How these Colorado college students be taught in regards to the Sand Creek Bloodbath

Instructor Sarah Malerich learn a letter to the scholars gathered in her historical past classroom within the southeastern Colorado city of Kiowa.

The eyewitness account described how U.S. troopers attacked a peaceable creekside camp at dawn, killing greater than 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho villagers.

“It was arduous to see little youngsters on their knees have their brains beat out by males professing to be civilized,” Malerich mentioned, quoting the letter. 

College students murmured “oh my God” and “geez” as Malerich learn in regards to the atrocities — essentially the most graphic of which she’d excised. In that second, the horrors of the Sand Creek Bloodbath, which unfolded on Colorado’s Jap Plains greater than 150 years in the past, grew to become uncomfortably actual.

“I’m so upset with historical past,” mentioned Mariah Vigil-Gonzales, a 17-year-old junior at Kiowa Excessive Faculty. “I want we had a time machine.” 

Different college students shortly chimed in, imagining how they may change the occasions of that long-ago November day. A woman mentioned, “Expose Chivington,” referring to the colonel who led the assault.

A lot in regards to the classroom scene was uncommon. Few Colorado college students be taught a lot in regards to the Sand Creek Bloodbath — the deadliest day in Colorado historical past — and even fewer spend a number of days learning the subject as a part of a Native American historical past class as Malerich’s college students did. 

The brand new course is well timed, coming as efforts to commemorate and elevate the Sand Creek Bloodbath are gaining steam throughout the state. Colorado’s historical past museum in Denver unveiled an exhibit on the bloodbath this month, and earlier this fall, federal officers introduced a serious enlargement of the nationwide historic website marking the bloodbath — a couple of two-hour drive from Kiowa. As well as, new social research requirements embrace the Sand Creek Bloodbath on a listing of genocides that Colorado college students ought to research earlier than commencement.

Carl Glenn Payne II for Chalkbeat

The Sand Creek Bloodbath occurred on Nov. 29, 1864, when U.S. troops attacked a camp of Native Individuals who’d been assured by territorial officers that they’d be secure at that website. Many Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs who’d sought peace with the U.S. authorities had been among the many murdered, upending the tribal energy construction and fueling many years of warfare within the West.

“It’s a narrative that must be advised. It’s a narrative that must be revered,” mentioned Gail Ridgely, a Northern Arapaho tribal elder who lives on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.

Ridgely, who’s the great-great-grandson of Little Raven, a peace chief who survived the bloodbath, mentioned the episode contributed to the displacement of the Cheyenne and Arapaho from their homeland in Colorado. 

“After the bloodbath, we had been hunted,” he mentioned.  

It was solely final 12 months that the state formally rescinded the 1864 proclamation that allowed settlers to “kill and destroy” Native Individuals and steal their property.  

Malerich believes there’s a lot of good issues to spotlight in American historical past, however that it’s vital to show about shameful episodes just like the Sand Creek Bloodbath, too.

“What can we be taught from that?” she mentioned. “We will’t return and save these peoples’ lives or something, however what kind of methods can we type of atone for that?”

Mascot legislation begets new class

Malerich’s Native American historical past class exists largely due to a 2021 state legislation banning Native American mascots in Colorado faculties — a measure lawmakers noticed as a step towards “justice and therapeutic to the descendants of the survivors of the Sand Creek Bloodbath, most notably the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.”

Following the legislation’s passage, the 318-student Kiowa district, which is crisscrossed by streets with names like Ute Avenue and Comanche Avenue, sought to retain its Indians nickname. Leaders there requested the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma to approve continued use of the identify and mascot, a situation allowed below the legislation. The tribe agreed to the request, updating a 2005 settlement, so long as the district met sure circumstances, together with offering “a curriculum that teaches American Indian Historical past.”

Strasburg Excessive Faculty, which additionally makes use of the Indians nickname, and Arapahoe Excessive Faculty in Centennial, which makes use of the Warriors nickname, have comparable agreements with the Northern Arapaho tribe. 

The settlement to maintain the mascot was “a big win for our group,” mentioned Kiowa district Superintendent Travis Hargreaves. “Lecturers are coming with increasingly more concepts of how we are able to honor that.” 

A type of concepts was the brand new semester-long historical past course, which will likely be a commencement requirement for district college students beginning with the category of 2025. Malerich mentioned she was excited to launch the category this fall, but additionally nervous as a result of she needed to do it justice and couldn’t discover many assets designed for highschool college students.

College students began out by studying in regards to the many tribes which have known as Colorado residence over the centuries, making maps outlining the place every lived. In addition they mentioned the tradition and traditions of these tribes, and extra broadly, the affect of Native Individuals throughout colonial instances and past. 

“It’s actually cool to consider the roots of the land,” mentioned ninth grader Alyssa Edwards, “like, what was right here earlier than.” 

A number of of the 11 college students in Malerich’s class — a typical class measurement on the rural highschool — signed up for the brand new course as a result of they needed to, not as a result of they needed to.

Mariah, who began at Kiowa Excessive this 12 months, mentioned her household is Apache, and he or she needed to be taught extra Native American historical past. “There’s simply lots of Indians that got here by Colorado and so it’s like, lots of this originated right here … and nobody ever actually talks about that.”

Who learns in regards to the Sand Creek Bloodbath?

