English: Of the over four hundred named areas of the National Park System, only this one has the word “Mas-sacre” in its name.

In 1851, the U.S. Government reached out to the Great Plains tribes and asked them what they con-sidered to be their land. The answer that came back from the Cheyenne and Arapaho (and others) was that the land from the North Platte to the Arkansas rivers, and from the Rocky Mountains to present-day Kansas was their property. Encompassing about 75,000 square miles, that large parcel was agreed to be recognized by the government. The U.S. would build forts throughout the territory to ensure that settlers didn’t interfere, and stated that the Indian tribes would receive payment of $15,000 per year, payable in horses, guns, and food. In exchange, the Indian tribes would ensure safe passage for settlers on their way through to California. This was called the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, or the Horse Creek Treaty. Like every other treaty, it was intended to last forever, but in this case, the treaty would only be honored for less than ten years, mostly because of the discovery of gold in Cherry Creek in 1858. By 1859, gold had been discovered elsewhere in Colorado as well, leading to the ingress of over a hundred thousand people into the region.

In 1861, a new treaty was drawn up, taking ninety percent of the previously agreed-to land, and doubling the annuity payments to $30,000. There would be education, building of roads, and additional logistics support. Six Cheyenne and four Arapaho chiefs thought this was a good idea, as the area had been subject to drought and the exodus of buffalo, making it not so attractive to their lifestyle. With this and the knowledge that their survival also depended on not going to war, those ten chiefs signed the 1861 Treaty of Fort Wise. As part of the treaty, they agreed to settle and become farmers. The issue here was that there were forty-eight chiefs in the Cheyenne tribe, and they ruled by consensus, not by decree. The ten chiefs had not received approval from the rest of the council to sign, so the council deemed the treaty invalid. Of course, this wouldn’t matter to Congress - they saw a treaty with signatures, and that was all that mattered.

1861 also brought the beginning of the Civil War, causing Congress to have little or no time to deal with a treaty drawn up in what wasn’t even a state, and agreed-to payments were ignored. This forced the communities of the ten signatory chiefs to join the remaining thirty-eight chiefs in abandoning their reservations. With no support from Congress or the U.S. Army, they had no choice but to go back to their original semi-Nomadic hunting lifestyle, coming into direct conflict with settlers, and attacks became inevitable.

Part of the culture of the Plains Indians involves raiding competing tribes in the Spring for their horses, partly as a way to replenish their herd, and partly as a way for young warriors to gain experience and credibility in their own tribe. Indeed, no chief could become a man of peace until he had experience in battle, and the warrior factions of the established tribes were the only real way to do that. White settlers, by virtue of their presence, were now involved in these tribal customs, knowingly or not.

In one example, five braves raid a ranch on the Arkansas River looking for horses. Though they’re not really interested in killing, when a ranch hand gets in the way, he’s killed, and his body left behind. News travelled slowly back then, with the story morphing into something much more threatening, and by the time news got back to Denver, the incident turned into fifty Indians raping the women, stealing children, and killing every ranch hand. There are even accounts of some of the alleged victims showing up to discover the story of their own killing.

Adding to the fear was the fact that the already aggressive Cheyenne and Arapaho had signed an alliance with the Confederacy to fight in the Civil War. Settlers were afraid that, at any moment, bands of Indians would show up behind supplied cannon and torch to burn Denver to the ground. During this time, the Cheyenne and Arapaho are actually at their weakest point, losing both population and livable land. Buffalo are becoming scarce. The spark that would finally ignite the fire came in May of 1864, Chief Lean Bear (a signatory of the 1861 treaty) is killed by U.S. troops in western Kansas.

Bull Bear, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier and Lean Bear’s brother, retaliates for the murder by launching a series of raids. The Hungate family is the unfortunate subject of one of these raids, and after their burial, their bodies were exhumed and put on display in Denver to foment public opinion and paranoia. The 1864 Indian War begins. A peace envoy is sent to Fort Lyon, just to the west of Lamar, for a prisoner exchange. There were no current Indian prisoners, but the idea was still valid - to begin peace talks. Despite orders to never allow Indians into the fort, Major Wynkoop allows them in, and agrees to follow Bull Bear. Despite his established disdain for the Indians, Wynkoop would later describe the incident as being “in the presence of superior beings.”

Because Wynkoop doesn’t have the authority to negotiate on his own, he arranges for seven chiefs to travel to Camp Weld, near Denver, which is the headquarters of the Colorado Military District. Among the people they’ll meet with are Governor John Evans and Colonel John Chivington, Wynkoop’s regimental commander and head of the Colorado Military District. Both Evans and Chivington refuse to accept re-sponsibility for peace talks, referring the chiefs back to Wynkoop, who returns to Fort Lyon with a new mindset of assisting the tribes in their survival. Within a month, there are six hundred Arapaho camping just outside the fort, and six hundred Cheyenne living in the valley at Sand Creek.

In November of 1864, there’s a change of command, creating the District of the Upper Arkansas under Major Henning instead of Chivington. Henning has Wynkoop reassigned, and Major Scott Anthony re-places him. Anthony opts to hold the same course as Wynkoop until further notice, other than telling the Arapaho they must leave their camp outside the fort. He tells the Cheyenne to stay where they are. A few of the Arapaho come to the Cheyenne camp at this location.

What none of these parties knew was that Chivington was already on the move. On November 28th, he arrives in Fort Lyon with five hundred men, and takes command of every available man in the fort as well. Several fort officers object, but to no avail. Six hundred and seventy-five cavalry men and four Howitzer cannon leave the fort, travel forty miles overnight, and arrive at Sand Creek in the morning. Chivington orders his men to attack. Chief Black Kettle raises an American flag and a white flag of truce, to signal their peaceful intent, but it has no effect.

Some soldiers see that a massacre is beginning, and as many as 120 men never fire a shot. One of the Howitzer crews may have even deliberately sabotaged their cannon. That still leaves five hundred and fifty soldiers ready to spend the next nine hours running down every villager they can find, some for as far as ten miles. The soldiers stay for two days, mutilating bodies and taking scalps, noses, fingers, or other body parts as souvenirs. A few prisoners were taken, but they were killed. Upon the exodus of the soldiers, the village is burned.

Chivington writes his reports while still on scene, and takes his story to Denver. Letters written for deliv-ery to Major Wynkoop, however, were to tell a quite different story. Wynkoop circulates these letters to everyone he can, including Ulysses S. Grant, who immediately realizes that this could have been nothing other than a massacre. Three federal investigations, one by the Army, and two by Congress, conclude the same thing.

As many as fourteen of the thirty-three chiefs were killed, and those who survive are no longer peace chiefs, beginning a Winter campaign with the Lakota against the territory. These raids would end in 1865 with the Treaty of the Arkansas, where the U.S. Government admits that the incident was a massacre, ex-changing current lands for a reservation in Kansas, and promising reparations for the survivors.

Those reparations were never paid.

The reservation was never delivered.

Chivington remained a hero to certain factions of Colorado citizens through the 1950s, even having a town nearby named after him. John Evans would later found the Colorado Pacific Railroad, as well as what would eventually become the University of Denver. Mount Evans was named after him.

Nothing has been named after any of the Cheyenne chiefs or villagers involved.