Thank you very much for that kind introduction and thank you for all your patience in advance. I woke up this morning quite nervous, more usually more nervous than i usually am when i am going to be giving a talk. I noticed that a number of your teachers. Is that right . Thank you. I appreciate that. I will just look at kevin. Kevin is a teacher, in addition to blogging. To being insed front of unruly crowds and you may have some experience with a particularly nerveracking speaking engagement. Where youre not quite sure if the subject matter of your talk fits with the events at hand, and then you learn, i dont know, maybe that cspan is going to broadcast your event live because Live Television still happens, apparently. But if you have done any public speaking, you also know that moment when a sense of real calm settles over you. I know that pete does that because i have watched him speak beautifully in the last couple of days. I just want you to know that that is not happening to me right now. ,nd so, without further ado approximately 700 troops from the first and third colorado regiment attacked and arapahoe and cheyenne encampment nestled in a bend of sand creek in Southeastern Colorado territory. Who 900 native people believed they had recently made peace with wide authorities fled up the dry creek bed that morning. The onslaught left somewhere between 150 and may be as many as 225 of them dead. The overwhelming majority of them were women, children, or the elderly. The surviving troops disgraced themselves by combing the field for what one of them called trophies, scalps, fingers, and the genitalia of their victims. Then burn to the village before returning to denver, colorado, where they greeted as heroes. In the weeks after, chin and his men displayed their plunder at a downtown theater. Sand creeky of the massacre National Historic site ceremony andts memorial service. Colorados governor at the time, members of congress, leaders of four native american tribes, park politicians and Service Officials all shared their views of what the Historic Site might accomplish in the coming years. The speakers for the most part struck an optimistic goes. Pose. Said, honored victims, long deferred healing the tribes, and a blueprint for cooperation between native americans and federal authorities. They said a sacred site is situated in an appropriate place could heal a rift between cultures. Most of you know this, but memorials are always shaped by politics. Reflectrary concerns that. This is especially true of National Historic sites. Federal officials have long viewed commemoration as a kind of patriotic all to me, as a way of conjuring unity from divisiveness by appealing to shared perceptions of the past. Good as a getss for civil war content. Im kidding. President example, lincolns first inaugural address. The president suggested that if americans would pay heed to open court the mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hard stone across this land, those courts would once again swell the force of the union. Sites around the United States, sentiments like president lincolns, sentiments that have been an abiding faith of the nationalizing power of public memory are carved into stone. These monuments are supposed to serve the nations interest by linking together its peoples and legitimating federal authority. Out of common memories, the americans have and will continue to forge common identities. Memories of sand creek, speakers at the Opening Ceremony suggested, would play this role, allowing visitors to the site to heal deep weapons. The justification for collective remembrance in the United States in recent years, from Oklahoma City to the 9 11 memorial in lower manhattan, has often rested on a similar premise. The idea is that these memorials will comfort stricken communities and a grieving nation. The sand creek site was going to be the first unit in the National Park system to label an event in which federal troops participated in a massacre. Visitors would supposedly be able to transcend their own prejudice. This was predicated on the idea that memorials allow people to heal. This vision diffused most of the speeches early in the ceremony. As some of you may know or already have a sense, sand creek is an unlikely source for these types of utopian sentiments. Those ofnting voices, the native people especially, who had participated in a memorialization process, rejected what they saw as a hollow offer of painless reconciliation. These people feared that the sand creek memorial might the day stalking horse for the federal governments longstanding effort to strip tribal peoples of their distinctive identities. Rather than excepting the site as a symbol of federal power, they displayed the as anal is in amblin emblem of tribal persistence and determination. Protested the memorial because the government was easternr on colorados plains, especially when it insinuated itself in local land disputes, because of charges of Political Correctness hovering over what marilyn musgrave, pictured here, called gratuitous revisionism, go and because the gnawing sense that revisionism, and because of the gnawing sense that the word massacre in guided the u. S. Army. The felt that a memorial questions the militarys rectitude flirted with antiamericanism. I am going to suggest that the in 2007 echoed a century and a half of memory filled with thorny questions. First of all, who was culpable for the bloodshed at thorne at sand creek . The relationship between politics and violence on the american borderlands , and also on the process of continental expansion and the two wars, the plains wars and indian wars spawned by that process. When the sand creek site sponsors try to answer these questions, they learned that the a historyemained front in an ongoing cultural