Samuel F. Tappan
He proposed the federal government replace military jurisdiction over tribal matters with a form of civil law on reservations, applied by the tribes themselves.
[1] Sam Tappan received a common school education and then went to work in the cabinet-making trade in his native town, learning to make chairs from his father.
Tappan was encouraged in his abolitionism by family members and prominent men, who included Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, and others.
[5] He was also a correspondent for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune and did some writing for the Boston Atlas and several other newspapers, reporting on the territory's first difficulties with border raiders.
He also maintained close ties to both the Kansas-based and East Coast leadership of the New England Emigrant Aid Company and participated in helping to smuggle arms (nicknamed "Beecher's Bibles") and other assistance to Free-Soil settlers.
Both Lewis and Sam were among the 15 armed men who captured the box containing the altered election returns at Lecompton, the discovery of which resulted in the overthrow of the pro-slavery party in Kansas.
This move was part of a business arrangement involving his cousin Lewis N. Tappan and the then relatively unknown Henry Villard, who had both preceded him to the gold fields by a year.
[10] With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Tappan received a commission from Colorado's Territorial Governor William Gilpin to help raise a regiment of Union volunteer troops.
Commissioned initially as a captain, his success in recruitment drives in the small Colorado mining towns of Black Hawk, Georgetown, Golden, and Central City resulted in his being promoted by Gilpin to Lieutenant Colonel of the newly formed First Colorado Volunteer Regiment, serving under Colonel John P. Slough, a lawyer from Cincinnati, Ohio.
[12] Tappan's actions that day were eventually overshadowed by the later success of the one-third of Slough's command that bypassed the Confederate lines and attacked and destroyed the enemy wagon train and supplies in their rear near Johnson's Ranch.
During his command of Fort Garland, he was assigned by Governor John Evans and Colonel Chivington to hunt down the Espinosa brothers, brigands and murderers who killed 32 Colorado citizens in cold blood and engaged in rape, robbery and other destructive acts.
On the fourth day, Tobin tracked down the Espinosas and killed the two brothers, bringing their severed heads back to Tappan as proof of his success.
His cousin Elizabeth Tappan Tannatt's (sister of his Colorado cousins' Lewis, William and George Tappan) husband, Col. Thomas R. Tannatt commanded the First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery in the city's defenses and John P. Slough, his former Colonel in the First Colorado, had been appointed a Brigadier General and was the Military Governor of Alexandria and commander of the fortifications at Fort Ward near Alexandria, Virginia.
The Federal troops lost ten soldiers and had 38 wounded (of whom four later died while at Ft. Lyon), some of the casualties apparently arising from friendly fire and disorder among the cooperating units.
The action at Sand Creek was greeted by citizens of Denver as a justifiable military victory which helped to avenge the murders of Plains settlers such as the Hungate family.
Silas Soule, a fellow Kansas pioneer and abolitionist, was killed by Charles W. Squires, another of the Colorado volunteers, presumably for his testimony against Chivington.
During his service in the First Colorado Cavalry, elements of the regiment also joined the New Mexico Volunteers in campaigns against various Plains tribes, including the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache.
While serving at Fort Garland, Tappan commented on the enslavement of Navajos by both the Utes and Mexicans, and sought official support to try to end the practice.
He acted as witness to the treaty executed on October 7, 1863, at Conejos between the Tabeguache band of Utes under Ouray and the US government represented by Colorado Territory's Governor Evans, New Mexico Territory's Indian Superintendent Dr. Michael Steck, Indian agents Simeon Whiteley and Lafayette Head, and President Lincoln's personal representative John G.
Tappan also vociferously protested the Washita Massacre in November 1868 of Chief Black Kettle's Southern Cheyennes while camped near Ft. Sill Oklahoma Territory by Lt. Col. George A. Custer's Seventh Cavalry troopers.
Tappan was appointed during the presidency of Chester A. Arthur to become the first superintendent of the United States Indian Industrial School in Genoa, Nebraska, in 1884–1885.
[24] Tappan's marriage to Cora, who was a spiritualist medium, author, poet, abolitionist, and fellow Native American rights activist,[25] eventually ended in divorce and they had no children together.
