Sand Creek Massacre 150th Anniversary News Releases

33-Star American Flag, white flag, and lodgepoles at Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. Photo Courtesy of the National Park Service.

Condemned by Congress, the Sand Creek Massacre marked the plains with blood, sparking warfare from Texas to the Canadian border. On the morning of November 29, 1864, U.S. Army Volunteers attacked a peaceful camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho, mutilated the dead, and looted the village. The massacre left behind about two hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho dead and many more wounded, with women and children comprising two-thirds of the casualties.

As the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War noted in 1865, the “truth is that [Chivington] surprised and murdered, in cold blood, the unsuspecting men, women, and children on Sand creek [sic], who had every reason to believe they were under the protection of the United States authorities, and then returned to Denver and boasted of the brave deeds he and the men under his command had performed.”

With the 150th anniversary of this tragedy approaching in November of 2014, the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site is releasing a monthly series of news stories to illustrate the people, events, and consequences of the massacre. In collaboration with the Northern Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, and Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, the National Park Service manages the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site for all Americans to understand and learn from our past.

To learn more about the Sand Creek Massacre, please visit www.nps.gov/sand or contact the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site outside of Eads, Colorado at (719) 438-5916.

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Eric Sainio, Park Guide
Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
National Park Service
P.O. Box 249
Eads, CO 81036
(719) 729-3003 ext. 223