8 DECEMBER 1-7, 2022 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | CALHOUN | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Nothing Lives Long... HISTORY COLORADO FINALLY RIGHTS A WRONG. BY PATRICIA CALHOUN November 29, 1864 At dawn on November 19, 1864, Colonel John Chivington led more than 600 volun- teers and troops with the First and Third Colorado Regiments on a violent raid of a peaceful village of Cheyenne and Arapaho camped along the banks of the Big Sandy, 173 miles southeast of the fi ve-year-old boom- town of Denver. Having just requested a meet- ing with Territorial Governor John Evans and consulted with the U.S. Army, Cheyenne chief Black Kettle believed that the camp was protected, and was fl ying the white fl ag. But now an estimated 235 tribal members were slaughtered — women, children, elderly men and close to twenty chiefs, including White Antelope, who sang the Cheyenne death song: “Nothing lives long...only the earth and the mountains.” Black Kettle escaped, grievously injured, and he and other survivors headed up creek beds in the cold, looking for safety. They fi nally found it far away from Colorado, on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Mon- tana, the Northern Arapaho reservation in Wyoming, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, soldiers mutilated the bodies and took their plunder — promised by the recruitment fl iers for the 100-day volunteer cavalry posted that August — back to Denver, where their trophies were displayed at the Denver Theater’s holiday show. April 28, 2012 When the $110 million History Colo- rado Center opened at 1200 Broadway on April 28, 2012, the David Tryba-designed building boasted many marvels, including a huge terrazzo map of the state as it would look from 400 miles up in space, inlaid in the fl oor of the giant atrium; newfangled, steampunk-y time machines were designed to roll over the map, telling certain parts of the Colorado story. But they did not hint at one scandalous story unfolding a fl oor above, where History Colorado (formerly the Colorado Historical Society) had installed state-of-the-art core exhibits, dubbed “Colorado Stories,” that focused on different industries — skiing (complete with a virtual-reality jump), min- ing (ride a shaky elevator into the depth of the Earth!) — and communities. There was a replica of a trading room at Bent’s Old Fort, another of barracks at the Camp Am- ache Japanese-American internment camp, and a display devoted to Lincoln Hills, a last resort for vacationing Black Coloradans that had opened in Gilpin County in 1922, when they weren’t al- lowed at most vacation retreats. There were some quibbles about these ex- hibits — stereotypical caricatures of the Natives visiting Bent’s Fort (which were later eliminated), a layout that made the Amache barracks look like a nice overnight camp (the wide aisles were designed to make the space ac- cessible, as a notice posted later by the door acknowledged). But accurately capturing the past is no easy task, even when it’s done right. Through a narrow entrance on this second fl oor was another core exhibit, Collision: The Sand Creek Massacre, 1860s-Today, that went very wrong. A sign by the entrance noted that it might not be suitable for children, despite the fact that the other Disneyfi ed exhibits were clearly designed to appeal to kids. But Collision was dedicated to one of the cruelest, darkest chapters of Colorado’s history, noted that sign: the “unprovoked at- tack” at Sand Creek. “A congressional com- mission concluded the massacre was ‘foul, dastardly and cruel,’” it added. Lives weren’t the only things lost that day, though. “Something larger was lost after Sand Creek: the chance for peace,” the Collision sign continued. “The massacre intensifi ed anger and mistrust among American Indian residents and those settlers who wanted to take their lands, hardening the divisions between competing nations. A generation of warfare ensued throughout the West, claiming many more victims.” The battle for truth would come later. November 7, 2000 Colorado never forgot the Sand Creek Massacre, though how the story was told took many turns. After not one, but two congressional inves- tigations, as well as an Army probe, Evans was disgraced, and he had to resign as territorial governor. But after he helped bring a railroad to town, he was later recognized as one of the city’s most civic-minded citizens. He had a mountain named after him in the 1890s, as well as a Denver street that runs right past the University of Denver, which he’d co-founded with Chivington, a fellow Methodist minister, just months before the massacre. On July 24, 1909, the Colorado Pioneers Association dedicated a Civil War Monu- ment installed just below the west steps of the Colorado Capitol. Below the fi gure of a soldier designed by