A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek

by Ari Kelman

  The troops, as it happened, could take care of themselves. Just as the online contretemps settled into a lull, Captain Charles Zakhem and other officers from the Colorado National Guard visited the Sand Creek site on October 24, 2003. The guardsmen were there for a “Staff Ride,” an exercise in which army personnel study a significant moment from the nation’s military history, travel to its scene, and then “try to replay the event.” Civil War battlefields, Gettysburg especially, are common locations for Staff Rides on the East Coast. But in Colorado, Zakhem regretted, “our choice of destinations is pretty limited.” Having settled on Sand Creek, he and his colleagues spent months researching the slaughter, learning that “unspeakable things happened there.” Because the modern guardsmen identified with troops from the 1st and 3rd Regiments, Zakhem revealed, “It really put a shock into us that this was done by Coloradans. That was really tough for us to swallow.” Zakhem “came to the conclusion that it’s more a scene of a crime than a battle.” The previous day, he and his colleagues had presented the results of their studies during a seminar held at their base at Fort Carson.16

  Fort Carson is located just south of Colorado Springs. Named for Kit Carson, one of Western history’s legendary trappers, scouts, and military commanders, the base hosted approximately 10,000 people at the time, many of them waiting for orders deploying them to one of two war zones. On October 23, though, with bright sunshine flooding the Front Range, Captain Zakhem remarked that Iraq and Afghanistan seemed very far away. Most of the deciduous trees in the area had recently dropped their leaves, but the cottonwoods still retained their foliage. Fort Carson appeared sylvan that morning, beautiful, even welcoming—if you overlooked the armed soldiers patrolling its entrance gates, screening visitors before waving them inside. But even with the guards in place, the base resembled the campus of a midsized state university or an unusually well-fortified suburban subdivision. Clusters of ranch houses, a few community buildings, athletic fields, and playgrounds filled with shouting children sprawled across nearly ten square miles. Posted signs apparently aimed to boost morale: the “word of the month” was “caring.” With so many young people wandering around carrying M-16s, that seemed like an excellent choice.17

  The Sand Creek Staff Ride symposium took place in a squat conference center near a basketball court and a group of small houses labeled, coincidentally, Cheyenne Village. Inside the building, officers from Captain Zakhem’s unit shared what they had learned about the massacre. Zakhem himself had first encountered Sand Creek while reading Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee in a class at the University of Colorado. In his presentation, Zakhem contrasted commemorative efforts at the Sand Creek site—“it’s empty, there’s nothing there”—with the more elaborate memorial at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, asking his audience which choice seemed more appropriate. Other officers talked about the cultural conflict that had emerged out of nineteenth-century westward expansion, musing about the nation’s ongoing imperial ambitions; about Colonel Chivington’s tactics, focusing especially on the rules of engagement; about weapons used by the Colorado volunteers and the Cheyennes and Arapahos at Sand Creek; and about the challenge of studying sources in which “all of the testimony seems to contradict itself.” With the preliminaries over, Zakhem and his colleagues prepared to visit the site the next day.18

  They did not go alone. Captain Zakhem, seeking authorization to visit Sand Creek, had contacted Alexa Roberts months earlier. Roberts had then invited the descendants and Bill Dawson to attend the event as well. Zakhem understood the significance of the gathering. It would be, he said, “the first time that the Colorado National Guard has recognized the activities of the Colorado militia a hundred and some odd years ago. We’re going in uniform, so there’s no mistake about who we are. It’s a big deal to them [the descendants] and a big deal to us.” Zakhem anticipated tension. Using passive constructions that obscured the identity of the perpetrators, he noted, “some truly horrible things were done on that battlefield.” He then admitted, “It’s something that still happens.” In the end, he concluded that there likely would be lingering ill will: “In terms of the engagement, there were so many broken promises, before and after, fallacies and fabrications. And we expect to hear about that from the tribes.”19

