A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek

by Ari Kelman

  At this writing, the NPS, working with the descendants and the public, still has to interpret the massacre. Jeff Campbell’s theory, by staking out terrain on which conflicting accounts can coexist, may simplify that process–but only if further geomorphological and archeological research supports his hypothesis. But in other ways, the idea that the creek shifted course might complicate the work of memorialization, raising questions about one element of the story—the where of Sand Creek—that John Chivington, Silas Soule, and George Bent initially took for granted; that, late in the twentieth century and early in the twenty-first, became shrouded in mystery; and that may now be known again. After all, if the creek moved in the past, who is to say that it will not move again in the future? Who is to say that even an apparently permanent and ostensibly static feature of Sand Creek’s history is not actually as ephemeral as memory and as open to debate and interpretation as history? And if that is the case, then what of the landscape’s apparent utility as a commemorative canvas, a vehicle for carrying the lessons of the past into the present and the future? That utility, it appears, is predicated on the misapprehension that place is more permanent, more stable, than narrative. Campbell’s theory suggests that perhaps White Antelope, when he sang his death song at Sand Creek, only had it partly right. The earth and mountains may be durable, as the chief suggested while waiting for the Colorado volunteers to cut him down, but not even they will live forever.27

  At the same time, as the United States celebrates the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, it remains unclear where exactly the massacre fits into the national narrative. Ironically, the NPS’s interpretation of Sand Creek will challenge visitors to the site not because federal officials will ask anew whether the violence was a battle or a massacre, but because they have definitively answered that question. Nations rely on origin stories to provide order to their histories and a shared identity for their citizens. The United States boasts two creation narratives: the Revolution and Civil War, tales of birth, death, and rebirth. In popular memory, patriots secured their independence from Great Britain through rebellion, beginning a grand experiment in democracy that changed the world. The Founders, regrettably, also legitimated the institution of slavery, embedding the nation’s original sin and the seeds of its undoing in the Constitution. Collective recollections of the Civil War suggest that conflict was the moment when the United States redeemed itself in the eyes of God by liberating the four million African American slaves then living in the South. Out of a paroxysm of violence and bloodshed the nation was reborn, a resurrection story that fits neatly within Christian narratives of catharsis through suffering. In this way, Americans remember the Civil War as a good war, transfiguring a history of violence into one of virtue, of tragedies into triumphs. Such is the power of memory to smooth the past’s rough edges.28

  Sand Creek, depicted as a massacre at the historic site, will buck the redemptive and reconciliationist currents running through most national memorials, including those recalling the Civil War. The massacre emerged out of corruption and malfeasance, race hatred rather than uplift. Its history indicts characters typically cast as heroes in the American imagination—citizen soldiers, rugged pioneers, Union officials—suggesting a darker vision of the Civil War’s causes, prosecution, and consequences. Westward expansion touched off the war that destroyed slavery, but also another war with the Plains Tribes, a brutal conflict that lasted decades and left behind no simple lessons for federal commemorators hoping to bend public memory to nationalist ends. With Americans still looking to the Civil War as an origin story, a way to understand who they are, the NPS and descendants must contemplate how to interpret an event like Sand Creek, an irredeemable tragedy that casts doubt on the enduring notion that the United States enjoys a special destiny, that it is an exceptional nation among nations, favored by God. The question of whether visitors to the Sand Creek site are ready to broach such difficult topics, to reassess their homeland’s character and fate, remains unsettled.29

  For in the end, this story of memorializing Sand Creek suggests that history and memory are malleable, that even the land, despite its implied promise of permanence, can change, and that the people of the United States are so various that they should not be expected to share a single tale of a common past. Sometimes their stories complement one another; sometimes they clash. Sometimes they intersect; sometimes they diverge. Depending on who tells it, the story of Sand Creek, for instance, suggests that the Civil War midwifed, in President Lincoln’s words, “a new birth of freedom,” but also that it delivered the Indian Wars; that it was a moment of national redemption for some Americans, but of dispossession and subjugation for others. NPS officials and the descendants will never concur on every element of Sand Creek’s interpretation, but they might agree that the historic site should challenge visitors to grapple with competing narratives of U.S. history, to struggle with ironies embedded in the American past. If that happens, then perhaps the massacre will no longer be misplaced in the landscape of national memory.30

  NOTES

  1. A PERFECT MOB

  1. “National Park Service News Release: National Park Service Announces 391st Unit, Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site,” found in uncataloged files of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site (FSCMNHS), currently held by National Park Service, Western Archeological and Conservation Center (NPS-WACC), Tucson, AZ. For population figures and other relevant statistics on the town of Eads and Kiowa County more broadly, see U.S. Census Bureau, “State and County QuickFacts, Kiowa County, Colorado,” http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/08/08061.html.