war. Elective memory could rip scabs off just as easily as heal them. Within the confines of a Pluralistic Society like the United States, the case of sand creek proved unusually complicated because competing stories haunted the memorial process. The first of those stories along to a methodist minister named john shillington. Chivington saw creek as ae at sand noble part of preserving the union. He used the gallons of blood to depict a masterstroke. In 1864, with cheyenne and arapahoe corpses still pooling to his he bragged superiors that his men had attacked an Indian Village bristling with 1000 warriors. He already at that time began a process of exaggerating the accomplishments of his troops. He went on to say that his men had killed several chiefs and hundreds of their followers. He would later increase that later to 500 and lad 700. He justified the attack by pointing to ask he said to deprivations he said the men had whipped savages and guilty of desecrating bodies. The remainder of his life, he said that sand creek was a glorious battle. Argument in large measure by pointing to the contextd in a civil war and pointing to the settlers remains his men had recovered there. He testified to federal investigators looking into sand creek that rebel emissaries were sent among the indians to incite them. Thathe was saying was white coloradans were facing peril, that the union was facing peril from the indians his men had killed at sand creek. He went on to point to the montana, to cherokee choosing to fight with the consider seeing with the confederacy. John 10 made his enemies not just of white settlers but of the union more broadly. The bloodshed became in triumph, not just in the indian wars, but also in the civil war. Finally in 1883 at the end of his life, John Shivington spoke publicly for the last time and addressed the colorado Heritage Organization at its annual banquet. He remained very popular in colorado until he died. He addressed this Heritage Organization and concluded his i stand by sand creek. Sole named captain silas did not. Before the massacre, he lived in bleeding, kansas where as an ally of john brown, he earned a reputation as an abolitionist jayhawker. He refused to commit the troops under him to the fight its an creek and wrote to a friend of his later. He insisted the slaughter at sand creek has sullied the honorable fight for the union and also the process of settling the west and that native and not white bodies had been desecrated their. A world ofed civilized canyons and savage whites and visited the dead. The bodies of men, women, and children, he said, have all been hacked apart. And he said that he would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there. When he testified to federal exam investigators look in 18 625, he recounted how the previous summer he arranged a parlay in Denver Colorado between a group of peace chiefs including black kettle and also governor john evans. And also governor john evans and colonel John Shivington. Shivington said if they wanted peace, they must commit to the post. He was talking about fort lyon and colorado. They must subject themselves to military law. The cheyennes and arapahoes complied and he explained that black kettles people as a result of that had believed before sand creek that they were under the protection of federal troops. Soules story about sand creek took on added residence on april 20 3, 1860 five, soldier from the Second Colorado cavalry murdered him in the streets of denver. Here with president lincoln having been assassinated a week earlier and soules death spawned a number of conspiracy theories including the kernel shivington had paid a subordinate to have them silenced. For some observers, soules members of sand creek became the unimpeachable recollections of a martyr, good man who had been killed for stand by his principles and having the courage to speak the truth to power. A federal official looking into isd creek wrote the barber in the slavery has come unaided assassination of mr. Lincoln. The barbarism of centrica is commented in the assassination of captain soule, this was a statement that foreshadowed some abolitionists decision to gravitate toward the Indian Reform Movement in the years after the passage of the 13th amendment. Three federal investigations eventually determined that sand creek had been a bad act and one of them call that a massacre. And othersgton refused to accept those findings. Because sand creek are presented and unsettled chapter in the regions history, the fight over its memory continued for years after. Hunt79, author Helen Jackson embraced the cause of unity death of indian reform. Letters to newspapers around the United States, she drew on silas soules recollections of sand creek and use the massacre as a cudgel. Creek hads at sand been peaceful and guarantee protection by federal authorities andshivingtons troops had desecrated the dead. Her charges rankled william byers, the editor of the Rocky Mountain news in 18 624. He had dismissed claims that sand creek had been a massacre. 