SILAS SOULE - AMERICAN HERO

11/29/1864 - Certainly one of the biggest and longest lasting warts in American history, the Sand Creek Massacre, takes place in Colorado on this day in 1864, but instead of picking at the scab once more, I'd like to discuss an individual that shines in his reaction to the mass murders ... the story of a now little known American hero named Silas Stillman Soule.

Soule

Born 7/26/1838 in Bath, Maine to a family of abolitionists, as part of the New England Emigrant Aid Company that has the goal of helping settle the Kansas Territory and bring the area into the Union as a free state, the family transplants in stages to the territory between 1854 (his father and brother) and 1855 (Silas, his mother, and his two sisters).  Establishing a household at Coal Creek (a few miles south of the town of Lawrence), Silas' father, Amasa, soon makes his home a stop on the Underground Railroad (a frequent visitor is fiery abolitionist John Brown) ... a family endeavor that all of the Soule's will contribute to, by age 17, Silas is escorting escaped slaves from Missouri, north to freedom.  He also distinguishes himself in the fight for "Bleeding Kansas," as an anti-slavery "Jayhawker" taking on Missouri pro-slavery "Bushwhackers" wherever and whenever they are encountered.

Young Silas Soule

Soule's most famous moment in the border wars that are the prelude to the American Civil War comes in 1859, after the arrest of fellow abolitionist, physician Dr. John Doy of Lawrence.  Leading 13 escaped slaves (eight men, three women and two children) towards the freedom of Iowa, Doy is ambushed and captured (the escapees will be sold back into captivity) by a party of 20 pro-slavery Missouri men seeking escapees in Kansas.  Tried and convicted in Missouri of abducting property, Doy is sentenced to five years behind bars for his actions.  An outcome massively undeserved in the eyes of his fellow abolitionists, a plot is soon hatched for the doctor's escape from the St. Joseph jailhouse he is being held within, with Soule first helping to get a note into Doy to be ready for rescue (he tells the jailer the note is from the doctor's wife), and then being one of the ten men that overpowers the jail's guards and takes the physician back to freedom in Kansas (back in Lawrence, the group poses for a picture that is dubbed "The Immortal Ten," and turned into a widely distributed postcard ... a photo now possessed by the Kansas State Historical Society).

The Immortal Ten And Dr. Doy

Soule As An Immortal

Impressed by the intelligence, fortitude, and calmness he shows in helping Dr. Doy get out of jail and back to his Kansas home, when John Brown is captured in 1859 at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, during the fabled abolitionist's failed attempt to spark a slave revolt, Soule is recruited to organize Brown's escape (deciding he wants to be a martyr to the cause of freedom, Brown refuses Soule's help and will be hung in December of 1859).  When freeing Brown fails, Soule is then recruited by Thomas Wentworth Higginson to free two of Brown's captured company, Albert Hazlett and Aaron Stevens.  Posing as a drunken Irishman, Soule manages to get himself arrested and thrown in the Charles Town jail where the men are being kept, charms the jailer, and manages to make contact with the men ... only to be told once more that like their leader, the pair wish to be martyrs too (and so they will be, hung in March of 1860).

John Brown

U.S. Marines Attacking Brown And His Followers

At Harper's Ferry

Higginson

East coast activities a bust, except for Soule getting the opportunity to meet fellow abolitionists and hobnob with the poet Walt Whitman, he is soon out West once more ... trying his luck, with his brother and a cousin, in the 1860 gold mining camps of Colorado (along with trying to find paydirt, Soule also works in a blacksmith shop).  But not for long, with the breakout of the American Civil War in 1861, Soule enlists in Company K, 1st Colorado Infantry when the governor of the territory, William Gilpin, calls for volunteers.  As a member of the 1st, under the command of Colonel John Milton Chivington, Soule participates in the Battle of Apache Canyon (in which a force of 300 Confederates is routed) and in what will be called, "The Gettysburg of the West," the Battle of Glorieta Pass (in present-day New Mexico), a clash that sends the command of Lt. Colonel William Read Scurry tumbling back to Texas when Chivington's men fortuitously capture the southern force's supplies at a place called Johnson's Ranch.

