EADS, Colo. — Friday marks 160 years since the Sand Creek Massacre. More than 200 men, women and children were brutally murdered when military forces attacked a camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho tribe members.
"There's a lot of stories out there that the public needs to know. They need to know our story," said Chester Whiteman, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and tribal representative for NAGPRA and Sand Creek.
The site down in southeast Colorado sits empty. The spot is managed by the National Park Service and designated as a National Historic Site more than 20 years earlier.
Small markers and signs at Sand Creek guide the way for visitors, pointing out the devastation that happened in 1864. Little infrastructure sits at the site, allowing visitors to imagine the horrifying events of that November day.
"160 years can may be 16 seconds ago for some people," said Mario Medina, lead park ranger with Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site and the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.
November 29th, 1864, is a day Medina won't forget.
"This is a difficult story," Medina said.
The violent acts of that day are never far from his mind.
"What happened was horrific," said Gail Ridgely, a Sand Creek massacre descendant and member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe.
"Murder in the morning," Whiteman said. "They killed all of our ancestors."
Whiteman said the government had broken treaty after treaty, whittling away their ancestral lands time and time again.
They'd been commanded to go to Fort Lyon. Hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho were camped along the bend of the Big Sandy Creek, under an American flag and a white flag.
In 1864, Colorado Territorial Gov. John Evans issued a proclamation calling for citizens to kill Native Americans. A commander named John Chivington had a plan for an attack.
"We got led there by the government," Whiteman said. "They tried to negotiate peace with [John] Evans and Chivington and Chivington wouldn't do that."
"John Chivington knew that the camp he was attacking was a camp of elders, women and children. It was a chiefs' camp," said Sam Bock, publications director and lead exhibit developer for the Sand Creek Massacre exhibit at History Colorado.
The morning of November 29th, Bock said the Cheyenne and Arapaho awoke to the sound of hoofbeats. It wasn't bison approaching, but was the 3rd Regiment of the Colorado Cavalry.
"So it happens somewhere out here. It's an active shooter incident, times 700," Medina said.
"The story that's been told is White Antelope went to meet with the soldiers and they shot him. Killed him on sight. And Black Kettle was trying to put the American flag up and the flag of truce, the white flag, and the officers started or the soldiers started firing," Whiteman said.
"There are people that are running, there are people that are hiding. There are people that are hiding each other, burying them into the sand," Medina said.
"The relatives fled in all directions. Some got away. A lot of them didn't," Whiteman said.
The attack by roughly 600 people included the 3rd Regiment of Colorado Cavalry volunteers and elements of the 1st Colorado Infantry Regiment of Volunteers, according to History Colorado. Soldiers not only attacked the peaceful village, but also pursued survivors through the surrounding plains.
Ridgely said those who returned found only horror.
"All they found was body parts," Ridgely said. "All the victims were chopped up, loaded up and they were paraded down in Denver three days later as trophies."
More than 230 men, women and children, including many elders, were killed in the brutal attack. It was the deadliest day in Colorado's history.
"The sheer scale of the horrible things that were done to the Native peoples – the dismembering of their bodies, the use of cannons and grapeshot and bowie knives and rifles against unarmed civilian," Bock said. "That was shocking even in that time and place."
"It was a horrific, horrific scene from what we're told. Today, we still feel that. We still feel that hurt," Whiteman said.
Fred Mosqueda, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe and tribal representative for NAGPRA and Sand Creek, said the trauma of what happened lingered for survivors.
"The story of this old lady who always went to bed with her moccasins on. And she was asked, 'Why do you do that?' She said, 'We have to be ready. They could come back and when they do, we're going to have to run,'" Mosqueda said.
In the years that followed, the Cheyenne and Arapaho would be pushed out of Colorado.
The Northern Arapaho to Wyoming, the Northern Cheyenne to Montana and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma to a reservation in the Sooner state.
But to these tribes, these people are not gone.
"We're still here," Whiteman said.
The Indigenous tribes are now helping tell their story at the Sand Creek Historic Site where the massacre took place and in Denver. At History Colorado, tribal representatives spent years consulting on an exhibit to tell their story. History so many never learned in school.
"I grew up here in Colorado and I didn't learn about the Sand Creek Massacre until I was in college," Bock said.
But there's still more work to be done.
"What we need to do is the awareness part and we're working on it," Ridgely said.
Whiteman said the Cheyenne and Arapaho make the trip out to Sand Creek every year to remember and to honor those lost. Still, they hope one day they can come back to Colorado to stay.
"We're going to make our way back home," Whiteman said.
On this stretch of land in southeastern Colorado, the blue sky hugs the brush on the ground. Little here is left behind to tell a story, but what happened that November day 160 years ago is planted deeply in the ground, rooted in the area.
Whiteman said they'll continue to unearth the story of that day to ensure the history and the horror of what happened isn't buried for good.
"Just remembrance, for them," Whiteman said. "We have to carry it on so nobody will forget."