William Bent believed peaceful relations between whites and Indians were good for business, and by the fall of 1864 his Cheyenne and Arapaho friends were camped forty miles north at Sand Creek on a reservation established by the U.S. government. That same year, when Colonel John Chivington and several hundred U.S. volunteer cavalrymen marched into Fort Lyon, formerly Bent's New Fort, he announced that his job was to lead troops against hostile Indians. Fort Lyon's officers assured him the Cheyenne and Arapaho were peaceful and protested his proposed attack. Instead, Chivington convinced officers to go on a campaign against hostiles at Smoky Hill River, twenty-five miles north of Sand Creek. Late on November 28, 1864, he marched 675 cavalrymen north, and at daybreak they arrived at Sand Creek. When Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle saw the soldiers, he raised the U.S. flag and a white flag of truce, but Chivington ignored the gesture and the attack began. While some Fort Lyon soldiers refused to fire, others murdered nearly 200 Indians, then scalped and mutilated the dead, and some 200 more were wounded. An outcry followed, and congressional investigations into Chivington's actions ensued, but no charges ever materialized. The massacre forever changed Anglo-Indian relations and the Cheyenne and Arapaho people's way of life.