for back in the 1980s I went to Santa Fe to look at the Wynkoop Collection. The only thing I can offer in regards to Wynkoop's unfinished memoir not being used in other books is that he was an outsider who spoke out against the November 29, 1864, attack on the Cheyenne-Arapaho village circles on Sand Creek. Meaning, and because of this, he was not a go-to source for some historians. In the epilogue in the Sand Creek book I spoke about Wynkoop speaking at the Cooper Institute (Cooper Union today) in New York City in December 1868, and one of the questions he answered that night was basically "what is the best way to handle the Indian question?" (a paraphrase here) He answered: "make them American citizens, and allow them seats in congress." (another paraphrase) An historian who had read the Sand Creek manuscript told me that this was a new discovery. I chuckled, for it wasn't; it was also in the Wynkoop book.

* Lewis H. Gerboth edited a small book entitled The Tall Chief: The Autobiography of Edward W. Wynkoop (Denver: Colorado Historical Society, 1994). His transcription of Wynkoop's words are decent. However, his short biography on Wynkoop is error-riddled. For example: Custer attacked Black Kettle's Washita village on November 27, 1868, and Wynkoop, who was en route to Fort Cobb in Indian Territory to assume command of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency that had been officially moved there (although I don't believe that there were any Cheyennes or Arapahos present yet), halted his journey before reaching his destination and wrote his resignation letter as Indian agent as he would no longer be associated with the murder of men, women, and children (this isn't close to his quote; part of it is in the Sand Creek book) on November 29, 1868, while not knowing that Black Kettle had been killed two days earlier. Gerboth not once, but twice, listed Wynkoop's resignation as November 27, 1868, and Custer's attack on the Washita village as November 29, 1868. And I have seen this error repeated in other books. Gerboth has a number of other errors in his publication. Some Sand Creek books as well as others do cite Gerboth, which isn't close to an autobiography.

B.R. Finally, the last question I always ask historians during an interview is, what do you think will be the subject of your next book?

L.K. There is no thinking required here for my next nonfiction book will be ERROL AND OLIVIA. It will deal with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland’s lives and times during the 1930s and 1940s when they were under contract with Warner Bros. This book has been in place for decades, and includes a wealth of research that (believe it or not) is larger than I have for any of my Indian wars nonfiction books. Los Angeles is a goldmine for Flynn and de Havilland research, and like the Indian Wars I have a network of knowledgeable writers, historians, and experts in the USA and elsewhere.

B.R. I know we could continue with this discussion about your book for hours, but we must close for now. I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to visit with us. Good luck with your book ERROL AND OLIVIA.

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