  2. Except where otherwise noted, details of the opening ceremony, including quotes, have been drawn from raw documentary footage of the event in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC. See also Anthony A. Mestas, “A Nation Pays Tribute,” Pueblo Chieftain, April 29, 2007, in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC; Anthony A. Mestas, “Sand Creek Massacre Site to Be Dedicated Saturday,” Pueblo Chieftain, April 24, 2007, in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC; Robert Weller, “Memorial Opens at Sand Creek Massacre Site,” Associated Press, April 29, 2007, in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC.

  3. Quotes from Abraham Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address,” in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, vol. 1: 1630–1865, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 476. See also Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: Transformations of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1993), 4, 13; Kenneth E. Foote, Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 5–8, 33–35; John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), x–xii.

  4. Edward Tabor Linenthal, Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 1, 60; Michael A. Elliot, Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 4–8, 10, 50; David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal, “Introduction,” in David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal, American Sacred Space (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 12; James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 41; Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History (New York: Penguin, 2008), 2–5.

  5. Quote from Alexa Roberts, superintendent, Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, interview by author, April 29, 2003, Denver, CO, tape recording, in author’s possession. See also David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 203; Edward Tabor Linenthal, The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 94–96; Philip Nobel, Sixteen Acres: Architecture and the Outrageous Struggle for the Future of Ground Zero (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005), 68–70, 81; Elliot, Custerology, 129; Foote, Shadowed Ground, 6; Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 5.

&nbs
p; 6. “Clash of cultures” from Robert M. Utley, A Clash of Cultures: Fort Bowie and the Chiricahua Apaches (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1977), title; and Elliot, Custerology, 135. See also Annie E. Coombes, Visual Culture and Public Memory in Democratic South Africa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 6–17, 19–115, 244–287; Steven Conn, History’s Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 3–32, 116–197; Jonathan Crewe, “Recalling Adamastor: Literature as Cultural Memory in ‘White’ South Africa,” in Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer, eds., Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999), 75–86; Bodnar, Remaking America, 181; Foote, Shadowed Ground, 322, 334; Devon A. Mihesuah, Repatriation Reader: Who Owns Native American Remains? (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 10.

  7. Sanford Levinson, Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 10; David Hurst Thomas, Skull Wars: Kenniwick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity (New York: Basic Books, 2000), xxvii; Charles Wilkinson, Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), xiii, 249; Linenthal, Sacred Ground, 1; Foote, Shadowed Ground, 33; Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 63; Otto Braided Hair, director, Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Office, interview by author, May 11, 2007, telephone, notes in author’s possession.

  8. Raw documentary footage of the opening ceremony found in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC; Alexa Roberts, interview by author, July 30, 2005, telephone, notes in author’s possession; Linenthal, Sacred Ground, 55, 146.

  9. “Nobody has …” from Rod Brown, Kiowa County commissioner, interview by author, June 17, 2003, Eads, CO, tape recording, in author’s possession. “There is …” from Janet Frederick, director, Kiowa County Economic Development Corporation, interview by author, June 17, 2003, Eads, CO, tape recording, in author’s possession. See also Alexa Roberts, interview by author, January 8, 2007, telephone, notes in author’s possession; and U.S. Census Bureau, “State and County QuickFacts, Kiowa County, Colorado.”

  10. Janet Frederick interview, June 17, 2003; U.S. Census Bureau, “State and County QuickFacts, Kiowa County, Colorado”; Kenneth Johnson, “Demographic Trends in Rural and Small Town America,” Reports on Rural America 1, no. 1 (2006): 1, 11.

  11. Quotes from Janet Frederick interview, June 17, 2003.

  12. Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (1954; reprint, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 84–85; Lauren O’Neill Shermer, Karen C. Rose, and Ashley Hoffman, “Perceptions and Credibility: Understanding the Nuances of Eyewitness Testimony,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 27 (May 2011): 183–203; Robert Burkhout, “Eyewitness Testimony,” in Ulric Neisser and Ira E. Hyman Jr., eds., Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts (New York: Worth, 1982), 214–222; Sven-Ake Christianson, “Emotional Stress and Eyewitness Memory: A Critical Review,” Psychological Bulletin 112 (September 1992): 284–309.

