A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek

by Ari Kelman

  33. Quote from Jerome A. Greene and Douglas D. Scott, Finding Sand Creek: History, Archeology, and the 1864 Massacre Site (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), title. See also Linenthal, Sacred Ground, 60, 90, 216; Levinson, Written in Stone, 10, 37; Foote, Shadowed Ground, 5–7, 33–35, 322; Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 63.

  34. Quotes from the raw documentary footage of the opening ceremony found in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC. Italics reflect Bomar’s spoken emphasis during her speech.

  35. Ibid. See also Matthew Mosk, “Brownback Announces Presidential Bid: Republican Senator from Kansas to Make Appeal to Social Conservatives,” Washington Post, January 21, 2007, A-8; and Alexa Roberts interview by author, May 1, 2007, telephone, notes in author’s possession.

  36. Quotes from the raw documentary footage of the opening ceremony found in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC. See also Mike Soraghan, “Massacre Site Plans Stymied,” Denver Post, December 14, 2004, A-1; and “House Silent on Sand Creek,” Denver Post, December 15, 2004, B-6.

  37. Quote from Denver Rocky Mountain News, December 13, 1864. See also Samuel Forster Tappan diary, MSS 617, Colorado Historical Society, Denver, CO; Denver Rocky Mountain News, December 8, 1864; Roberts, “Sand Creek: Tragedy and Symbol,” 458–459.

  38. Virginia Claire Seay, “Pioneers of Freedom: The Story of the Soule Family in Kansas,” Kansas Magazine (1943): 107–115.

  39. Quotes from Gary Leland Roberts and David Fridtjof Halaas, “Written in Blood: The Soule-Cramer Sand Creek Letters,” Colorado Heritage (Winter 2001): 25.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Ibid. See also Silas Soule to unknown, July 21, 1861, Carey Collection; Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, 94–129; Edward E. Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1998), 3–34, 157–192.

  42. Quotes from Roberts and Halaas, “Written in Blood,” 25–26.

  43. Soule to unknown, July 21, 1861, Carey Collection; Soule to Mother, January 8, 1865, Carey Collection; “Report of the Secretary of War,” 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., S. Ex. Doc. 26, 10–11, 13, 16–29; Roberts and Halaas, “Written in Blood,” 25–26; Ronald Walters, American Reformers, 1815–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), 87–99.

  44. Quotes from Roberts and Halaas, “Written in Blood,” 26.

  45. “You and mother …” and “I think …” from Silas Soule to Annie, July 16, 1864, Carey Collection. “We have …” from Silas Soule to Annie, August 15, 1864, Carey Collection. “They are …,” “I think Government …,” and “if that is the case …” from Silas Soule to Annie, October 30, 1864, Carey Collection.

  46. “Present at …,” “friendly,” “not let [his] …,” “little Children …,” and “their brains …” from Silas Soule to Mother, December 18, 1864, Carey Collection. All other quotes from Soule to Mother, January 8, 1865. See also Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, XLI, Pt. 4, 948.

  47. Quotes from “Report of the Secretary of War,” 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., S. Ex. Doc. 26, 8–9.

  48. Ibid., 9–10.

  49. Ibid., 10–13.

  50. Ibid., 16–29.

  51. Ibid., 25–29.

  52. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, U.S. senator, interview by author, September 10, 2003, telephone, tape recording, in author’s possession; James Doyle, Colorado communications director for Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, interview by author, June 10, 2003, Fort Collins, CO, tape recording, in author’s possession; M. E. Sprengelmeyer, “A Career Come Full Circle,” Rocky Mountain News, September 18, 2004, A-25; Herman J. Viola, Ben Nighthorse Campbell: An American Warrior (Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1993), 17–29, 51–54, 74–86, 109, 144–151, 177, 181, 226–231, 304–310.

  53. “World’s most …” from James Doyle interview, June 10, 2003. “Home” from Ben Nighthorse Campbell interview, September 10, 2003.