Glorieta Pass

Present Day

Working his way up the ranks, still under Chivington's command, by November of 1864, Soule is a captain, in command of Company D of the 1st Colorado Cavalry, a position he is holding when the governor of Colorado, John Evans, asks the volunteers from his territory to deal with Indian raids taking place to the east and south of Denver. As such, Soule's moment of eternal grace comes on 11/29/1864, when he is ordered by Chivington ("Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.") to attack a camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho under the leadership of Chief Black Kettle, on Colorado's Sand Creek, near Fort Lyon ... a camp of roughly 800 souls, mostly women and children, that flies an American flag at its center to show one and all that they are peaceful.  Refusing to give his men the order to attack the helpless camp, Soule risks a court martial and hanging (Lt. Joseph Cramer also keeps Company K out of the massacre) in keeping his men out of the tragedy that soon results in which between 137 to 500 Indians are slaughtered, and then turned into sliced up souvenirs by the "victors" ... an action which allows hundreds of Indians to escape certain death (one will be an ancestor of future Colorado United States Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell).

Chivington

Black Kettle

The Sand Creek Massacre - 11/29/1864

Horrified by what he has witnessed, Soule is adament in demanding justice for the murdered Indians ... not participating in the "victory" parade through downtown Denver, writing vivid letters depicting the events of the massacre, and when the government decides to investigate what happened, testifying before an Army court of inquiry, and in front of the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War (Chivington will be reproached for his actions, but never put behind bars thanks to a general amnesty being granted after the Civil War ends ... he dies in 1894 in Denver at the age of 73, still convinced that all his actions at Sand Creek were justified).  Typical of his testimony, Soule will write his former commander, Major Edward W. Wynkoop:  "I refused to fire, and swore that none but a coward would, for by this time hundreds of women and children were coming towards us, and getting on their knees for mercy. I tell you Ned it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized. ... I saw two Indians hold one of another's hands, chased until they were exhausted, when they kneeled down, and clasped each other around the neck and were both shot together. They were all scalped, and as high as half a dozen taken from one head. They were all horribly mutilated. One woman was cut open and a child taken out of her, and scalped. ... Squaw's snatches were cut out for trophies. You would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there."

Soule

Vilified by locals and members of the army for testifying against Chivington, Soule accepts the fact that he might be assassinated for his position on Sand Creek, but feels his life is worth the cost of truth and justice.  Giving Lincoln's "... last full measure of devotion" to his beliefs, on 4/23/1865, just five weeks after marrying Hersa Coberly, while on duty as provost marshal in Denver, Soule is fatally shot in the head by an unknown assassin (the deed is thought to be the work of a Chivington acolyte from the 2nd Colorado Cavalry named Charles Squier ... but when Squier escapes from jail, and his tracker, First Lieutenant James Cannon is poisoned, no one is ever found guilty of the crime).  In 2012, the HIstorical Society of Colorado has a memorial placed at the northwest corner of the building at Fifteenth and Arapaho Streets in Denver a plaque that reads:  "At this location on April 23, 1865, assassins shot and killed 1st Colorado Cavalry officer Capt. Silas S. Soule. During the infamous Sand Creek massacre of November 29, 1864, Soule had disobeyed orders by refusing to fire on Chief Black Kettle's peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho village. Later, at army hearings, Soule testified against his commander, Col. John M. Chivington, detailing the atrocities committed by the troops at Sand Creek. His murderers were never brought to justice."

Soule

Soule is only 26-years-old when he passes ... an American hero, then, and forevermore!  

Denver Grave      

ONE LESS BAD APPLE

11/22/1921 - Mercifully for the citizens of Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa, in a rent-a-car garage, the short, but exceptionally violent, criminal career of Edward J. "Eddie" Adams is ended by three officers of the Wichita, Kansas Police Department.

