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In late November 1864, as the U.S. Civil War rose to its bloody climax in Georgia and Virginia, a related disaster occurred in what was then the territory of Colorado. For no reason that was easily discernible at the time, a group of about 700 U.S. soldiers led by Colonel John M Chivington attacked a sleeping gathering of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians along the Sand Creek. The true reasons for this senseless massacre were rooted in the passions of secession, politics, and racism. Colorado bordered “bloody Kansas,” and its Union troops feared being attacked by Confederate raiders hoping to turn the territory into a slave state.