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It is a little strange that no mention is made, in the paragraph "background", of important developments leading to Sand Hill. Trapper and trader Elbridge Gerry (possibly a grandson of founding father E. Gerry), who was married to a Sioux or Cheyenne woman, warned the Colorado governor of an impending large scale attack by indians. So did Robert North, married to an Arapaho. Governor Evans received similar warnings by other sources, maintaining that the indians procured guns and ammunition in unusually large quantities,e.g. from Sioux Indian Agent Major John Loree the previous year. Mention should also be made of the small number of settlers living in Colorado at the time, and of the distance to the nearest possible places from where help could be expected. All this might possibly (!) have lead to an exaggerated (??) fear of being annihilated by indian war parties (see, for example, Letter from Governour Evans to W.P. Dole, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Denver, November 10, 1863.)
See also: Executive Department, Colorado Territory, August 21, 1865:
"I, David A. Chever, Clerk in the office of the governor of the Territory of Colorado, do solemnly swear that the people of said territory, from the Purgatoire to the Cache la Poudre rivers, a distance of over two hundred miles, and for a like distance along the Platte river, being the whole of our settlements on the plains, were thrown into the greatest alarm and consternation by numerous and almost simultaneous attacks and depredations by hostile Indians early last summer; that they left their unreaped crops, and collecting into communities built blockhouses and stockades for protection at central points throughout the long line of settlements; that those living in the vicinity of Denver City fled to it, and that the people of said city were in great fear of sharing the fate of New Ulm, Minnesota; that the threatened loss of crops, and the interruption of communication with the states by the combined hostilities, threatened the very existence of the whole people; that this feeling of danger was universal...reliable reports of the presence of a large body of hostile warriors at no great distance east of this place were received, which reports were afterwards proved to be true, by the statement of Elbridge Gerry (page 232, Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1864)..."