  54. Quotes from the raw documentary footage of the opening ceremony found in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC. See also Philip J. Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 70–73, 156–167; and Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 74–94.

  55. Quote from Abraham Lincoln, “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg,” in David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition, vol. 1: 1630–1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 429. See also Gary Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 67–82; Gabor S. Boritt, The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 37–41, 106–118, 149–158; “Gettysburg Address (1863),” Our Documents, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=36; John Bodnar, The Good War in American Memory (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 3–4; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2009), 5–10, 71–93; David Blight, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 5–7, 19–24.

  56. Kristin Ann Hass, Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 1–32, 103–126; Jeffrey Karl Oschner, “A Space of Loss,” Journal of Architectural Education 50 (February 1997): 156–171; Karal Ann Marling and Robert Silberman, “The Statue Near the Wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Art of Remembering,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1 (Spring 1987): 4–29; Daphne Berdahl, “Voices at the Wall: Discourses of Self, History, and National Identity at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” History and Memory 6 (Fall–Winter 1994): 88–124; Michael S. Sherry, “Patriotic Orthodoxy and American Decline,” in Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1996), 97–114; Marilyn B. Young, “Dangerous History: Vietnam and the ‘Good War,’ ” in Linenthal and Engelhardt, History Wars, 199–209; Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures: “Science as a Vocation,” “Politics as a Vocation,” ed. David Owen and Tracey B. Strong, trans. Rodney Livingston (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004), 32–27; Linenthal, Sacred Ground, 1; Foote, Shadowed Ground, 333–335; Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 101–131; Blight, Race and Reunion, 204–216.

  57. Quotes from the raw documentary footage of the opening ceremony found in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC. See also Montana Census and Economic Information Center, Montana Department of Labor and Industry Research and Analysis Bureau, Montana Governor’s Office State Tribal Economic Development Commission, Demographic and Economic Information for Northern Cheyenne Reservation (Helena, MT: n.p., 2006), 1–8; and Stephen R. Anderson, Gordon M. Belcourt, Kathryn M. Langwell, “Building Healthy Tribal Nations in Montana and Wyoming through Collaborative Research and Development,” American Journal of Public Health 95, no. 5 (May 2005): 784–789.

  58. Quotes from the raw documentary footage of the opening ceremony found in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC. See also Otto Braided Hair interview, May 11, 2007.

  59. Halaas and Masich, Halfbreed, xii–xiv, 23–25, 39, 59–72, 86–89.

  60. Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 6. “Afraid of …” from Bent to Hyde, June 9, 1905, Bent Manuscripts 54. See also Hyde, Life of George Bent, vii–xiii; Hoxie, A Final Promise, 41–81; Halaas and Masich, Halfbreed, 1–112; L. G. Moses, The Indian Man: A Biography of James Mooney (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 7–31, 71–86, 130–140; Michael Punke, Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2007), 177–204.

  61. “Always thought …” from George Bent to George Hyde, September 22, 1915, Coe Collection. “Give credit …” from Bent to Hyde, January 29, 1913, Coe Collection. All other quotes from Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 3. See also Bent to Hyde, January 19, 1905, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, January 23, 1905, Coe Collection; Ben
t to Hyde, June 4, 1909, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, February 22, 1912, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, November 29, 1912, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, February 19, 1913, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, January 17, 1914, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, October 17, 1916, Coe Collection.

  62. Quotes from Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 3. See also Bent to Hyde, September 26, 1905, Coe Collection.

  63. Quotes from Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 3–4. See also Bent to Hyde, March 6, 1905, Coe Collection.

  64. “Wynkoop told …” and “this was the reason …” from Bent to Hyde, April 30, 1906, Coe Collection. “Told Black Kettle …” from Bent to Hyde, May 14, 1913, Coe Collection. All other quotes from Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 4–6. See also Bent to Hyde, October 15, 1914, Letter 10, Bent Manuscripts 54; Bent to Hyde, March 15, 1905, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, February 28, 1906, Coe Collection.