Adams

Born as William Joseph Wallace on a farm in Hutchinson, Kansas when the area is still the stomping grounds for the Dalton Brothers, Bill Doolin, and a passel of other notorious outlaws, Adams earlier loses parental guidance when his father dies and his mother remarries a man the boy despises.  Despite hating the man who changes him into an Adams, the future outlaw has a relatively normal country childhood, though he soon learns to despise manual labor due to the many farm chores he is assigned.  Exchanging farm for big city, in the early part of the 20th Century, Adams moves to Wichita, where he becomes a barber and marries ... until one of his patrons realizes the man is open to other pursuits if nice paydays are available.

Downtown Wichita - 1920s

The snip and a shave customer is John Callahan, a Midwest thief and bank robber who moves up to underworld kingpin during Prohibition ... controlling bootlegging, narcotics, and money fencing ... and he also mentors young hoodlums (Pretty Boy Floyd will work for Callahan for a time as bootleg liquor delivery driver).  Soon, with the guidance of the mobster, Adams is involved in bootlegging, petty robberies, partying and car theft to such a degree that his wife leaves him.  Not enough, the former barber forms a gang of like-minded thugs, and takes down bank and train scores in Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa; his road to oblivion begins shorty after, in 1920, when Callahan introduces the outlaw to hoodlum brothers, Ray, Walter, and Dudley Majors, and the men convince Adams that a downtown Kansas City gambling den belonging to mobster Harry Trusdell is a plum, ripe for the picking.  Wrong ... in the daylight robbery that ensues on September 5, 1920, a gunfight breaks out in the gaming establishment between the robbers and employees unwilling to release Mr. Trusdell's assets ... and the lead exchange leads to the death of a gambler and gunman Frank Gardner.  Murder and hitting a protected gambling hall a big no-no, the gang is soon caught (Dudley escapes, only to end up serving time in Delaware) and goes on trial with the two Majors brothers both receiving five-year sentences, while Adams gets life.

Kansas City Gambling Den - 1920s

Criminal career seemingly over before it really got started, while being transported to the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, Adams manages to get away from a guard and not break his neck jumping off the train taking him to prison ... and his bloody last crime spree is on.

The Missouri State Penitentiary

Hooking up with a bandit named Julius Finney, the men rob a bank and general store in the town of Cullison, Kansas, but are soon in custody when excessive speed causes Adams to crash a stolen car into a bridge and they are surrounded by a posse.  Already under a life sentence in Missouri, Adams adds a ten to thirty year stretch at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing to his criminal resume ... but he is out again by August of 1921, after masterminding an escape that knocks out the power to the prison lights and allows the convict to flee over the pen's wall with fellow hooligans, Frank Foster, George Weisberger, and D.C. Brown (Brown is recaptured only days later), into a getaway car driven by a WWI vet turned louse, Billy Fintelman ... the makings of a new Adams Gang.

Kansas State Penitentiary - Lansing

Taking $10,000 from each of their next targets, the gang robs banks in Rose Hill and Haysville, Kansas ... and it is in Haysville that Adams pistol-whips 82-year-old James Krievell for no discernible reason ... an act that sends the man to the hospital, where he eventually dies from the trauma of having a fractured skull.  The heat on, police try to trap the gang near Anoly, Kansas, but in the gun battle that ensues, the gang escapes, wounding Deputy Benjamin Fisher.  The gang resurfaces eleven days later when they steal $500 in silver from a bank near Osceloa, Iowa (also called Cherokee).  Resting from their escape on a gravel farm road just a few miles south of the town of Murray, Iowa, the suspicious owner of the nearby farm, C. J. Jones, contacts Sheriff Ed West, and a posse soon arrives at the site to investigate. Approaching the suspect vehicle, a revolver is shoved out a window into Sheriff's West's face, but fails to fire ... a problem the other weaponry of the outlaws does not have, and in the spray of lead sent out both sides of the bandit car, several posse members are wounded.  Worse though takes place for Jones, hearing the sounds of gunfire from the area of the suspect vehicle he'd reported, the farmer grabs a shotgun and runs down the road to assist the posse, where he encounters the fleeing outlaws and is mortally wounded.