1879, he ignored the ongoing indian wars. He replied to jackson that sand creek had pacified the plane strives tribes rather than spurring them to buy pretty said jackson was originally from new and couldd a woman not possibly understand the violence at sand creek. Fetepossessed ef sensibilities out of place in a roughandtumble west. Helen hunt jackson gave as good as she got. She rebutted his sexism and regionalism with patriotic nationalism. The bloodshed after sand creek, she noted, occupied thousands of federal troops who otherwise might better have spent their time fighting confederates. Been aeek had not just massacre, have also detracted from the union war effort. As jackson engaged in this print war with byers, she worked on the book about the nations history of mistreating its indigenous peoples. It was published in 1881 and argue that only by overhauling federal indian policy could the United States be redeemed in the eyes of god. Doc or and the custer massacre just over, some officials in the department of the interior were primed to embrace helen hunt jacksons calls for reform. Even as the climate surrounding federal tribal relations was shifting, shivingtons perspective still had adherents in the west including whether including editors at another newspaper. Infuriated by the sentiments, george bent, son of a borderlands trade tycoon named william bent, his cheyenne wife, weighed in on the history of sand creek. George bent shown here with magpie his wife was a victim and survivor of the ordeal. Wounded at sand creek, he fought for years after to keep memories of the massacre alive. Around the turn of the 20th century, Frederick Jackson turner speaking in chicago at the worlds fair fretted over the closing of the frontier. Conservationists warned of the impending extinction of the bison and the native peoples who depended on those animals for survival and readers consumed piles of novels about cowboys and indians. Culture and popular Public Policy stood at the center of debate about the future of United States and george bent worried that native americans had no voice and these conversations. He began relating tribal history to george bird grinnell, a founder of professional anthropology and james mooney. George hyde, relatively obscure hysteria and historian. In 1906, george bent and george hyde published six articles in the magazine called the frontier. They debunked John Shivingtons story of sand creek. George bent technologist that he had fought with Dickinson George bent acknowledged that he had fought with the cavalry, he mocked a man in colorado who talk about rebel plots to ally with the region indians. Inveterate foes of texas and the arapahoe zen had no incentive to fight with the south. Turning to the massacre, bent related details of shivingtons betrayals of the peace chiefs with american and white flags flying over black kettles lodge in the colorado troops butchering. Bent understood the civil war as a war of imperialism rather than liberation. Hadoncluded that shivington wrought the thing he always claims to have prevented, conflict that threatened if only briefly expansion into the west. He said their actions and somehow decide the service and an had dared to suggest a white man might be uncivilized. Downing responded to george bent in the denver times labeling him a cutthroat and the thief, liar and a scoundrel but worst of all, a halfbreed. He turned his attention to embedding John Shivingtonsa stories into a civil war narrative that heritage groups were constructing around the United States at the time. It was working, native in denver with the unveiling of a memorial on the State Capitol steps in 1909. The monument featured the placards days cataloguing battles and engagements in which coloradans had fought during the war and sand creek was among them. Your lower right. With veterans of the civil war nearing the end of their lives, campaigns took shape how future generations would remember the conflict. Andives at the time document collections and published residential histories and cities unveiled monuments and memorials. Scholars have argued in recent years that these efforts were often intended to inspire onlookers who embrace a reconciliation narrative of the war. Janney is here, i apologize. The root causes, struggles over slavery and competing definitions of federal authority and citizenship and the right to shape an emerging american empire in the transmississippi west could and a deed should be set aside in service of an amicable reunion between north and south. In short, upholding patriotic orthodoxy, sometimes demented collective amnesia rather than remembrance. Stewards of the civil war memory in colorado realized that if their state was going to be included in this emerging civil war story, sand creek was going to have to be remembered as a battle or engagement. At the statue dedication, organizers stitched together National Unity and pride and seamlessly integrated visions of empire and liberty. A military band balanced the emancipation of spirit of marching through georgia with the nostalgia of dixie. One speaker invoked the spirit of reconciliation suggesting we are all americans today and we all glory in one flag and one country. Couldeneral irving hale gain fame of the spanishamerican war and later helped found the veterans of for making freedom free for all americans. He ignored the impact on native americans. The memorial sponsors had smoothed away the sand creek massacres rough edges and cast John Shivingtons stories of the tragedy in bronze. Less than half a century later, coloradans working against the political backdrop worked against course. They began segregating memories of sand creek from those of the civil war and associated the bloodshed exclusively with western expansion. August 6, 1950, the state unveiled two historic markers. The first of those was an ocher marble slab on a rise overlooking the massacre site. For the rest of my talk, alaska that you keep this image in the back of your mind when i refer to the monument overlooked and i will do so a number of additional times. This is what im talking about, the rise you see in the distance beyond the trees, that is the monument overlooked at the sand creek site. That marker echoed John Shivington. It read sand creek battleground. Obelisknd marker, and sponsored by the state Historical Society included the mixed message sand creek battle or massacre. And labeled the bloodshed a regrettable tragedy of the conquest of the west. This is an interpretation born of the need to placate Historical Society