But now an estimated 230 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 finally found it far away from Colorado, on what became the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana, 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 fliers for the 100-day volunteer cavalry posted that August — back to Denver, where their trophies were displayed at the Denver Theater’s holiday show.
The celebration didn't last long: Both the U.S. Army and Congress launched investigations into the incident; even as the bloody Civil War was still playing out, Congress determined that the action had indeed been a massacre. Evans was forced to resign his post in disgrace. And there was one more death to come: Captain Silas Soule, who refused to participate in the killings and reported the horrors of what had happened to his former superior, Major George "Ned" Wynkoop, was assassinated on the streets of Denver in April 1865.
Over the decades, the story of Sand Creek largely disappeared from Colorado history lessons, until Congress approved creating the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site at the killing fields by Eads in 2000. In 2012, the brand-new History Colorado Center opened with Collision, an exhibit that purported to tell the true story of Sand Creek. But after Arapaho and Cheyenne descendants complained that not only was the display inaccurate and insulting, but that History Colorado had not followed congressional guidelines requiring consultations with the tribes, the exhibit came down. History Colorado spent nearly a decade talking with the tribes and creating a replacement, which debuted in November 2022.
Governor John Hickenlooper apologized to the descendants of the Sand Creek Massacre on the 150th anniversary, in 2014.
Brandon Marshall
"This has been too long in coming," he said. "On behalf of the State of Colorado, I want to apologize."
Unlike many Coloradans, Hickenlooper had long been aware of what had transpired at Sand Creek. "When we first looked at what to name our brewpub on Wynkoop Street, we saw all this connection to this horrible tragedy," he recalls. "We told the story on our menus. It was a part of history people have too long ignored."
That was back in 1987, when Hickenlooper was an unemployed geologist who was about to open Denver's first brewpub in LoDo. After reading Soule's letters and learning about Wynkoop's work with the tribes, he and his partners went with Wynkoop Brewing Co. Hickenlooper went on to become mayor, then governor.
Before he issued the apology, Hickenlooper reached out to Colorado's other living governors. After all, it had been a territorial governor, Evans, "who went ahead and empowered what led to the massacre," Hickenlooper recalls today.
"They all thought it was a good idea. We felt as a group that we were actually making the state stronger by making it possible to face the worst parts of our history."
Governor Dick Lamm, who passed away six years later, reminded him of the power of two simple words: "I'm sorry." When Hickenlooper repeated those words at the Capitol, many in the audience wept.
The state had come a long way from Thanksgiving 1988, when then-Colorado Lieutenant Governor Mike Callihan hosted a feast for local Native Americans in a Mayflower moving van parked at the Capitol. But there is still a long way to go.
History Colorado, which debuted a replacement exhibit, The Sand Creek Massacre: The Betrayal That Changed Cheyenne and Arapaho People Forever, in November 2022, opened early today, the 160th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre, so that people could view the display in silent contemplation. And at 6 p.m. this evening, there will a Sand Creek Massacre Candlelight Vigil on the west steps of the Colorado Capitol.
Nothing lives forever...only the earth and the mountains.