Downtown Osceola, Iowa - 1920s

Safely back in Kansas once more, the crime spree continues with the gang robbing eleven stores in Muscotah, Kansas, kidnapping and robbing two state motorcycle officers outside of Wichita (and setting both bikes on fire to send an "F-you" message to the Kansas authorities), followed by Adams killing Wichita Patrolman A. L. Young while the man walks his beat ... a cold-blooded murder not performed as part of a robbery or escape, but because a mutual love interest in town has chosen the lawman over the outlaw.  That bit of bad business done, the gang then engages in its most successful robbery, taking over $35,000 off a Santa Fe express train outside of Ottawa, Kansas.

Wichita - Coleman Lamp Company

Ottawa, Kansas - Santa Fe Depot

Back in Wichita, the gang then stupidly decides to celebrate their successful train robbery by getting drunk, picking up some pliable women, and going joy riding about town ... in one car of fools is Adams, Foster, local madam Nellie Miles, a local bootlegger named George J. McFarland and two prostitutes, while in a following vehicle ride Fintelman, his wife, Weisberger, P.D. Orcutt, and two more prostitutes.  Not surprisingly, the Adams vehicle is soon stopped by two motorcycle cops, and also not surprisingly, either Adams or Foster deals with the situation by gunning down patrolman Robert Fitzpatrick, before discarding the women passengers and fleeing south into Cowley County ... where another murder takes place. Running out of gas, the bandits go to steal the car of farmer George Oldham, and do such a poor job that the man comes out of his home to see what is going on ... and is gunned down by Adams (having enough, McFarland runs off into the woods).  Returning to Wichita in the stolen car, the men go to McFarland's home, and instead, find two cops also looking for the man ... and Adams goes gunning again, severely wounding officer Ray Casner (while the other officer hides under a bed).

Fitzpatrick

Laying low, Adams waits until the day of Fitzpatrick's funeral, figuring every cop in town will be at the officer's memorial, then goes into downtown Wichita to rent a car to leave town for good ... but he is recognized by the garage owner, who secretly calls the authorities. Confrontation, when three police officers enter the back door of the garage, Adams draws his weapon and is tackled by Detective Charles D. Hoffman, but able to free his pistol, the outlaw kills Hoffman, wounds Officer Charles Bowman, before looking to take down the third officer.  But Officer D. C. Stuckey is no fool when it comes to dealing with armed felons ... stepping behind the protection of a pillar in the garage, the police officer takes careful aim as Adams breaks away from Hoffman, and ends Adams' fourteen month crime spree for good with three bullets placed fatally into the killer's chest. Adios Adams, out at the age of thirty-four, over 9,000 people come by the City Undertaking Parlor to see the badman off to Hell and celebrate the end of the maniac's spree, during which seven people have be murdered, over a dozen citizens and lawmen are wounded, and eighteen individuals are arrested and go to jail, including gang member Frank Foster, who gets life behind bars.

Newspaper Recreation Of The Final Gunfight

Detective Hoffman

The death of Adams is one less bad apple for the citizens of the Midwest to be concerned about ... removed for good on 11/22/1921.

MADNESS IN GUYANA

11/18/1978 - In Jonestown, Guyana, mad 47-year-old cult leader, James Warren "Jim" Jones decides to cash in his chips ... and through persuasion and outright murder, gets over nine hundred other souls to join him in the afterlife (the greatest loss of American civilians by way of a deliberate act until the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001).