  At a meet and greet held in a conference room in the Kiowa County courthouse, Laird Cometsevah signaled that Zakhem was right: the day would be devoted not only to remembrance but also to recriminations. Scolding the soldiers for the sins of their forebears, Cometsevah said, “The Cheyennes will not accept an apology for what happened at Sand Creek for the simple reason that Sand Creek is not over. The U.S. government still owes the descendants of the massacre. We’re not going to accept any apology until Article 6 of the Treaty of the Little Arkansas is completed.” Zakhem, who nodded as Cometsevah spoke, recalled later that no matter how sorry he personally might have been about Sand Creek, he could not apologize on behalf of the federal government or the army. Then, as the group arrived at the monument overlook, Steve Brady, wearing emblems from his service in Vietnam, explained: “From Sand Creek on, the U.S. military took human remains from the Cheyennes. We, the Cheyenne people, were the scientific specimens that improved the U.S. military’s killing efficiency, its ordnance. So whenever you pull the trigger on your weapon, and you see the tight grouping of your round, remember to thank the Cheyenne people.” One officer in Zakhem’s unit winced; another looked skyward, shook his head, and then lowered his gaze to the ground.20

  For the most part, though, the gathering was more than amicable; it was a meeting of brothers in arms. Many of the descendants, as well as Bill Dawson, had served in the military. They laughed about unit discipline with the guardsmen or traded tales of tight spots. In their common experiences, Alexa Roberts noted, they found a bridge between cultures. At one point, Captain Zakhem sidled up to Steve Brady, asking, “How does Cheyenne medicine work?” Without missing a beat, Brady replied, “How does the Rosary work?” “Faith,” Zakhem answered. Brady just shrugged in response, leaving Zakhem nodding and smiling. Throughout the day, Ray Brady, Steve’s uncle, found himself surrounded by soldiers. The elder Brady had served valiantly in World War II, and the assembled troops wanted to hear of his exploits. He obliged them. When it was all over, Alexa Roberts beamed. “Can you believe how great that was?” she asked. Then she wrote a press release, declaring, “The Sand Creek Massacre site is already serving its memorial purpose.” Having distracted herself from the bickering on the Kiowa County website, Roberts recalled that she wanted nothing more than to rest for a few weeks before preparing for the next event on her calendar: the ceremony celebrating the transfer of the Dawson ranch to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.21

  The Lucky Star Casino was huge when Alexa Roberts arrived there late in 2003. Located off Highway 81 in Clinton, Oklahoma, its stucco and stone bulk seemed especially outsized when juxtaposed with the spareness of the surrounding prairie. An immense archway greeted visitors, who entered a smoke-filled cavern that might just as well have been located in Nevada, Connecticut, New Jersey, or anywhere else that casino gambling was legal. There were no windows; patrons could not inadvertently catch a glimpse of the darkening sky and realize that a day had slipped away. The sound of one-armed bandits—clanking, ringing, whirring—overwhelmed all of the other noise in the building, except for the occasional exclamation of delight accompanying a payout. But those shouts were rare. Most players stared straight at the machines in front of them, reaching down into buckets of coins and dropping them into insatiable slots, gambling metronomes oblivious to the time they were keeping.22

  On December 19, 2003, Eugene Black Bear, who served his tribe as a master of ceremonies at powwows, climbed atop a podium deep inside the Lucky Star. Thundering over announcements of prize drawings, Black Bear presided over a somber celebration: the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes would now own what Laird Cometsevah called “the traditional site.” After several descendants spoke, Jim Druck walked to
the microphone. He recounted his father’s World War II service, the horrors of the Holocaust, and his sorrow about the massacre, before explaining to the crowd that he “understood their pain and what it means to fight for your heritage.” Finally, in an odd moment suggesting that the tribes remained divided over acquiring the site, Druck looked uncertain as he searched for someone to accept the deed to the Dawson ranch. With tribal officials suddenly scarce, Druck handed the document to Cometsevah, who took it on behalf of his people.23

