The story
We did not fire a shot
On 28 November 1864, Captain Silas Soule, aged 26, stood among a group of officers at Fort Lyon, in Colorado Territory, and told them what he thought of the attack they were about to make.
That morning Colonel John Chivington had arrived without warning, with hundreds of volunteers, to strike a Cheyenne and Arapaho camp on Sand Creek led by Black Kettle and Left Hand. In September Soule had ridden on the peace mission that brought their chiefs to a council. They were camped there because they believed they were at peace.
So he said it, once, in front of witnesses. Any man who would take part in the murders, “knowing the circumstances as we did,” was a coward, he told them, in rougher words than that. Two officers carried it straight to Chivington, and the colonel's camp swore to hang him. Every officer at the post but one backed him.
He was no pacifist. Born in Maine in 1838, he had taken the anti-slavery side in Kansas and fought for the Union at Glorieta Pass. He would fight an enemy. He would not kill people who had come in under a promise of peace.
So he set a condition before the march. He “would not take part in their intended murder,” he said, but if they were going after bands at war, he would go as far as any of them. They said that was the plan, and that night he rode out with his company.
Auroras often work this way. They name the line once, early and plainly, so that when the moment comes there is nothing left to decide.
At daylight on 29 November the troops opened fire on the camp. Two men trading there came out with white flags and were ignored. Then Soule's company was moved up close, and the order came to fire.
“I refused to fire and swore that none but a coward would.”
His company held its formation and did not fire a shot. Lieutenant Joseph Cramer refused beside him. It was no rescue. The killing went on for six or eight hours, and most of the Cheyenne and Arapaho dead were women, children and elders. Their families keep the fuller account.
Two weeks later he wrote it all down for Ned Wynkoop, the major who had made the peace and then lost his command. It reads like a letter between friends, full of nicknames. He told Ned that “every word I have told you is the truth, which they do not deny.”
The army opened an inquiry. On 16 February 1865, with Chivington in the room, Soule was asked whether women and children had been shot while trying to escape. “They were,” he said.
On 1 April he married Hersa Coberly. On 23 April 1865, sixty-six days after he took the stand, he was shot dead in a Denver street while serving as provost marshal. He was 26. His killers were never brought to justice.
His letter lay largely forgotten for over a century. When it resurfaced in 2000, a senator read it to Congress as it moved to protect Sand Creek. He had said it once in a room and once on a page. The page is still speaking.
The Aurora pattern in his life
- Names the line in advance
- Before the march, he told the officers he would not take part in killing people who had come in under a promise of peace.
- Refuses quietly, without a fight
- At Sand Creek his company held its formation and did not fire a shot.
- Writes it down for one reader
- Two weeks later he set everything down in a letter to Ned Wynkoop, the friend who had made the peace.
The Aurora: You feel the whole room and keep most of it. What you make of it comes out later, whole.
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The book
The Aurora: A Story of Your People
His story and thirteen more, from third-century China and Bengal to Bordeaux, a mountain hermitage in Japan and a sanatorium in the Swiss snow, grouped by the situations every Aurora runs into: work, love, friendship, money, the body, purpose and power.
More famous Auroras
Questions people ask
What personality type was Silas Soule?
His life fits the Aurora, one of the houses at Grand Personalities: someone who feels the whole room and keeps most of it, and whose answer comes out later, whole. Closest four-letter code: INFP.
What did Silas Soule do at the Sand Creek massacre?
On 29 November 1864 he refused to let his company fire on the Cheyenne and Arapaho camp, and his men did not fire a shot. He then described the massacre in a letter to Major Edward Wynkoop and testified against Chivington before an army commission.
How did Silas Soule die?
He was shot dead in a Denver street on 23 April 1865 while serving as provost marshal, about two months after his testimony and three weeks after his wedding. He was 26, and his killers were never brought to justice.
Shown: the Aurora house art.