  13. Colonel John Chivington to Messrs. Beyers and Dailey, Editors News, November 29, 1864, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900) (hereafter Official Records of the War of the Rebellion), Series I, XLI, Pt. 1, 951; William M. Thayer, Marvels of the New West. A Vivid Portrayal of the Stupendous Marvels in the Vast Wonderland West of the Missouri River. Six Books in One Volume, Comprising Marvels of Nature, Marvels of Race, Marvels of Mining, Marvels of Stock-Raising, and Marvels of Agriculture (Norwich, CT: Henry Hill, 1887), 241–246; Silas Soule to Mother, January 8, 1865, Carey Collection, Box 5, Folder 13, University of Denver Special Collections, Penrose Library, Denver, CO (hereafter Carey Collection); George Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes,” ed. George Hyde, Frontier: A Magazine of the West 4 (October 1905): 5–6; George Bent to George Hyde, June 9, 1905, Letter 10, Bent Manuscripts 54, Colorado Historical Society, Denver, CO (hereafter Bent Manuscripts); George Bent to George Hyde, September 26, 1905, Coe Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT (hereafter Coe Collection); George E. Hyde, Life of George Bent: Written from His Letters, ed. Savoie Lottinville (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), vi–xiv.

  14. Quotes from Colonel John Chivington to Major General Samuel Curtis, November 29, 1864, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, XLI, Pt. 1, 948.

  15. Alvin Josephy Jr., The Civil War in the American West (New York: Random House, 1991), 61–94; Don E. Alberts, Battle of Glorieta: Union Victory in the West (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998), 45–68; David Fridtjof Halaas and Andrew E. Masich, Halfbreed: The Remarkable True Story of George Bent, Caught between the Worlds of the Indian and the White Man (New York: Da Capo Press, 2004), 120–125; Reginald S. Craig, The Fighting Parson: The Biography of Colonel John M. Chivington (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1959), 9–17.

  16. “Bloodless Third” from Report of Lieutenant Colonel Leavitt L. Bowen, Third Colorado Cavalry, November 30, 1864, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, XLI, Pt. 1, 957; and William Breakenridge, Helldorado: Bringing Law to the Mesquite (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), 32. All other quotes from Chivington to Beyers and Dailey, November 29, 1864, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, XLI, Pt. 1, 951–952.

  17. Quotes from Colonel John Chivington to Major General Samuel Curtis, December 16, 1864, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, XLI, Pt. 1, 948–950.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Ibid.

  20. New York Herald, December 26, 1864; Washington Daily Star, December 27, 1864; Rocky Mountain News, January 30, 1864; Congressional Globe, 38th Cong., 2nd Sess., Part 1, 158, 173, 250–256; Major General Samuel Curtis to Colonel Thomas Moonlight, January 13, 1865, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, XLVIII, Pt. 1, 511; Gary Leland Roberts, “Sand Creek: Tragedy and Symbol” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 1984), 464.

  21. Quotes from “Massacre of Cheyenne Indians,” in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, at the Second Session, Thirty-Eighth Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865), 101–102.

  22. Ibid., 103–104.

  23. Ibid., 104.

  24. Ibid., 104–105.

  25. Ibid., 104. See also Chivington to Beyers and Dailey, November 29, 1864, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, XLI, Pt. 1, 951, and Chivington to Curtis, December 16, 1864, 948–950; Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana; or a Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America; to Which is Affixed an Essay on the Variety of Human Species …(Philadelphia: J. Pennington, 1839); Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 82–96; Ann Fabian, The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 79–120; Thomas, Skull Wars, 38–47.

  26. Quotes from “Massacre of Cheyenne Indians,” 104.

  27. Ibid., 106.

  28. Ibid., 106–108; Thayer, Marvels of the New West, 244–245; James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 47–169, 450–453; Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contesting Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 9–49, 89–136, 169–177; Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 248–289; Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 53–60, 107–114.

  29. “Massacre of Cheyenne Indians,” 105–106; Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 12–14; Elliot West, “Reconstructing Race,” Western Historical Quarterly 34 (Spring
2003): 7–26.

  30. Quotes from “Massacre of Cheyenne Indians,” 104–108. See also Chivington to Beyers and Dailey, November 29, 1864, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, XLI, Pt. 1, 951; and Chivington to Curtis, December 16, 1864, 948–950; Thayer, Marvels of the New West, 241–446; Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 41–44; Louis Warren, “Buffalo Bill Meets Dracula: William F. Cody, Bram Stoker, and the Frontiers of Racial Decay,” American Historical Review 107 (October 2002): 1124–1157; Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 203–233.

  31. Quotes from Thayer, Marvels of the New West, 241–246; emphasis added. See also Denver Republican, October 5, 1894; and Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, 57.

  32. Quotes from the raw documentary footage of the opening ceremony found in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC. See also Miles Moffeit, “Profile: Bill Ritter,” Denver Post, August 31, 2006, online edition, http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_4113098.