This translation is not completely accurate as it was automatically generated by a computer.
Powered by
By Linda Bloom*
12:00 P.M. EST Sept. 28, 2010 | SAND CREEK MASSACRE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, Colo. (UMNS)
Under a cloudless blue sky, Otto Braided Hair turned to the east and prayed for his Cheyenne ancestors.
Behind him, a group of United Methodists had formed a circle on a
ridge above the place where, nearly 150 years ago, troops led by Colonel
John Chivington — a Methodist minister — brutally slaughtered occupants
of a Native American village that was largely composed of women,
children and the elderly.
Standing near the stone marker commemorating the date — Nov. 29-30,
1864 — the church people and native people alike had come to show their
sorrow.
For Otto Braided Hair, the connection is very personal: His
great-grandparents were among those who managed to escape the massacre.
But their survival does not lessen the pain that still makes it
difficult for him to speak of the unthinkable attack against the
Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. At least 165 of the estimated 500 village
occupants died and many others were wounded.
The United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious
Concerns had invited him and other Northern Cheyenne representatives
from their reservation in Lame Deer, Mont., to be a part of its Sept.
22-25 meeting in Denver. The commission is responsible for organizing an
“Act of Repentance” for the 2012 General Conference, the denomination’s
top legislative body, to help heal relationships with indigenous
persons.
To prepare for that task, “it will be necessary for each of us to
listen attentively to the voices of indigenous peoples around the world
and the voices of Native Americans,” the Rev. Stephen J. Sidorak Jr.,
the commission’s top executive, told directors.
‘A crime against humanity’
The Methodist connection to Sand Creek demands such attention. And
Americans need to know about the massacre because it was “a crime
against humanity,” said David Halaas, former chief historian of the
Colorado Historical Society, who has spent 17 years on the historic site
project.
The passage of time has not made the horrors of the attack any less
vivid, particularly for tribal members. “I wish my elders were here to
talk to you, to tell you what they heard from the survivors,” Otto
Braided Hair told the group during an afternoon dialogue session in
Denver.
He was 8 or 9 years old when his father first recounted the story of
Sand Creek to him. When he heard what had happened to the children, “I
remember walking away,” he said. It was difficult to breathe. “I
remember thinking, why, why?”
Braided Hair, his great-grandfather, “heard the voices and the guns”
of the troops as they approached on that cold November morning. He
grabbed a lariat and managed to secure a nearby horse. He placed his
pregnant wife on top of the horse, which blended back into a passing
herd, before managing, somehow, to escape the area himself.
“If you know the history, (the massacre) kicked off about 15, 16
years of warfare — what they call the Plains Indian wars,” his
great-grandson said.
Reginald Killsnight Sr., recalled how he and other children joined
their elders for a showing of “Soldier Blue,” a 1970 Hollywood movie
with Candice Bergen and Peter Strauss with a graphic depiction of the
massacre.
Some of the children did not realize the movie told the story of
their own tribe. After the showing, the elders were silent and the young
men tense with anger. “If there was a white person there, I think he
would have got hurt that night,” he said.
Rising tensions
Tensions between Native Americans and settlers grew after
gold-seeking prospectors and settlers flooded into what became the
Territory of Colorado in 1861. In the spring of 1864, U.S. troops killed
Cheyenne Chief Lean Bear and burned the Cheyenne camps of Crow Chief
and Raccoon.
After the Hungate family was killed on their ranch and their remains
displayed in public in Denver, panic ensued and a new volunteer regiment
of more than 1,000 men was recruited. The Cheyenne and Arapaho were
told to make their way toward Fort Lyon if they wanted peace.
The encampment at Sand Creek was following those orders when it was
surprised by musket and artillery fire on Nov. 29. Chief White Antelope,
wearing a peace medal given to him by President Abraham Lincoln, was
shot down, the historian Halaas said, and the American flag flying over
the Lodge of Chief Black Kettle was ignored. “The solders had been told
before they attacked to take no prisoners,” he added.
Two junior officers who had tried to dissuade Chivington from his
course of action, Capt. Silas Soule and Lt. Joe E. Cramer, ordered their
men to stand down. But the rest of the cavalry attacked with a
vengeance as they pursued the fleeing Native Americans. “The killing
went on for five miles,” Halaas said.
Reginald Killsnight, Sr., David Halaas and Otto Braided Hair
listen during a dialogue about the Sand Creek Massacre.
View in Photo Gallery
What happened at Sand Creek sent a message to all Native Americans,
Halaas said. “Everybody knew Black Kettle had dedicated his life to
peace,” he explained. “If his village could be attacked, anybody could
be attacked.”
Despite the gruesome details that emerged about the mutilation of the
dead, Chivington — who had left his role as a presiding elder in the
Kansas-Nebraska Conference to join the army — was “readmitted on trial”
to the conference in 1868, said Robert Williams, top executive of the
United Methodist Archives on Archives and History.
The vivid letters that Soule and Cramer wrote to the commanding
officer at Fort Lyon about the atrocities and testimony in federal
hearings led Congress to condemn the attack as a massacre the following
year and promise reparations to the survivors.
The reparations have never been paid, but the discovery of those
long-lost letters helped spur final Congressional approval and the Sand
Creek Massacre National Historic Site was established in 2007, said
Alexa Roberts, site superintendent for the National Park Service.
A ‘living landscape’
With current boundaries five miles long and two miles wide, Sand
Creek is a “living landscape” of Native American history. The barren,
windswept site attracted 4,000 visitors last year. “When you go there,
it’s like a beating heart, it resonates,” she added.
A hallmark of the site’s development has been the collaborative
efforts of diverse parties, including tribal representatives, government
entities and historians. “Going forward together has been both a
challenge and a tremendous reward, I think, for everybody,” Roberts
said.
As the bus carrying commission members entered the Sand Creek
Massacre National Historic Site on Sept. 24, coming from the same
direction that Chivington and his men had approached the sleeping Indian
village, Denver Area Bishop Elaine Stanovsky invoked a spirit of
repentance.
“We’re here today remembering a time when people shut your love and grace out and human tragedy occurred,” she prayed.
The Native Americans have found their own ways to purify what is a
sacred site for them. A traditional cloth ceremony has been used, Otto
Braided Hair explained, “to cleanse the ground of all the bloodshed and
killing. We think it worked.”
He welcomed the United Methodist presence at the site because, he
noted, “you come here in a good way. You come here to seek healing.”
In the center of the ceremonial circle, Reginald Killsnight lit a
braid of sweetgrass and waved it gently, dispensing a smell that reminds
him of peace, serenity and prayer.
He thanked the group for joining them. “I think one of the most
important things for all of us, in our own healing, is praying
together,” he said.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
Korean News
About UMC.org
RSS Feed
Press Center
Contact Us