Close upon the heels of the announcement of Gen. Custar's battle and victory at Washita, came the usual howl of the Indian lovers. They pronounced it another massacre, and compared it with Sand Creek. Ned. Wynkoop, in the ardor of his friendship for the "Noble Red Man," threw up his commission; relinquished his nice berth, with all its perquisites. Of course, that step was for effect. He expected to overslaugh Custar and Sheridan, and plunge them into disgrace. All the other Indian sympathisers echoed his cry. Tappan flew to the press, and poured out column after column in defense of his pets, and abuse of the military and frontier settlers. For a little while it looked as though they would again control public opinion, aided by prejudice in the East, but the contract was too heavy for them. They had military men to deal with, and those of influence. Custar was backed by Sheridan; Sherman swears by gallant Phil; and Grant won't go back on the hero of the march to the sea. They stood like a rampart; a row of stupendous bricks, that Ned, and Sam. could not push over. Public opinion was sorely perplexed, and newspapers wavered. For a little while Wynkoop, Tappan & Co. seemed to have an advantage; but it was only for a little while. Day after day Sheridan laid additional reports before his Chief until the evidence is overwhelming. The latest we have seen is the statement of the principal squaw of Black Kettle; and the letter of Mrs. Blinn.
    Gen. Custar was led to the hostile camp by following the trail of a war party who were returning from a raid west and south of Fort Riley. They had the fresh scalps of four white men in their possession. One was that of a military express rider who was butchered and horribly mutilated but a few days before, between Forts Dodge and Larned. The mail he was carrying was found in the conquered camp. Two other similar parties were absent at the time of the battle. The contents of rifled mails, effects from plundered settlements, and the green and reeking scalps of murdered citizens, were found in the captured camp. All these things are told by Gen. Sheridan, and Wynkoop dare not deny it. They cried "Friendly Indians," and "Another Sand Creek Massacre" lustily at first, but it has dwindled to the faintest whisper. Thank God the military, civilization and the cause of the frontier settlers is victorious this time.
    Now we want to say to the people and the newspaper press of the East that Washita was an exact parallel of the battle of Sand Creek four years ago. Only this difference: Sand Creek was fought by volunteers, commanded by volunteer officers of insignificant rank. The leader was only a Colonel who, in the public mind, had also the misfortune to be a preacher. His term of service was really out. Strenuous efforts had for some time been made to compass his disgrace, and the very men who have since become notorious as the friends of the Indian and foes of the white man were the ones who had labored for it. No prominent army officer was in the remotest degree responsible, nor did any know the facts in the case. With this vantage ground in their favor, Tappan, Wynkoop, Leavenworth and their allies succeeded in stigmatizing the battle as a massacre and branding the men who were engaged in it as murderers. Under this stigma they have rested ever since, because they were helpless and could not do otherwise. Their protestations have been scorned and the voice of the press of the West has been unheeded.
    According to General Sheridan's testimony this Washita camp was reputed friendly. It was drawing supplies from the depot at Fort Cobb, whilst it was sending out war parties to ravage and devastate the settlements on the frontiers of Kansas and Colorado. Three war parties out at once, and two of them yet out at the time of the fight, and yet at Fort Cobb they were considered friendly, and Wynkoop, their agent, who has been among them three or four years, asserts over and over again that they were friendly. Is he not guiltier than they? Just so at Sand Creek. Wynkoop, Tappan, Anthony, and Leavenworth, swear that the camp was occupied by friendly Indians, protected by the United States Flag. Let us hope, for the sake of their immortal souls, that they were sincere and believed what they swore to. But our people know that it was no more a friendly camp than was that at Washita. Whilst they drew rations from Fort Lyon (42 miles distant on the South) their war parties were raiding the country for two hundred miles to the North. Their trails led out of and into the camp. When the camp was captured there were found, flour, sugar, bolts of cotton goods, letters, bills of lading, &c., known to have been captured from plundered and burned trains on the South Platte. There were photographs, books, women's and children's clothing known to have been taken from the plundered houses of settlers who were murdered along the Colorado border. There were scalps, not yet dried, known to have been torn from the heads of our own citizens, murdered along the Great Overland Mail route between Denver and Fort Kearney. Among the trophies brought back from that battle-field were the scalps of white men, women and children, and it was given officially as the opinion of good medical authority that some of them had not been stripped off more than three days before the Sand Creek battle. We saw a saddle-cloth fringed with the long hair of white women, which must have taken a dozen scalps to so ornament. It was found in the lodge of a sub-chief slain in that battle. Yet Tappan, and Wynkoop, and Ross, and Randall, have made the world believe that the Indians slain were friendly; that the Colorado settlers only were to blame, and that our citizens who fought the battle and won the most telling victory ever achived [sic] on the Plains, were murderers. And on that foundation the "Peace Commission"--God save the mark--was established. Look at the record of its doings.
    Sand Creek was a more stubbornly fought battle on the part of the Indians, than Washita. The white force engaged was less, and the loss was greater. Of about five hundred men who went into the battle, forty-nine were killed and wounded. We do not say this to belittle Gen. Custar's splendid victory; we rejoice over it, and so does everybody in this country; but while we "hurrah for Washita" we call "three times three for Sand Creek." Now we want the East to give us a little justice, tardy though it be. We want the New York Tribune, Times and Post, Philadelphia Press, Chicago Tribune, and the press generally, which claims to be the champion of the weak and arbiter of justice, if it dares not brand such men as Sheridan and Custar as murderers, and denounce the battle of Washita as a massacre, to do the poor, weak, but well-meaning people of Colorado a favor, by recalling some of the epithets and abuse that has been heaped upon them for doing precisely the same thing that Custar did by Sheridan's authority.

Source:

Unknown, "Washita and Sand Creek Compared," Daily Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, Tuesday, 29 December, 1868, Page 1.