A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek

by Ari Kelman

  The details of the deal were dramatic. Bill Dawson remembered that negotiations with his anonymous buyer—a man whom rumors later hinted operated a second gaming corporation—were almost complete when Laird Cometsevah stepped in at the eleventh hour. “They [the other buyer] had offered me well over a million dollars,” Dawson claimed. “And I had to give them an answer by five o’clock that same afternoon.” He recalled, “Sometime around four o’clock that day I got a telephone call from Laird, who said, ‘Don’t do anything. I’ve got the place sold for you.’ ” Dawson asked, “What do you mean?” Cometsevah elaborated: “We’ve got a guy that wants to buy your place at your price.” Dawson, facing an inflexible deadline from his other buyer, explained to his friend, “You’ve got to be right about this, Laird.” Cometsevah replied, “Trust me.” Dawson did and waited to hear from Jim Druck. When Druck assured him that at the end of the three-party exchange he proposed, the South Bend, the massacre site marked on George Bent’s maps, would belong to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, Dawson decided that he had found the right buyer.31

  Jim Druck did not look the part of the stereotypical casino owner. He did not wear sharkskin suits, crocodile shoes, or silk shirts open to the navel. He did not drive around in stretch limousines, bark orders at lackeys, or surround himself with hired muscle. Instead, the squat, bright-eyed Druck favored jeans and T-shirts, motorcycles, and even tones when he spoke. His thoughts on hiring goons remained unknown. Most of the time, he looked like what he was: a Jewish lawyer transplanted from the Midwest to the mountains of Colorado, where he made what he described as “a good living in the gaming industry.” Druck became involved with Sand Creek when, while in Oklahoma on business, he got wind that the Dawson property was for sale. As he worked to extend his management contract with the Cheyennes and Arapahos, one of his subordinates brought him a newspaper report on the Sand Creek stalemate. Years earlier, Druck had purchased a parcel of land for the tribes, which had then lengthened his contract in return. He hoped to do the same thing with the Dawson property. Druck broached the idea with the tribes’ business committee, whose members he recalled were “panicking” because Dawson had a deal brewing with another buyer. “We weren’t going to play poker with that,” Druck remembered. He drew up a letter of intent with the committee, clarifying the deal: Bill Dawson would receive $1.5 million; the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes would extend their casino management agreement with Southwest Entertainment; and they would receive the Dawson ranch in return. Druck scheduled a signing ceremony for April 27 at his Cripple Creek, Colorado, casino to celebrate the deal.32

  The sale initially looked like a “win-win” for all parties involved, a case of profit motive and private enterprise walking in lockstep with the politics of public memory. The Denver press, turning the page on one of the most gruesome chapters of the region’s past, ran headlines like “Sand Creek Healing Can Begin” over sunny articles suggesting, “thanks to Southwest Entertainment’s philanthropy, modern Colorado finally may get on the right side of history.” Other stories featured the descendants, including Joe Big Medicine, who said that he finally had done something for his great-grandfather, one of Chivington’s victims. Steve Brady justified the cost of the Dawson ranch by comparing the Sand Creek site to other hallowed national ruins: “If Ground Zero or the Murrah Building [the federal office building in Oklahoma City leveled in 1995 by domestic terrorists] were put on the auction block, people would pay any price.” Robert Tabor, chairman of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Business Committee, suggested that acquiring the Sand Creek site would allow the tribes to maintain their traditional culture while carving out space for themselves within the national narrative. “The Cheyenne and Arapaho are doing this to preserve our history,” he noted, “and to remind the government that this should never happen again. We do this to teach our children that this was not a battlefield as some would like to claim, it was a massacre site where our elders, women and children were killed.” Tabor concluded, “Our people did not fight a battle, they were murdered and it should be remembered as such.”33

  Bill Dawson, for his part, had achieved the outcome he had long sought. He had sold his land for his price. He had also managed a neat trick: looking benevolent while cashing out. He appeared to have done both well and good. A decade earlier, such a turn of events would have been unthinkable. At the time, a belligerent Dawson still claimed that Sand Creek was a battle, insisting that any other interpretation amounted to politically correct pandering. Then, even after his views on the subject evolved, dealing with the public on his ranch embittered him. After menacing passersby and sightseers on his land, allegedly brandishing weapons in defense of his property rights, Dawson languished for a night in the Kiowa County jail, his reputation in tatters, his relationship with his hometown forever sundered. Finally, a U.S. senator and a venerated Cheyenne chief were lauding him as a “dedicated steward of a sacred site” and “a friend of the Cheyenne people.” Dawson planned to leave Eads for his new home, Colorado Springs, where he and his wife would live comfortably, close enough to the Sand Creek site to visit for major events but far enough away to sleep well at night.34