  65. Quotes from Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 6–7. See also Bent to Hyde, March 15, 1905, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, December 21, 1905, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, April 14, 1906, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, April 25, 1906, Coe Collection.

  66. “2 scalps …” from Bent to Hyde, March 9, 1905, Coe Collection. “The scalps of White Leaf …” from Bent to Hyde, October 12, 1905, Coe Collection. See also Bent to Hyde, May 3, 1906, Coe Collection; and Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 6–7.

  67. “Still stood …” and “most were …” from George Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes,” ed. George Hyde, Frontier: A Magazine of the West 4 (December 1905): 3. See also Bent to Hyde, May 14, 1913, Coe Collection; George Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes,” ed. George Hyde, Frontier: A Magazine of the West 4 (January 1906): 3–6; George Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes,” ed. George Hyde, Frontier: A Magazine of the West 4 (February 1906): 3–7.

  68. Quotes from Bent to Hyde, June 5, 1906, Coe Collection. See also Bent to Hyde, May 16, 1905, Letter 7, Bent Manuscripts 54; Bent to Hyde, May 7, 1906, Coe Collection; Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (December 1905): 4–7; Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (January 1906): 3–6; Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (February 1906): 3–7; Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (March 1906): 3–8.

  69. “I don’t think …” from Bent to Hyde, February 28, 1906, Coe Collection. See also George Bent to George Hyde, January 24, 1906, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, March 6, 1913; Bent to Hyde, April 30, 1913; Bent to Hyde, July 14, 1913, Bent Letters, Western History and Genealogy, Denver Public Library, Denver, CO; Bent to Hyde, January 20, 1915, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, September 1, 1917, Coe Collection.

  70. Quotes from Hyde, Life of George Bent, 149–153.

  71. Ibid., 149–155.

  72. Ibid., 155–163.

  73. Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 6–7; Bent to Hyde, September 26, 1905, Coe Collection; Hyde, Life of George Bent, vii–xiii.

  74. Bent to Hyde, September 26, 1905, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, March 6, 1905, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, March 15, 1905, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, February 28, 1906, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, April 30, 1906, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, May 14, 1913, Coe Collection; Bent to Hyde, October 15, 1914, Coe Collection; Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 3–6; Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (December 1905): 3; Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (January 1906): 3–6; Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (February 1906): 3–7; Hyde, Life of George Bent, 153–158.

  75. Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes” (October 1905): 6; and Hyde, Life of George Bent, 150.

  76. “Whites never get it straight …” from Bent to Hyde, June 9, 1905. See also Donald J. Berthrong, The Cheyenne and Arapaho Ordeal: Reservation and Agency Life in the Indian Territory, 1875–1907 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), 3–44, 122–171, 214–340; Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973), 114–158, 274–288; Hoxie, A Final Promise, 41–81; Donald J. Berthrong, The Southern Cheyennes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 227–381.

  77. George Bird Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes (1915; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), x; Hyde, Life of George Bent, xii–xiii; Halaas and Masich, Halfbreed, 343–349.

  78. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 11–67; Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 46–51, 124–182; Jaques Le Goff, History and Memory, trans. Steven Rendell and Elizabeth Claman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 58–67, 81–100; David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3–33, 185–236, 327–411; Pierre Nora, ed., Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, vol. 1: Conflicts and Divisions, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 1–20; Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 2–7; Michel-Rolph Touillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 3–27, 141–152.

  79. James Sheehan, “What Is German History? Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography,” Journal of Modern History 53 (March 1981): 3–5; Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 52; Wilkinson, Blood Struggle, 249; Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 687.

  2. LOOTERS

  1. “History buffs” from Richard Ellis, chair, Department of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College, interview by author, May 25, 2005, Castle Rock, CO, tape recording, in author’s possession; “Treasure hunters” from David Halaas, director of publications, library, and archives, John Heinz History Center, interview by author, September 26, 2003, Pittsburgh, PA, tape recording, in author’s possession; “Looters” from Susan Collins, Colorado state archeologist, interview by author, September 12, 2003, Denver, CO, tape recording, in author’s possession. See also William Dawson, interview by author, June 18, 2003, Kiowa County, CO, tape recording, in author’s possession.

