Two young men, King Fisher and Little Bear, were the first to see soldiers approaching as they tended horse herds grazing south of the village. In 1906, Little Bear recalled meeting King Fisher running back toward camp with news that many white men were driving off the ponies, and he understood that soldiers were coming to attack the village. Chivington had already ordered the horses driven away by the time the warning reached the village. As Lieutenant Luther Wilson's companies of the 1st Regiment moved east and companies from Colonel George Shoup's 3rd Regiment swung west, they aimed to drive the pony herds away from the village and toward 2nd Lieutenant Jose Autobee's Hispanic soldiers of Companies H. Private Jesse S. Haire of Company D, 1st Regiment Cavalry, Colorado Volunteers, recalled that Lieutenant Wilson's men began shooting volley after volley and advancing into a crowd of five or six hundred chiefs, braves, squaws, and papooses huddled together. In response to the advance under Major Anthony and Lieutenant Wilson, Cheyenne Chiefs White Antelope, War Bonnet, and Standing Water walked out to face the soldiers. Along Sand Creek's north bank they stood firm, trying to calm frightened women and children, but within moments all three were shot, and their bodies were later scalped and mutilated. Recalling his great-grandfather Cometsevah's account of the massacre, Cheyenne Chief Laird Cometsevah said that by tribal law the 44 Chiefs Societies had to protect their people and give their lives so their people could escape, which is why so many chiefs were killed as the chiefs stood their ground and troops concentrated gunfire on the lodges.