  Jim Druck also got the deal he wanted. And as he tallied his future earnings, he played the role of the philanthropist. Druck readily admitted that swapping the Dawson property for considerations in his negotiations with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes had been a savvy financial transaction. But he also suggested that, because of his religion and family history, he could empathize with the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples’ historical suffering. He appealed to observers fascinated by the so-called Greatest Generation, revealing that his father’s service in World War II had recently prompted him to make a pilgrimage to Dachau, one of the Nazis’ most notorious death camps. Druck noted links between failed efforts to exterminate Europe’s Jews and North America’s indigenous peoples. Recalling a visit to the massacre site that he had made with several of the descendants, he explained: “At Sand Creek, I could see that they were feeling the same things that I felt at Dachau.… I could see in their eyes, I could see in their body language, what they were feeling. It’s crushing. You can’t talk. You can’t say anything.” Purchasing Bill Dawson’s ranch, in this telling, had been much more than just a calculated business decision.35

  By contrast, NPS personnel were skeptical about potential fallout from Druck’s acquisition of Dawson’s land. Alexa Roberts cheered the news that the property had changed hands. It seemed that the historic site might open sooner than she had previously hoped it would. But she worried that the extraordinary price tag would generate unrealistic expectations among other local proprietors, making it harder for the NPS to purchase more land. “We knew we’d just have to live with the consequences of the deal,” she said. Initially, the NPS had calculated that acquiring property for the site would cost approximately $2 million. The NPS admitted in the wake of the Druck deal that “the sufficiency of that estimate is now questionable, considering the sale of the Dawson property for an amount far in excess of the appraisal approved by the Service.” Surveying the changed real estate landscape in Kiowa County, Senator Campbell’s aide, James Doyle, cringed: “When Jim Druck appeared on the scene, everybody understood that would be great for Bill Dawson, but we also understood that it was really going to complicate any future negotiations with landowners down there.” Likely referring to Chuck and Sheri Bowen, Doyle noted, “Now we have people saying, ‘If Dawson’s property is worth X, my property, which has more artifacts on it, has to be worth Y.’ ” In short, “Mr. Druck kind of upset the apple cart in a way nobody anticipated.” Nobody, that is, except Bill Dawson.36

  As for Kiowa County residents, the specter of a casino in their backyard loomed over the sale of the Dawson ranch. Among stereotypes of the modern Indian—at one with nature, a pugnacious drunk, a stoic font of wisdom—the sharp dealer figures prominently in the American imagination. With a small number of tribes raking in huge sums from gaming ventures, there were people in Eads who wonde
red if their town would soon be illuminated by neon lights. Rod Brown recalled, “The first thing that came up around here when Mr. Druck bought the Dawson property was, ‘Well, now we’re going to have casinos.’ ” James Doyle scoffed at such concerns, saying, “There are more cattle than people in Kiowa County.” He wondered if “the cows are going to gamble.” But then Doyle admitted that although it was not “a viable option economically,” he supposed that “a casino could be a legal option.” Some people in Eads were not reassured. In addition to coping with tens of thousands of newcomers tramping through town annually and sacrificing some control over their local history and landscape, they might have to confront big-city vice as well.37

  Or perhaps they would not have to do any of those things. The Druck deal generated so much controversy in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes that its completion began to seem uncertain. Jim Druck had planned to own the Dawson ranch for “less than five minutes,” just long enough to sign documents extending his management contract before handing the deed over to Robert Tabor. But when it came time to convey the land to the tribes, Tabor balked. It turned out that he did not have the votes necessary to complete the deal. Druck was stunned. Although he had worried that things were moving quickly—he had asked members of the business committee, “Are we going too fast?”—Tabor had reassured him that there would be no problems at the back end of the transaction. Now the casino magnate owned the Sand Creek site outright. He was not happy about it. “I didn’t want to be responsible for that,” he remembered. “It’s far too valuable a historic asset for me. And that’s not what I signed on to do.” Bill Dawson shrugged as he recalled Druck’s discomfort at the time: “Mr. Druck paid me a million and a half dollars. And he ended up with something he didn’t quite know what to do with. He had a ranch in eastern Colorado and didn’t own a cow. And he couldn’t swap the damn thing to the Indians either. They were doing the whole deal on Indian time.”38

  The holdup actually stemmed from more prosaic issues than allegedly indigenous conceptions of time: tribal politics. Reports suggested that Robert Tabor had circumvented recalcitrant members of the business committee. Vera Franklin, one such committee member, responded to Tabor’s tactics in an open letter. “You have exceeded your authority by acting outside the parameters of your position as chairman,” she wrote, “and this constitutes misconduct.” Franklin suggested that the issue should be brought before the entire tribe. Tabor replied that the business committee had the authority to handle the matter and insisted that Jim Druck had “donated the land to the tribes without conditions.” Druck himself made no such assertions. Instead, he began lobbying members of the business committee directly, demanding that they make good on their part of the deal he had struck with them. As spring 2002 turned into summer and then fall, the descendants, the people of Kiowa County, Jim Druck, and key personnel within the NPS could only wait and hope for a quick resolution.39