  2. Quotes from David Halaas interview, September 26, 2003. See also 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), xii–xiv.

  3. “It looks …,” “an archeological rule …,” and “no battle-related …” from Andy Masich to All Interested Sand Creek Site Researchers, Memorandum, December 15, 1993, 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. All other quotes from David Halaas interview, September 26, 2003. See also Ann Bond’s personal notes, “Sand Creek Reconnaissance,” September 1, 1993, in FSCMNHS, now at NPS-WACC; Richard Ellis interview, May 25, 2005.

  4. “Demonstrate public …” and other information about the Colorado State Historical Fund from http://www.coloradohistory-oahp.org/programareas/shf/shfindex.htm. See also Stuart Davis, “A Million before the Millennium: Oral History and the Lottery,” Oral History 28 (Spring 2000): 103–108; David Halaas interview, September 26, 2003; Richard Ellis interview, May 25, 2005; Susan Collins interview, September 12, 2003.

  5. David Halaas interview, September 26, 2003; Richard Ellis interview, May 25, 2005; Stan Hoig, The Sand Creek Massacre (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), vii, 115–127; Gary L. Roberts, “Sand Creek: Tragedy and Symbol” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 1984), 107–119; Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891 (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 63–74, 164–179; Robert M. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848–1865 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 294–317; Elliot West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Gold
seekers, and the Rush to Colorado (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 11–17, 281–293.

  6. Quotes from Richard Ellis interview, May 25, 2005. See also David Halaas interview, September 26, 2003, and Susan Collins interview, September 12, 2003.

  7. Quote from Steve Brady, president, Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Descendants, interview by author, August 29, 2004, Lame Deer, MT, tape recording, in author’s possession. See also Harrison Fletcher, “The Killing Field at Sand Creek: Truth Was the First Casualty,” Westword 21 (May 28–June 3, 1998): 16; Ray Brady, Northern Cheyenne elder, interview by author, August 15, 2003, Lame Deer, MT, tape recording, in author’s possession; Norma Gorneau, member, Northern Cheyenne Tribe Sand Creek Massacre Descendants Committee, interview by author, July 1, 2004, Lame Deer, MT, tape recording, in author’s possession; Mildred Red Cherries, member, Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Massacre Descendants Committee, interview by author, August 13, 2003, Lame Deer, MT, tape recording, in author’s possession.

  8. “Taught the …” from Steve Brady interview, August 29, 2004. “After Sand …” from Laird Cometsevah, chief, Southern Cheyenne Tribe, interview by author, May 12, 2003, Denver, CO, tape recording, in author’s possession.

  9. Steve Brady interview, August 29, 2004; Laird Cometsevah interview, May 12, 2003; Richard Ellis interview, May 25, 2005; David Halaas interview, September 26, 2003.

  10. “Thirty or forty descendants” from Richard Ellis interview, May 25, 2005. “Three white guys …” from Steve Brady, interview by author, September 12, 2003, tape recording, in author’s possession. “We decided …” from Mildred Red Cherries interview, August 13, 2003. See also David Halaas interview, September 26, 2003; and Gail Ridgely, Sand Creek representative, Northern Arapaho Tribe, interview by author, July 29, 2003, Denver, CO, tape recording, in author’s possession.

  11. Douglas Scott, chief archeologist, National Park Service Midwest Archeological Center, interview by author, October 3, 2003, telephone, tape recording, in author’s possession; Douglas D. Scott, “Site Significance and Historical Archaeology—A Scenario and Commentary,” Historical Archaeology 24 (1990): 52–54; Douglas D. Scott, “Oral Tradition and Archaeology: Conflict and Concordance Examples from Two Indian War Sites,” Historical Archaeology 37 (2003): 55–65; Steve Brady interview, September 12, 2003; Laird Cometsevah interview, May 12, 2003; Richard Ellis interview, May 25, 2005.