Essential Context for Sand Creek
In 1851, the Treaty of Fort Laramie recognized a vast territory that included the South Platte Valley and the lands around present-day Denver as Cheyenne and Arapaho land. Then, in 1858, the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush brought thousands of newcomers into the same valley, and Denver City was laid out on treaty-recognized Cheyenne and Arapaho land. “They knew the treaties we signed with the government meant they weren’t supposed to be on our lands,” Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal Elders said in the Sand Creek Massacre exhibit at History Colorado.
In February 1861, Congress created Colorado Territory with Denver as its political and commercial center. “But as the town grew, many of these trespassers wanted us to be the ones to leave,” Tribal elders continued. The same month, the Treaty of Fort Wise was signed by only a small number of Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders. By 1864, “many of our people were starving and desperate, all because the U.S. government refused to honor the promises it made in treated with the Cheyenne and Arapaho people,” Tribal Elders said in the Sand Creek Massacre exhibit.
Then, on April 11, 1864, troopers under the command of Lt. Clark Dunn of the First Colorado Cavalry tried to disarm Cheyenne men in northeast Colorado—an encounter a post-Sand Creek investigation later identified as the beginning of the 1864 conflict. Unprovoked attacks on Cheyenne people by Colorado troops in April and May further escalated the violence. About five months later, Chief White Antelope confronted Gov. John Evans at Camp Weld with a simple truth: “A [white] soldier fired first.”
