The Colonel Commanding has kindly permitted us to continue the publication of the News during the reign of Martial Law. It will be an up-hill business and entail certain loss, because our advertising patronage is necessarily entirely cut off. However we shall continue to give the news, publish military orders and such other matter as we can get in type.

    By order of Col. Moonlight, commanding this district, the board of military officers appointed to investigate the acts of Col. Chivington and the "Fort Lyon affair" will meet in this city to-morrow to enter upon the discharge of that duty. They are Lieut. Col. S. F. Tappan, Capt. E. A. Jacobs and Capt. G. H. Stilwell. The first named gentleman has been here for some time past; Capt. G. Stilwell arrived yesterday by the southern coach and Capt. Jacobs is expected to-day.
    We, in common with the public, are glad that the settlement of this issue is at last under way. There has been quite talk enough about it. None will rejoice more, perhaps, than Col. C. His motives have been impugned and his character maligned; all to answer personal ends, but he will, we are confident, come out of the ordeal unscathed.
    We are surprised at one thing in the organization of the Commission; that is the appointment of Lieut. Col. Tappan President of the Board. His well-known personal enmity to the Colonel should have excused him from the position he is to occupy in the pending trial. However, we have no fears of the result. The evidence of almost every one who participated in the battle will sustain the Colonel's action, and the opinion of the great public approves it.

    "You will observe Scott J. Anthony's letter to Col. Moonlight in this morning's News. Read it, and then you will not be influenced by the one-sided view of the subject presented in the editorial of the same paper. The News seems to have forgotten that the whites, (according to its own acknowledgment, in its account of the "council" with the Indian chiefs brought to Denver by Maj. Wynkoop, last fall,) were the aggressors in this most unfortunate war. Under that abberration of memory it continues to urge on the war, to frown down investigation, to appeal to popular passion, always too excitable in such cases to admit of the use of reason. The News knows that the massacres which it so vividly paints, were Indian revenge for the massacre of their women and children, and the theft of their arms and guns by parties of troops ordered out for that purpose last spring by the Commander of the District. The News is unfair and wrong; it presents but one side of the question to its readers; it pays no attention to facts or logic which is against it; in fine, the effect of its course can only result in mischief to the country."
    We clip the above from the editorial correspondence of the Black Hawk Journal, dated at Golden City the 2nd, and published in that paper of the 4th inst.
    The NEWS never did, "in its account of the 'Council' with the Indian chiefs brought to Denver by Major Wynkoop," nor at any other time, acknowledge that the "whites were the aggressors in this most unfortunate war." After Major W's. arrival here, and before the "talk" was held, we did give his version of the Indian war. We did it upon a conversation with him, and were very careful to refer to his statements as the authority for the article. The "talk," or "Council," as the Journal styles it--revealed a very different state of facts. The Indians themselves confessed to a series of outrages and and atrocities seldom paralleled, and going far back of the earliest hostilities between themselves and the troops last summer. Having the promised protection of Major Wynkoop, and feeling perfect safe in life and person, they seemed to exult in confession of murders and robberies.
    So offensive were their unblushing acknowledgments that Governor Evans withdrew from the Council. But a careful and accurate record was kept of all their sayings which their sympathising friends and apologists, like the Journal, should read for their own edification.
    The fact is that the statements of the Indians themselves so utterly disagreed with the advanced story of Maj. Wynkoop as to destroy all one [sic] confidence in the latter. Subsequent events showed that he was our [sic] of those who was disposed to justify any act of the savages, just as Scott J. Anthony, Judge Harding, the Journal and others are disposed to do now. Besides, the Indians ever [sic] carried out their voluntary agrement [sic] to secure peace even with Major Wynkoop. They did not deliver up the remaining prisoners as promised, nor did they give up their arms, except a few worthless bows and broken guns. The Major was fully infected with the Fort Lyon disease, and the Indians hoodwinked him just as they pleased week after week and month after month. Witness the fact of their occupying a fortified camp within forty miles of that post, which was the common rendezvous of all their war and thieving parties during the summer and fall.
    In the same article, upon another subject, the Journal says:
    "In the same paper I notice two garbled extracts from the Journal, the object being to show that the Journal has been inconsistent with itself in its comments on the "contested seats" question. The articles were written with regard to different subjects; one referring to the action of the House Committee on Credentials, the other to the action of the House Committee on Elections and Apportionment. They expressed no conflicting views. The News is dishonest in its endeavor to make a point on the Journal in his [sic] instance. It knows that it misrepresents us."
    The assertion that our extracts from that paper were garbled is utterly false. They were clipped from its own columns, set up from its own print, and the "proof" read by its own "copy." If that "misrepresents" our cotemporary it is his fault, not ours. The public are at liberty to conclude whether the two articles in the Journal referred to the same or to different subjects. They were both upon the Arapahoe contested seats in the House of Representatives.
    The article closes with;
    "Judge Harding's opinions with regard to Sand Creek are shared by a great many men in high and low position, and the carrying all their "detestable persons out of the Territory on a rail" would consume much valuable time."
    That is true, and furthermore, it would ineffably disgrace a great many otherwise decent and respectable rails. It was out of respect for the latter, probably, that a cottonwood rail was named in the resolutions offered at the Broadwell House meeting.

Source:

Unknown, "Court of Inquiry," Daily Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, Wednesday, 8 February, 1865, page 2.