  Alexa Roberts believed that the path from the deed transfer ceremony to the opening of the historic site would be straightforward. Congress had to pass legislation placing the former Dawson ranch into federal trust, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes had to agree to allow the NPS to manage the property. Roberts thought that the first condition would be no problem. So did Senator Campbell. “I don’t anticipate opposition in Congress,” Campbell said. But securing the tribes’ agreement worried Roberts. “That was a wild card,” she recalled. Robert Tabor had recently been deposed as chair of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Business Committee, and the political landscape remained uncertain. Some of the descendants also were not sure they wanted the NPS involved in any way with the memorial. With Bill Dawson’s land back in Cheyenne hands, Laird Cometsevah wondered if having the government manage the site served his people’s interests or honored their ancestors’ memories. Looking back on the search, Cometsevah asked, “Why should we trust the Park Service?” With that question unanswered, other factors threatened to derail the memorialization process.24

  Just days after the transfer ceremony, author and activist Suzan Shown Harjo penned an exposé for the online edition of Indian Country Today, the nation’s largest weekly newspaper devoted to covering Native American issues. A headline asked, “Who’s Keeping Secrets from the Sand Creek Descendants?” Harjo answered: “There’s big talk about a big money deal in the making in the name of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people.” The deal, known as the “Cheyenne-Arapaho Homecoming Project,” was “the brainchild” of a venture capitalist named Steve Hillard and would be carried out by his company, Council Tree Communications. Harjo reported that the Homecoming Project’s prospectus, spread across sixteen pages all stamped with the warning, “Strictly Confidential,” identified “10 core objectives,” including funding the opening of the historic site and “publicly redress[ing] the crimes committed against Native Americans and the particular atrocity of Sand Creek.” How would Council Tree accomplish these goals? By exchanging Cheyenne and Arapaho land claims in Colorado for a small parcel of property, a new reservation to be created on the plains just east of Denver. The catch? The proposed location sat adjacent to Denver International Airport, and on it, Council Tree “would build a full-service casino and hotel, a Plains Indian Cultural and Media Center, and a five-star restaurant in a glass-enclosed rooftop observatory.”25

  Six months earlier, Steve Hillard had called a meeting in Billings, Montana, hoping to sell the Northern Cheyenne government on his plan. Steve Brady attended and warned Hillard that he should steer clear of Sand Creek. Linking memorialization of the massacre with gambling, Brady explained, “was completely unacceptable.” Brady next contacted Laird Cometsevah, inquiring about where he stood on the Homecoming Project. Cometsevah responded that he “didn’t care at all if there were hundreds of new casinos built in Colorado, so long as Sand Creek isn’t dragged into it and Article 6 claims aren’t involved.” Reassured, Brady thought they should write to Senator Campbell, clarifying the Cheyenne descendants’ position: Sand Creek and gaming must remain separate. When news of Hillard’s proposal made its way to Suzan Harjo, generating the first trickle of what ultimately would be a flood of bad press suggesting that the Homecoming Project rested on the dubious proposition that the horrors of Sand Creek could be swept away for the affected tribes by waves of corporate profits, the entrepreneur wondered if Brady had leaked the news. Brady acknowledged only that Harjo was “a good friend.”26

  Brady initially dismissed the Homecoming Project as grandiose and very likely doomed. “Steve Hillard made lots of promises,” Brady recalled, “but I wasn’t sure he’d keep a single one of them.” The scheme, as Brady understood it, hinged on the contention that federal authorities had violated the Fort Laramie treaty. The Cheyenenes and Arapahos, Hillard argued, had legal rights to huge swaths of Colorado, perhaps 40 percent of the state. But, Brady countered, such claims had been extinguished when the tribes had settled with the U.S. government in 1965. Brady did not like it, but in his view no room remained for another land claim. As for the idea that Hillard would fund the historic site, Brady muttered, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Finally, he responded to Hillard’s plan to use the federal government’s promise of reparations in Article 6 of the Little Arkansas treaty as leverage to secure a casino outside Denver’s massive airport, sneering: “It’s disgusting. He really should be ashamed of himself. But he’s shameless.”27

