Qualla: Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site: Introduction

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. Chief Black Kettle raised an American flag above his lodge. Beside it, he tied a white flag of surrender to a lodgepole, exactly as he had been instructed. It made no difference. At dawn on November 29, 1864, roughly 675 U.S. soldiers under Colonel John M. Chivington attacked an encampment of approximately 750 Cheyenne and Arapaho people along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. The camp was there by agreement -- Black Kettle and other chiefs had brought their people to this site near Fort Lyon following peace negotiations with Colorado's territorial governor. What followed was not a battle. It was a massacre, and this stretch of shortgrass prairie in Kiowa County bears witness to one of the most grievous acts of violence in American frontier history.

Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site: A Broken Promise at Dawn

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Cheyenne and Arapaho families camped at Sand Creek believed they were under the protection of the U.S. government. Black Kettle, White Antelope, and some thirty other chiefs had negotiated their presence at this location. But Colonel Chivington, a former Methodist minister co...

Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site: The Reckoning

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TradingCardsNPS, CC BY 2.0. Chivington initially returned to Denver as a hero, his attack celebrated in local newspapers. The truth emerged through the testimony of officers who had witnessed the slaughter. Captain Soule wrote damning letters to his superior, Major Ned Wynkoop, detailing what had happened. ...

Image: TradingCardsNPS | CC BY 2.0

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site: Reclaiming Sacred Ground

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carptrash, CC BY-SA 3.0. For more than a century, the massacre site lay unmarked on private ranchland. In 1999, archaeological teams from the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Colorado Historical Society -- accompanied by Native American observers -- discovered the remains of ...

Image: Carptrash | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site: A Living Memorial

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephanie A. Terry, CC BY-SA 4.0. The site continues to grow. In October 2022, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland stood alongside leaders of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, along with descendants of victims and survivors, to announce the purchase of...

Image: Stephanie A. Terry | CC BY-SA 4.0