Jones

Cracked from the beginning, Jones is born in rural Crete, Indiana, to James Thurman Jones (a WWI veteran) and Lynetta Putnam on May 13, 1931 ... with his mother believing she has given birth to a messiah.  A Depression baby, the first part of his life takes place in a shack without running water.  Signs of trouble are on display early ... he studies voraciously the careers of Stalin, Marx, Mao, Hitler, and for a change of pace, Mahatma Gandhi, he becomes obsessed with religion and death, childhood acquaintances recall him as being a "really weird kid," a cat is stabbed to death, there a numerous funerals for small animals, and there are violent fights with his alcoholic father over the boy's friendship with local African-American children.  Despite everything, he graduates with honors from high school, marries nurse Marceline Baldwin in 1949, attends Indiana University and night school at Butler University, eventually earning a degree in secondary education in 1961.

Youngster

High School Senior

An avowed communist by 1951, using his gift-of-gab conman skills, Jones creates his first church in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1956 that becomes the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel.  In 1960, the Democratic mayor of Indianapolis, Charles Boswell, appoints Jones the director of the local Human Rights Commission, and the budding rabble-rouser uses his position to expand his church, while integrating major portions of the city such as restaurants, the police department, and the telephone company (and receives considerable criticism for his stands, and threats of intimidation in the form of a swastika painted on the Temple, a stick of dynamite left in the Temple's coal bin, and a dead cat thrown at Jones' house ... later there will be questions as to whether Jones conjured up all the incidents himself).  During this period Jones also expands his family ... he and his wife adopt three Korean-American children, a partly Native-American girl, a white girl, have their own child, Stephan Gandhi Jones, become the first white couple in Indiana to adopt a black child (a boy named James Warren Jones, Jr.), and adopt a white boy too. 

First Church

Selling Monkies As Pets To Garnish Church Funds

Believing a nuclear apocalypse is coming any day to America, in 1961, Jones explores moving his operations to Brazil ... but returns to the United States in 1963 when he receives word that his People's Temple in Indiana is floundering without his leadership.  And lead his people he does ... predicting a nuclear war will start on July 15, 1967, Jones begins moving his followers to Northern California, near the town of Ukiah.  There, even though no nuclear holocaust takes place, Jones creates his own religion, a mix of communism, socialism, and a hodge-podge of religious beliefs in which he casts himself as the glorious reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi, Father Divine, Jesus, Gautama Buddha, and Vladimir Lenin ... and begins believing his own bullshit.  Limited by the number of pinheads in the Ukiah region, in the early 1970s Jones moves his base of operations to San Francisco, and soon finds willing acolytes there, and in branches of his church which open in Los Angeles and San Fernando ... and a host of political fools willing to accord respect to the cult leader for his cash and endorsements ... San Francisco Mayor George Moscone appoints Jones the chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission, he meets with vice-presidential candidate Walter Mondale, meets several times with First Lady Rosalynn Carter, is lauded at a testimonial dinner by California assemblyman Willie Brown, Governor Jerry Brown, and Lt. Governor Mervyn Dymally, and has San Francisco Board of Supervisors member, Harvey Milk, speak at the Temple several times.  Seemingly sweet times, Jones' world begins falling apart when New West magazine publishes an expose of Jones' activities that includes allegations of members being physically, emotionally, and sexual abused, and that tax fraud might be taking place.

Happy Days

With Governor Brown

Recipient Of Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award

And so, to escape media attention into his activities (by this time he had also become addicted to amphetamine and barbiturates, and he is rumored to have had homosexual relations with several politicians), Jones makes his final move, opening up a "socialist paradise" and so-called "sanctuary" in Guyana called the "Peoples Temple Agricultural Project," which will become the hellhole known as Jonestown ... a site with fences, little food, guards, and many, many rules broadcast to its residents over a loud-speaker system from Jones (in a test of loyalty called "White Nights," members several times are given a red "death" juice to drink to escape into the next life, then told they won't be dying, it was just a test).  Before long, with the prod being a custody battle over a child taken to the Guyana compound, Congressman Leo Ryan decides to lead a fact-finding mission to Jonestown to investigate the rumors of human-rights abuses taking place in South America to some of Ryan's former constituents ... and the table is set for the tragedy that will ensue.

