Officials Delay Vote to Rename Colorado's Mount Evans
The mountain is named for John Evans, who oversaw the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864
The push to rename Mount Evans in Colorado has gained momentum in recent years. Greg McCollum via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0
Last Thursday, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names was expected to vote in favor of a change several years in the making: renaming Colorado’s iconic Mount Evans. But in the minutes before the meeting started, the vote was canceled.
This surprise delay is the latest chapter in the long, controversial reckoning over the legacy of John Evans, the former territorial governor of Colorado, who oversaw the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. Advocates hoped to rename the site Mount Blue Sky, a suggestion from the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.
The Northern Cheyenne, however, oppose the new name because of its connection to a tribal ceremony. “It’s a sacrilege to our tribe to throw that phrase around in public,” tribal administrator William Walksalong tells the Denver Gazette’s Carol McKinley and Marianne Goodland.
On Wednesday night, the tribal government filed a request for a “government-to-government consultation,” prompting the delay.
The name change has been gaining momentum since 2020, when Jared Polis, Colorado’s governor, established a board to analyze contentious names of landmarks around the state, according to Saja Hindi of the Denver Post.
More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/vote-to-rename-colorados-mount-evans-is-delayed-180981789/
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The opening of a national historic site in Colorado helps restore to public memory one of the worst atrocities ever perpetrated on Native Americans
Joanna B. Pinneo
Jeff Campbell worked for 20 years as a criminal investigator for the state of New Mexico. He specialized in cold cases. These days, he applies his sleuthing skills to a case so cold it’s buried beneath a century and a half of windblown prairie.
“Here’s the crime scene,” Campbell says, surveying a creek bed and miles of empty grassland. A lanky, deliberate detective, he cups a corncob pipe to light it in the flurrying snow before continuing. “The attack began in predawn light, but sound carries in this environment. So the victims would have heard the hooves pounding towards them before they could see what was coming.”
Campbell is reconstructing a mass murder that occurred in 1864, along Sand Creek, an intermittent stream in eastern Colorado. Today, less than one person per square mile inhabits this arid region. But in late autumn of 1864, about 1,000 Cheyenne and Arapaho lived in tepees here, at the edge of what was then reservation land. Their chiefs had recently sought peace in talks with white officials and believed they would be unmolested at their isolated camp.
When hundreds of blue-clad cavalrymen suddenly appeared at dawn on November 29, a Cheyenne chief raised the Stars and Stripes above his lodge. Others in the village waved white flags. The troops replied by opening fire with carbines and cannon, killing at least 150 Indians, most of them women, children and the elderly. Before departing, the troops burned the village and mutilated the dead, carrying off body parts as trophies.
Col. John Chivington led the raid. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs division
More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/horrific-sand-creek-massacre-will-be-forgotten-no-more-180953403/
A delegation of Arapaho and Cheyenne leaders met with the U.S. military on Sept. 28, 1864, at Camp Weld, Colo., to seek peace on the plains east of Denver, almost two months before the Sand Creek Massacre. Denver Public Library, Western History Collection.
Committee releases study on involvement of leading University founder in the 1864 massacre of Native Americans.
. . .
Following are the conclusions, as stated in the report:
• No known evidence indicates that Evans helped plan the Sand Creek Massacre or had any knowledge of it in advance. The extant evidence suggests that he did not consider the Indians at Sand Creek to be a threat and that he would have opposed the attack that took place.
• Evans nonetheless was one of several individuals who, in serving a flawed and poorly implemented federal Indian policy, helped create a situation that made the Sand Creek Massacre possible. In this regard, the most critical of his errors was his failure to fulfill his responsibility as superintendent of Indian Affairs to represent the best interests of Native people in Colorado. The most significant instances of this failure were his response to the skirmishes that occurred in the spring of 1864 and, especially, his conduct during and following the Camp Weld meeting [a conference with Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders who were seeking peace] in late September.
• Evans’ conduct after the Sand Creek Massacre reveals a deep moral failure that warrants condemnation. While he denied any role in the massacre, he refused to acknowledge, let alone criticize, what had happened, even going so far as to defend and rationalize it. Regardless of Evans’ degree of culpability in failing to make every possible effort to protect the Cheyennes and Arapahos when they were most vulnerable, his response to the Sand Creek Massacre was reprehensibly obtuse and self-interested. His recollections of the event displayed complete indifference to the suffering inflicted on Cheyennes and Arapahos.
• Evans did not profit from the Sand Creek Massacre. On the contrary, the massacre cost him both politically and financially. He did profit in a broader sense from his policies toward Indians when he was governor, however, since in the years that followed he was a full participant, along with many others, in the effort to develop the western and national economies that was profoundly damaging to Native people and remunerative to individuals like himself.
More:
https://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/fall2014/campuslife/john-evans-and-the-sand-creek-massacre.html
When they didn't see a thorough history lesson on the Sand Creek Massacre, these Colorado teachers created one
Dan and Jake Yergert believe this tragic part of Colorado history is not taught enough in schools.
Author: Nelson Garcia
Published: 8:22 PM MST November 8, 2021
Updated: 8:22 PM MST November 8, 2021
DENVER — The Colorado we know today is a summation of our past. But, Dan Yergert believes there are parts that people don't like to talk about, like the the Sand Creek Massacre.
"I think it gives you a more complete picture of the West," he said.
He and his twin brother, Jake Yergert, created a Youtube video on the tragic events of November 1864 when the United States Army attacked a Native American camp in southern Colorado, killing 230 people. The National Park Service lists those deaths as mostly women, children and the elderly.
"Why didn't we hear about this, especially in Colorado, so close?" Jake Yergert said. "Why does that seem to be the thing that gets forgotten?"
Though they are both English teachers, these brothers created a history lesson in the form of a 35-minute video aimed at teaching high school students.
"When we started, we promised ourselves we probably weren't going to say anything in the videos that we wouldn't feel sufficiently comfortable, confident that this is the truth," Dan Yergert said.
They said they just want to make sure that this part of history is not ignored.
. . .
You can watch their video here.
More:
https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/history-sand-creek-massacre-colorado-teachers-youtube-video/73-84c14453-ab48-4249-900e-1a68d4ccfea7
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Mount Lauren Boebert...
And make sure it's not taught in schools because it night make republicans uncomfortable.
???
