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| Cheyenne and Arapaho still return here to pay tribute to ancestors who both perished and survived the 1864 massacre. |
Many of our national parks inspire awe, motivating visitors to look outward and be wowed by scenic splendor. Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, established in April of 2007, is not one of those parks. It asks the visitor to look inward and contemplate man’s inhumanity to man, to absorb the silence and reflect on the lessons to be learned there.
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A great American tragedy occurred in late November of 1864. This tragedy is part of our history, but it's not one we schoolchildren learned while studying the European conquest of North America.
During the early 1800s the US government signed treaties with Indian nations promising them much of the land on the Great Plains in exchange for safe passage for whites. After the discovery of gold and other valuable minerals in the area, those treaties were no longer considered convenient (read, profitable). So Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans proclaimed that a new policy take effect in 1864, its mission “... to kill and destroy, as enemies of the country, wherever they may be found, all such hostile Indians”.
United States volunteer cavalry soldiers such as Colonel John Chivington took that message to heart, and to mean “all Indians, hostile or otherwise”. On November 28, 1864 Colonel Chivington led a surprise attack on the peaceful Indian settlement of predominately women and children camped at Sand Creek.
Two captains with the US Volunteer Cavalry, Joseph Cramer and Silas Soule, refused to take part in the massacre and had their regiments stand down, all the while witnessing this horrific tragedy. The passage below is taken from letters detailing the eye-witness accounts of captains Cramer and Soule.
“The massacre lasted six or eight hours. I tell you it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized. One squaw was wounded and a fellow took a hatchet to finish her, she held her arms up to defend her, and he cut one arm off and held the other with one hand and dashed the hatchet through her brain. Some tried to escape on the prairie, but most of them were run down by horsemen. 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.”
--Captain Silas Soule
After the massacre soldiers paraded the streets of Denver holding body parts in their hands, cheered on by some in the crowd.
If not for the bravery of Captains Soule and Cramer, the acts described above may have continued unabated. As it was, these accounts of the massacre led to congressional hearings in 1865 and a new method of dealing with the “Indian problem” was launched. From this point on our government’s old policy of extermination was replaced by a new policy of assimilation. This assimilation attempt would be only partially "successful", due to the resilience of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people.
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I should mention that Colonel Chivington has his apologists as does Governor Evans. I’ve read that the US Cavalry was only doing onto the Indians what was done onto them, that Captains Soule and Cramer had hidden agendas when they wrote their damning accounts of this massacre. And we’ve all heard this argument: “All was not peace and love on native lands, you know. Tribes continually warred with one another.”
Well, yes. Humans are a warring species.
But, no. The “everybody’s doing it” excuse CAN NOT justify what happened here.
Visit the high plains site where the massacre occurred. Listen as the breeze rustles the thistles and grasses. View the meadow below the escarpment, the willowy trees lining the banks of what once was a small stream. Imagine the camp there, the place where several hundred women, children and retired warriors were promised safe haven by Colorado territory officials. Remember the atrocities which occurred there, atrocities for which Colonel Chivington and his men were never held accountable. Then, take heed as the park’s rangers remind you that this place was established with the belief that we’re a better people now, that what happened here could never happen again.
I would like to believe that too.
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| Meadow below the escarpment; site of the 1864 Cheyenne and Arapaho temporary settlement. |
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| Colonel Chivington has a town named for him. In 1895 the Colorado state legislature re-named a prominent Colorado mountain peak in honor of the esteemed and murderous Governor Evans. The least we could do for Cheyenne Chief White Antelope—who raised the white surrender flag when the US Cavalry approached Sand Creek and who was mutilated and killed in the attack—was to name this dirt road after him. |