Colorado was not a state yet and was known as the Colorado Territory. The massacre, Wentz said, occurred on November 29, 1864, and, in the days leading up to it, peaceful Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians had gathered in southeastern Colorado (close to Eads) at the request of John Evans, who was governor of the territory.
At the time the atmosphere was tense between the Indians and white people in the territory due to stories about Indians killing white people, to which Wentz said, “There were some truths and inflated truths.”
However, she said the recent murder of a farm manager and his wife reportedly at the hands of Indians had led Denver residents to believe "Indians would come flooding into the city” and harm them, and there was an atmosphere of “hysteria.”
A man named John Chivington decided to seek out these Indians (gathered near Eads) even though he was well aware of Governor Evan’s instructions. Wentz said Chivington “was a bit of a Civil War hero and had led Union troops to stop Confederate troops from pushing into Colorado.” She said although he was “staunchly anti-slavery, he didn’t mind killing Indians.
Chivington and his men approached the Indians the morning of November 29, where the camp, comprised primarily of women, children and the elderly, flew the American flag and Wentz said “was clearly peaceful.” She stated, “Chivington ordered his men to attack and for hours killed Indians” in a grisly assault “scalping and cutting off body parts” with only a few Indians sustaining only injuries and escaping.
Chivington was never prosecuted for these events now known as the Sand Creek Massacre, which will commemorate its 150th anniversary this November. Wentz theorizes that Chivington’s reasons for the attack included that “he was an egotistical guy, a protector and a military man.”
Wentz, who grew up on a farm near Eaton and now lives near Strasburg, said she was very young when she learned the story of the Sand Creek Massacre and found it to be “powerful” and “knew in the back of my head I would write a novel” related to the events.
History has always been interesting to her, and she has always been curious about how people lived during the early days of Colorado settlers.
When she was young she and her mom would drive through the country with her mom stopping to look at old gravesites, while Wentz found herself interested in abandoned farm houses and “wondered what life was like for those people.”
This interest inspired her to write her first short story when she was 12 about a gravely ill Indian boy being dropped off at a settler’s home.
Fast forward a few years, and Wentz last year published her first novel “Prairie Grace,” a work of historical fiction based on events leading up to the Sand Creek Massacre. It is about fictional characters frontier woman Georgie MacBaye, who Wentz called “kind of a daredevil” and Cheyenne Brave Gray Wolf, who is the nephew of Chief Lean Bear, an actual historical figure.
Wentz said she took the Colorado timeline of the Sand Creek Massacre events and used it as a skeleton story. She said “she also wanted to make it inspiring as we so often we lack understanding for other people.”
“The massacre is a sad story and we are kind of embarrassed about it even 150 years later,” she stated. “They say if we don’t study history we are bound to repeat it.”
She also wanted to show the complexity of the situation at the time of the massacre.
“A lot of events led up to the massacre,” she said. “There were good guys and bad guys on both sides.
“Prairie Grace” is available for purchase online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and at the Tattered Cover stores in the Denver area and other independent book stores.