  In the meantime, other efforts to shift collective memory of the massacre finally came to fruition. On November 29, 2002, a crowd of Sand Creek descendants mingled with local dignitaries on the Colorado capitol steps in Denver. The crowd waited for the start of a ceremony rededicating the state’s Civil War memorial. The statue, erected in 1909, included on its base a plaque listing all of the “battles” in which Coloradans had fought during the war. Sand Creek stood among them, a reminder that Colorado officially recalled the tragedy as a triumph. In 1998, a state senator named Robert Martinez sponsored a bill to remove Sand Creek from the bronzed catalog of battles. But in fall 1999, due to the efforts of David Halaas and the descendants, the legislature reconsidered. Senator Martinez wrote a second bill, reiterating, “Sand Creek was not the site of a battle, but rather was the site of a massacre.” And yet, “instead of removing the words [Sand Creek] from the Civil War monument, an interpretative exhibit [would] be designed and placed near” it. A new marker would be cast, explaining the “historic significance of the Sand Creek massacre to Colorado and the United States.” The state would reinterpret the offending passage of the text rather than erase it.40

  It would not be easy. Crafting a pithy explanation of the massacre’s importance, for state and nation, that would satisfy both observers at the Colorado capitol and also the descendants would require a deft touch. Further complicating matters, the work had to be done as a joint project of the state legislature and the Colorado Historical Society. Plus, David Halaas had taken a new job, leaving his replacement at the Historical Society, Modupe Lobode, in charge of the Civil War memorial. Starting early in 2002, Lobode began working on new text. By late June of that year, she had a preliminary draft ready to share at a meeting of the legislature’s Capitol Building Advisory Committee. That body agreed to consider the text before meeting again in August. After receiving more input, Lobode produced a penultimate draft, approved on October 2, 2002. “An interpretive bronze plaque” would be “permanently installed at the base of the Civil War monument to clarify that Sand Creek is considered the site of a massacre and not a Civil War battle.” The new marker would be unveiled less than two months later, on the massacre’s anniversary.41

  Unfortunately, without David Halaas overseeing the reinterpretation of the memorial and acting as liaison to the tribes, the descendants had not been invited to participate in the project. In late October, Otto Braided Hair, director of the Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek office, explained in a letter to the Capitol Building Advisory Committee “that he was very disappointed his people were not consulted regarding the content of the plaque text.” He offered suggestions for substantive changes before noting that Joe Big Medicine—who, along with Laird Cometsevah, served as a Sand Creek representative for the Southern Cheyenne tribe—would need to do the same. Steve Tammeus, the legislative staffer overseeing the project, assured Braided Hair that he “would consider” the descendants’ input. Tammeus told Modupe Lobode to “call the foundry and ask them to hold the plaque for final revisions” and to stay in contact with Braided Hair and Big Medicine in the weeks leading to the ceremony.42

  On November 29, having just completed a healing run from the massacre site to the capitol steps in Denver, Otto Braided Hair led the Northern Cheyenne Singers in a version of White Antelope’s death song. Gazing west toward the foothills of the Rockies, dusted with early snow, Robert Tabor remarked: “I look at the mountains today and I wonder what the Cheyenne and Arapaho were thinking 138 years ago.” Considering all that had happened since, he issued a challenge: “Our people are still here.” As drumbeats reverberated across Civic Center Park, Steve Johnson, chair of the Capitol Building Advisory Committee, explained the decision to update the memorial, noting, “History is not a static thing.” Other local officials followed Johnson before several descendants shared their massacre stories. Laird Cometsevah detailed the atrocities committed by Chivington’s men. Eugene Black Bear Jr. made a plea for empathy, suggesting that for Cheyenne and Arapaho people, the massacre “was akin to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.” The crowd then turned to Bob Martinez, who stood by the memorial. The descendants had shrouded the new plaque with braided sweet grass. Members of the Southern and Northern Cheyenne tribes sang an honor song after Martinez unveiled the stele. Onlookers clustered around, contemplating the State of Colorado’s new official memory of Sand Creek.43

  The text, for the most part, focused attention on questions of memorialization rather than on the massacre itself. “The controversy surrounding the Civil War Monument,” Modupe Lobode begins, “has become a symbol of Coloradans’ struggle to understand and take responsibility for our past.” The discussion of Sand Creek remained somewhat ambiguous, reflecting ongoing uncertainties in the historical and archeological record. The number of Chivington’s victims, for example, stood at “about 160.” The violence had played out “about 180 miles southeast of here.” By contrast, on the key point, how the bloodshed should be remembered, Lobode took a clear position: Sand Creek had been a massacre. “Colorado’s First and Third Cavalry,” she writes,
“commanded by Colonel John Chivington, attacked a peaceful camp of Cheyennes and Arapahos on the banks of Sand Creek,” adding, “Though some civilian and military personnel immediately denounced the attack as a massacre, others claimed the village was a legitimate target.” And despite the fact that “this Civil War Monument … was erected on July 24, 1909, to honor all Colorado soldiers who had fought in battles of the Civil War in Colorado and elsewhere by designating Sand Creek a battle, the monument’s designers mischaracterized the actual events. Protests led by Native Americans and others throughout the twentieth century have since led to the widespread recognition of the tragedy as the Sand Creek Massacre.”44

  A revised plaque placed in 2002 at the Colorado Civil War Memorial, Denver. This plaque reinterprets the memorial by suggesting that “the controversy surrounding this Civil War monument has become a symbol of Coloradans’ struggle to understand and take responsibility for our past.” (Photo by author.)