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A listener note.

This episode contains references to violence and harm to children.

Listener discretion is advised.

It's November 29, 1864.

High on the wind-swept plains of eastern Colorado, a Native American chief, white

antelope of the southern Cheyenne, sits slumped behind a boulder, bleeding. In the distance,

he can hear the terrified screams of his people as they are gunned down by the United States

Army's howitzers. He can hear the murder of fleeing women and children.

He loads his weapon and prepares to defend against the coming onsla.

Earlier that morning, as dawn broke over the prairie, some 700 U.S. Army soldiers rode into

White Antelope's Village on the banks of Sand Creek in southeast Colorado and started

shooting. They claimed it was in retaliation for recent attacks on white settlers in the area,

but that was a mere excuse. White Antelope knows the men were thirsty for native blood.

The slaughter was frenzied and indiscriminate. Sand Creek is home mainly to women and children,

and the soldiers dragged those innocents from their tepees and butchered them like animals.

Survivors attempted to flee up the dry creek bed, led by White Antelope and several other tribal leaders.

The few warriors that remained stayed behind to fight.

But ill-equipped and unprepared,

...