Captain Jack Howland, a member of the First Colorado Cavalry, was a list of all the Civil War “battles and engagements” that Coloradans had fought in, including “The Battle of Sand Creek.” A monument with the same label was put by the actual site of the massacre in 1950, twenty-plus miles from Eads and just past the ghost town of Chivington. (The colonel almost had a Denver street named after him, too, but it became Hale Parkway instead.) But what happened at Sand Creek was no Civil War battle, and by the 1990s, there was a move to erase the words on the statue. Working with legislators and Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal descendants of the massacre, then-state historian David Halaas came up with a solution that would not erase history, but explain it. A plaque was put just below the statue, tell- ing what really happened at Sand Creek and noting that “the controversy surrounding the Civil War Monument has become a symbol of Coloradans’ struggle to understand and take responsibility for our past.” At the time, Halaas and others were struggling with another challenge: having the actual massacre site declared a national monument. With Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the only American Indian in Con- gress, leading the charge — and after some last-second drama that involved Halaas’s discovery of letters written by Captain Silas Soule to Colonel Edward Wynkoop, telling of the horrible things he’d seen that day at Sand Creek, activities he’d refused to allow his troops to join — the Sand Creek Massacre Na- tional Historic Site Establishment Act of 2000 was signed into law on November 7, 2000. With the law came numerous provisions, including calling for the Department of the Interior, through the National Park Service, to create a vision for the site as well as offi cial protocols for consulting with the tribes every step of the way. “The development of the general management plan included an extensive consultation process in- volving members of the National Park Service and the designated Sand Creek representatives of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, the Colorado state his- toric preservation offi cer and staff of History Colorado (formerly the Colo- rado Historical Society), and represen- tatives of Kiowa County,” where the massacre site is located, a draft report on the process noted. By the time the Sand Creek Massa- cre National Historic Site was offi cially dedicated in April 2007, there had been many consultations with the three tribes, consultations that the NPS has contin- ued to this day. They’d met every year at the start of the Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run, a tradition started in 1999 that took members of the tribes on a run to Denver after they gathered at the site to remember their ancestors. But when History Colorado began planning the exhibits for its new build- ing, it ignored that road map, federal dictates be damned. On December 5, 2011, with the opening of the History Colorado Center less than six months away, Cheyenne leader Joe Fox sent History Colorado offi cials a letter reminding them of this: “History Colorado, along with the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Northern Arapaho Tribe, the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma, and the Park Service are by federal legislation recognized as partners in the development and management of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. ... Any exhibit on the tragic events of Novem- ber 29, 1864, which is produced by History Colorado, we fear, will appear to carry the endorsement of all the partners, including the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. Unfortunately, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe was not consulted until late November, just months before the exhibit is scheduled to open.” Then-state historian Bill Convery went to a meeting with the tribes in Billings that month. In his doctoral dissertation, “Colo- rado Stories: Interpreting Colorado History for Public Audiences at the History Colorado Center,” he recalled that the meeting was “bruising,” as “consultants from all three tribes expressed their deep sense of per- sonal pain, insult, and outrage at History Colorado’s interpretation, and requested a formal apology from the lead developer and the institution’s CEO.” They didn’t get it. Instead, exhibit plan- ners made some slight changes to Colli- sion, corrected a few outright mistakes, and scheduled another meeting with the tribes in March 2012, when the Northern Cheyenne asked that the exhibit’s opening be postponed. CALHOUN KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS A new day has dawned with The Sand Creek Massacre: The Betrayal That Changed Cheyenne and Arapaho People Forever. COURTESY HISTORY COLORADO continued on page 10
