The Cheyenne and Arapaho village at Sand Creek was a chief's village with 33 chiefs and headmen present. In the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, becoming a chief meant accepting a vast responsibility, and chiefs were expected above all to be peacemakers. The chiefs gathered there believed they had brought their people to a place of safety. Several lodges displayed flags given by American envoys who had sought peace with the Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1860. On the morning of November 29, 1864, as soldiers approached and fear spread through the camps, Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle raised a white flag of truce beneath his American flag to show that those assembled were peaceful. Despite this, the soldiers opened fire. Many chiefs were killed at Sand Creek, including Yellow Wolf, Little Robe Sr., White Antelope, Big Man, Two Thighs, Lone Bear (One Eye), Warbonnet, Niwot (Left Hand), and Bear Robe, while among the chiefs who survived were Black Kettle, Whirlwind, Seven Bulls, Sandhill, and Little Wolf (Big Jake). George Bent later wrote that there was one Arapaho chief killed, Left Hand, and recalled that White Antelope, seeing soldiers fire into the lodges after months of urging peace with whites, chose to die, standing before his lodge with his arms folded and singing his death song: "Nothing lives long, Only the earth and the mountains."