  Nevertheless, Brady feared that Hillard was dangerous and that his plan might actually scuttle the historic site. Brady’s concerns reflected his sense that the lure of easy money could divide the descendants between those people committed to memorializing the massacre and those willing to trade the moral authority associated with Sand Creek for cash. “We had been mostly unified up till then,” he remembered, “sticking together because we knew that we needed to protect the site and honor our ancestors.” But the lure of a healthy bottom line threatened that rapport, because Hillard had a track record of brokering deals involving communities of color—including helping to finance Telemundo, the successful Spanish-language cable television station. Hillard, in other words, was not just a grifter looking for an easy mark. So when he suggested that the proposed casino would be a “money machine,” the Cheyenne and Arapaho Business Committee cooperated with him. Pointing to rampant poverty within the tribes, James Pedro, Robert Tabor’s replacement as tribal chairman, believed that the Homecoming Project “would allow us to return to a presence in our ancestral lands, participate in the economic energy of our home and earn money to meet the basic needs of our people.” Brady, Laird Cometsevah, and the other descendants, by contrast, maintained their opposition, insisting, “it is outrageous exploitation that Steve Hillard would propose to use something like the Sand Creek Massacre for a casino proposal.”28

  Beyond just Hillard’s financial muscle, Brady also feared the venture capitalist’s political connections. Hillard counted several Alaska Native Corporations among his partners in the Homecoming Project. Those groups, in turn, had the ear of Senator Ted Stevens. Notorious for a take-no-prisoners approach to legislating, Stevens chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee, making him one of the most powerful people in the federal bureaucracy. The Denver Post reported, “Stevens … has immense control over the nearly $800 billion doled out by Congress every year. As a result, he’s able to single-handedly push through legislation by attaching it to must-pass spending bills.” One corporation backing Hillard reportedly paid Stevens’s business partners $6 million in rent annually. And executives at Council Tree had recently hired the senator’s brother-in-law as a lobbyist focused on Indian gaming. Brady understood that Stevens’s power worried even Senator Campbell, who feared that his colleague might pressure him into supporting the Homecoming Project, complicating his bid for reelection in Colorado, where Indian gaming remained unpopular. Campbell, therefore, struck preemptively. He opposed the deal, attributing his decision to bedrock principals. It was, he said, “sacrilegious to link gambling to the Sand Creek Massacre.” Nobody knew how Senator Stevens would react.29

  News of the Homecoming Project hit NPS officials and Kiowa County residents hard, leaving Janet Frederick scrambling to reassure people that the descendants would not allow a casino at the Sand Creek site: “We’ve had to say, over and over, ‘no casino, no casino.’ But everyone’s just assuming, ‘Yeah, you’re telling us that, but once they get the land, then a casino will go in.’ ” Chuckling at the thought of opening a
gambling parlor in sparsely populated Kiowa County, she remarked, “Well, I suppose parking wouldn’t be a problem. We have room for the biggest parking lot in the world here.” Alexa Roberts appreciated Frederick’s good humor but knew that associating the site with gambling would be a political loser for the NPS. Congress still had to place the Dawson ranch into trust, and Roberts worried, “if the perception exists that the tribes are using Sand Creek as a wedge to open a casino, we’re probably sunk.”30

  With the descendants, people in Kiowa County, and the NPS arrayed against him, Steve Hillard faced another problem: the regional press began painting him as the villain in a modern massacre story. Hillard, from this perspective, hoped to capitalize on the memory of Sand Creek by taking advantage of credulous Indians and transforming white guilt into cash. The Denver Post noted that it was “ghastly to pretend that such a worthy goal [commemorating the massacre] could be accomplished by building a gambling hall filled with card tables and binging, blinking slot machines. That’s not honoring the dead, that’s defilement.” The story derided Hillard as “smarmy” for trying to “ride the coattails of respected Indian leaders who for years have worked diligently to create an appropriate memorial.” A day later, the Post asked saracastically, “Why lament this chapter in Colorado history when we can slam chips on the table and try to make a buck off it?” The article jeered, “there’s nothing like the ching-ching-ching of slot machines to soothe the haunting memories of genocide,” before concluding, of the Indians at Sand Creek, “they slaughtered them under a banner of economic development. And if a few wealthy and powerful people have their way, we shall memorialize their brutal murders in the same vein.” So while Jim Druck, who also had linked Sand Creek with casino gambling, remained something of a local hero, Hillard played the part of moustache-twisting heel.31