The Sand Creek Massacre Foundation and the Sand Creek Massacre Memorial Committee announced that the Colorado State Senate will vote Monday to approve the proposal to install a monument to the Sand Creek Massacre on the Colorado State Capitol grounds. 

This follows the April 10 session, when all present Colorado State Representatives voted unanimously to approve Joint Resolution 25-1024 “Concerning the installation on the state capitol grounds of a memorial to the victims of the Sand Creek Massacre of November 29, 1864,” sponsored by Representative Tammy Story, Representative Ty Winter, Representative Mandy Lindsay, Senator Kyle Mullica and Senator Byron Pelton. 

This resolution was drafted after hearing testimony from the Sand Creek Massacre Memorial Committee, led by Cheyenne and Arapaho descendants of the victims of the massacre, and was drafted with their input. 

This official recognition of the massacre and the Cheyenne and Arapaho people - whose traditional homelands spanned the plains of Colorado long before it was a state - is long overdue.

The proposed bronze sculpture, designed by Artist Gerald Anthony Shippen, features an Arapaho Chief and a Cheyenne Chief flanking a woman holding a baby, standing in front of a tipi frame. It will be installed on the west plaza of the capitol, where the Civil War memorial stood until 2020 when it was torn down by protestors. 

The Civil War monument was controversial because in the list of battles honoring Colorado Troops featured on a bronze plaque on the base, the Sand Creek Massacre was mischaracterized as a “battle.” The proposed monument to the Sand Creek Massacre corrects this error and honors the Cheyenne and Arapaho people who were victims of the 1864 massacre. 

November 29, 1864, regiments of the U.S. Army attacked an encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho people whose leaders - only months before - had been told by the Colorado Territorial Governor they would be under protection if they camped there along the banks of Sand Creek in what is now southeast Colorado. 

That morning, over 200 children, women, men and the elderly were slaughtered as they tried to escape the onslaught of cannon fire and cavalry troops. Before they left the scene, the soldiers mutilated the victim’s bodies, bringing body parts as war trophies back to Denver, where they were paraded close to where the state capitol stands today. 

The massacre was nearly buried in history, obscured by narratives created to glorify the colonization of the American West that omitted the crimes against Native People. But Cheyenne and Arapaho people never forgot, and it is thanks to their resilience and persistence that today Colorado has been given the opportunity to recognize the truth of its past and take steps towards healing.