Lieutenant Cannon was found dead in his room at the Tremont House on July 14, three days after he brought Squiers to Denver. The incident provided fuel for more rumors that he had been killed by the same people supposedly responsible for Soule’s death. There was a less mysterious answer, however. The Rocky Mountain News reported that Cannon had been gambling and drinking heavily, plus he was a morphine user. The combination of alcohol and morphine did him in.

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A decade later, Ned Wynkoop would, as usual, blame everything on John Chivington. The fiend, he said, had Soule ‘murdered at night in the streets of Denver by an assassin whom he had hired for that purpose.’ Wynkoop even took credit for bringing Squiers in. ‘I had the pleasure some time afterward of arresting the murderer of Caption Soule,’ he wrote, ‘and sending him in irons to Denver….’ Unfortunately, ‘through the machinations of Col. Chivington and his satellites he escaped….Cannon was found dead in his bed the next morning having been poisoned through the agency of the same demons who had murdered S. Soule.’ Time had not tempered Wynkoop’s dishonesty.

Another military blunder was made by appointing Lt. Col. Samuel Tappan head of the military tribunal. Tappan, another of the Sand Creek villains, was Chivington’s avowed enemy. They hated each other. The court met the day after Soule was killed and agreed to adjourn for one day ‘in respect to the memory of the deceased’ who had been ‘assassinated.’ Using the word ‘assassinated’ implied that Tappan suspected Chivington had a hand in Soule’s death. The inference is borne out in Tappan’s diary, where he recorded, ‘The barbarism of Sand Creek has culminated in the assassination of Capt. Soule.’ He also wrote, ‘The origins of this dreadful deed may yet be found in the editorial columns of the press and the public speeches of Col Chivington.’ Tappan poured out his feelings in his diary. No one should be allowed to defend Sand Creek, he said, no one should ‘palm off on posterity a bloody massacre as a battle, the blackest perfidy as military strategy, assassination…and the disgusting mutilation of the dead as victory.’

Realizing all too well that Tappan would not call any witnesses friendly to him, Chivington appealed to Brig. Gen., Patrick E. Connor to allow a deposition by freighter Lipmann Meyer. The testimony would have been helpful to Chivington and damaging to Soule, so Tappan objected to the receipt of the affidavit. Chivington protested, but to no avail. Tappan sustained his own action and threw out Meyer’s testimony. The proceedings were a farce.

The court was charged to investigate the facts and to ensure justice to all parties. It failed miserably. Chivington and his attorney tried several times but failed to limit the illegal testimony and depositions. Tappan’s tribunal called 20 witnesses, every one of them hostile to Chivington. Chivington therefore called 16 witnesses to testify on his behalf. Throughout the course of the inquiry, 63 percent of Chivington’s objections were overruled and 93 percent of Tappan’s objections were sustained. In total, 59 people were questioned, 31 of whom had not been at the battle. Like the two congressional hearings, the court of inquiry was a travesty. The willingness of congressmen and officers to accept hearsay evidence and obvious falsehoods shows that Chivington and the volunteers were already prejudged and condemned.

The great controversy about Sand Creek was the result of a number of factors. Probably the initial and largest contributing factor to its exposure was political. The chief issue dividing Coloradans in 1864 was statehood. On the statehood side were Evans, Chivington and William Byers of the Rocky Mountain News. Opposing statehood were some of the territorial judges, the marshal and the district attorney, backed by the Black Hawk Mining Journal. Chivington and Evans had political aspirations, but the statehood proposal was voted down on September 13, 1864. Chivington did not need a great victory over the Indians to sweep him into any office; the statehood battle was already lost. The original appearance of massacre stories in the Eastern press was politically motivated. The publicity was not to help the Indians but to ruin the careers of Evans and Chivington. The humanitarian press was not as responsible for the blowup as were a handful of vindictive little men out for revenge.

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