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The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie recognized a vast Cheyenne and Arapaho territory across parts of Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado and Kansas, but the 1858 Pikes Peak gold rush filled it with miners and towns. The 1861 Treaty of Fort Wise, signed by a few leaders without the Council of 44, cut the land to less than one thirteenth of its size and split the Cheyenne between peace chiefs like Black Kettle and the Dog Soldiers. In 1864 Lieutenant George Eayre’s troops shot peace chief Lean Bear as he rode out alone wearing a medal from Abraham Lincoln. At a Denver council that September, Colonel John Chivington told the chiefs to seek protection at Fort Lyon, and Black Kettle’s band camped at Sand Creek believing they were safe.

At dawn on November 29, 1864, Chivington led 675 men of the 1st and 3rd Colorado Cavalry against a camp of mostly older men, women and children while Black Kettle raised an American flag and a white flag. About 150 people were killed and mutilated, and peace chiefs including White Antelope and One Eye died, gutting the Council of 44 and fueling retaliatory raids such as the attack on Julesburg. Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer refused to let their companies fire. Congress’s Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War condemned the attack, but Chivington had resigned and was never charged, and Soule was murdered in Denver weeks after testifying.

• Chivington used the phrase nits make lice to justify killing children.
• Body parts taken by soldiers were later displayed in Denver saloons.
• A 1909 monument at the Colorado Capitol called Sand Creek a battle until a 2002 plaque corrected it to massacre.
• Colorado’s governor formally apologized to descendants in 2014.
• Thousands of artifacts found on private land miles from the first historic site finally pinned down the camp’s location.