Congressman Leo Ryan

Arriving in the Guyana capital of Georgetown, in November of 1978, Ryan and some members of his staff, a number of relatives of Temple residents, an NBC camera crew, and reporters for a variety of newspapers spend two days there, then take an airplane to Port Kaituma in the northern part of the country, and from there are driven by limo to Jonestown, seven miles away in the jungle.  At Jonestown, the group is given a tour, talks to several residents, and is feted with a reception in their honor ... but things go abruptly south when the next day, Temple member Don Sly attacks Ryan with a knife (despite Ryan stating he will be issuing a positive report on the Temple) ... attack fended off, the mission immediately leaves for the airport, taking fifteen residents along that had expressed a desire to return to the United States ... and there, the murders begin.

Jonestown - Newsweek Map

Entrance To Jonestown

Expecting to be a small enough group to get in a 19-passenger Twin Otter from Guyana Airways, with the additional defectors brought along, the party is forced to wait for a second aircraft for over thirty minutes to get everyone to Georgetown.  At about 5:10 in the afternoon, the second plane, a six-passenger Cessna arrives and the party begins its boardings ... just as a group of armed Red Brigade security guards from the Temple compound arrive and open fire (along with fake defector, Larry Layton, on board the Cessna).  Fire from shotguns, rifles, and pistols is launched at the party by nine shooters, two of whom circle the planes looking for victims ... amazingly, only five people are killed in the shootings ... Congressman Ryan (he is hit more than twenty times), NBC reporter Don Harris, NBC cameraman Bob Brown, San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, and Temple defector Patricia Parks (while nine others are injured in the chaos at the airport).

Moments Before The Gunfire - Robinson With Camera Equipment

Diagram Of Airport Incident

After

Madness embraced and death decision made, when the airstrip killers return to Jonestown, Jones calls his staff together and has them prepare, and then distribute grape Flavor Aid (which will morph into Kool-Aidin the aftermath of the Guyana deaths) laced with Valium, chloral hydrate, cyanide, and Phenergan to his disciples, with children getting dosed first (the mix takes about five minutes to kill) ... some have the solution forced on them, others take it willingly, and some are shot for refusing to participate (while the madman leader of the Temple consuls his people to "die with dignity" while they are committing "revolutionary suicide" to prevent the torture of their children by unknown enemies that are coming "soon").  For his own death, Jones shoots himself in the head (at his autopsy, enough chemicals are found in his system to kill a normal human being not grown accustomed to their toxicity).  Over in roughly an hour, 908 Americans die at Jonestown with their insane leader (one of his last acts is to send an acolyte off with a request that $7.3 million of Temple money be transferred to the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

Bodies Everywhere

Not everyone however dies in the holocaust of stupidity and murder ... several members are given assignments and sent away from the compound on their missions, a few guards balk at taking their own medicine once there is almost no one left around, and a few individuals manage to hid (including Jones' two lawyers, Charles Garry and Mark Lane, Lane being famous as Lee Harvey Oswald's lawyer and the author of the Warren Commision criticizing book, Rush To Judgment about the JFK assassination).  And there is one survivor left to punish ... airstrip gunman Larry Layton.  Placed in custody at the airstrip, after being found "not guilty" of murder and attempted murder by a Guyanese court (his defense of brain washing is of course true to a degree), Layton is returned to the United States by U.S. marshals, placed on trial in San Francisco (four times), and eventually is sentenced to 20 years behind bars for conspiracy and aiding and abetting in the murder of Congressman Ryan and the attempted murder of Richard Dwyer (he is paroled in 2002) ... the only person to ever be held criminally responsible for the Jonestown massacre.

Layton Under Arrest

The jungle has now reclaimed most of the site where Jonestown once stood, but events there are remembered by many in Guyana and in the United States still, each November 18th ... and of course, all the ghosts have never forgotten the day Jim Jones ordered so many suicide deaths of his followers.

Memorial