It’s not clear what number of Colorado college students be taught in regards to the Sand Creek Bloodbath at college — both throughout their Colorado historical past unit in fourth grade or every other time. 

Representatives from the Colorado Council of Social Research and the Historical past Colorado museum in Denver, the place the brand new Sand Creek exhibit opened earlier this month, each guessed the numbers are comparatively small. 

Hargreaves, who was a fourth grade trainer within the Cherry Creek district, mentioned the textbook he used on the time included a couple of half web page on the Sand Creek Bloodbath. 

“It was a couple of day devoted to it,” he mentioned.  

Malerich, who teaches in the identical Kiowa Excessive Faculty historical past classroom the place she as soon as sat as a pupil, mentioned her first distinct reminiscences of studying in regards to the bloodbath weren’t from college however from the TNT miniseries, “Into the West,” which she watched earlier than sixth grade.

Some college students in Malerich’s Native American historical past class mentioned they’d realized slightly in regards to the Sand Creek Bloodbath in different lessons. Others by no means had. 

Josie Chang-Order, college applications supervisor at Historical past Colorado, mentioned there aren’t any youngsters’s books in regards to the bloodbath and few supplies designed for older college students both. 

“Lecturers coming to Indigenous historical past once we ourselves didn’t get very a lot of it in faculties is a big problem,” she mentioned. 

She and different museum workers hope the brand new exhibit will assist flip the tide. They’re creating particular classes for fourth- to 12-graders who take area journeys to the exhibit and a web based checklist of Sand Creek Bloodbath assets for educators.

Carl Glenn Payne II for Chalkbeat

Elishama Goldfarb, whose class at Denver’s Lincoln Elementary consists of fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders, covers the Sand Creek Bloodbath at the least each three years, interspersing main supply accounts of the bloodbath with excerpts from a miniseries on Colorado historical past known as “Centennial.”

He desires college students to grasp the bloodbath throughout the context of ongoing battle, damaged treaties, and distrust between Native Individuals and white settlers who needed gold, land, or different assets.

Goldfarb, who plans to take his college students to the brand new Sand Creek exhibit in January, additionally connects the unfairness that fueled the bloodbath to the human temptation to evaluate individuals or deem sure individuals superior to others. 

He desires to assist college students perceive that “once we see one another as worthy of dignity and love and care,” horrific occasions just like the Sand Creek Bloodbath don’t must occur.

Voices of the individuals

Historical past Colorado had a Sand Creek Bloodbath exhibit as soon as earlier than. It closed a decade in the past after stress from tribal leaders, who didn’t really feel it precisely mirrored their historical past. 

“It was a fairytale, Barbie dolls, misprints,” Ridgely mentioned. 

However the brand new Sand Creek Exhibit — subtitled “The betrayal that modified Cheyenne and Arapaho individuals perpetually” — has been executed proper, he mentioned, with tribal leaders consulted extensively on the main points.

Carl Glenn Payne II for Chalkbeat

“It’s a historic milestone for Colorado and it’s sacred,” he mentioned. “Each time I’m going all the way down to the museum, it’s an actual good feeling as a result of the victims are talking.”

The exhibit begins years earlier than the bloodbath, grounding guests within the tribes’ tradition and lifestyle. Apart from maps, timelines, and larger-than-life images, the exhibit options oral histories from tribe members telling the tales of Sand Creek which were handed down over generations. The exhibit incorporates Cheyenne and Arapaho language all through.

Shannon Voirol, director of exhibit planning at Historical past Colorado, believes the brand new exhibit will assist make the Sand Creek Bloodbath a part of the state’s lexicon in the identical means the museum’s Amache exhibit raised consciousness in regards to the southern Colorado camp the place Japanese-Individuals had been imprisoned throughout World Conflict II.  

“Extra individuals now perceive that we had Japanese internment camps in Colorado. We get increasingly more lecturers asking about it. We get extra college students having some data of it. It’s a part of the canon as it will grow to be,” she mentioned, gesturing to the images and artifacts, within the Sand Creek exhibit. 

Ridgely, one in every of a number of tribe members who labored with museum officers on the exhibit thinks college students will grow to be extra humble and respectful — “higher residents” —  by studying in regards to the Sand Creek Bloodbath.

In October, Malerich started a sequence of classes on the Sand Creek Bloodbath by discussing the historical past of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes — their traditions, language, and tradition. In the course of the third lesson, she and her college students learn 5 accounts of the bloodbath, together with from Col. John Chivington; Silas Soule, a military captain who refused to fireside on the Native Individuals; and a survivor named Singing Underneath Water, whose oral account was written down by her grandson.  

Malerich learn aloud from Chivington’s 1865 testimony to Congress, which falsely portrayed the bloodbath as a battle the place just a few girls and no youngsters had been killed. 

“I had no purpose to consider that [Chief] Black Kettle and the Indians with him had been in good religion at peace with the whites,” she learn. 

However college students had been skeptical and indignant.

“Actually, [they] had the white flag up and the American flag up,” Mariah mentioned of the tribes. 

She and her classmates concluded that Chivington knew the Arapaho and Cheyenne had been camped peacefully however didn’t care. Different firsthand accounts didn’t help his claims, they mentioned.

After the lesson, Alyssa mentioned realizing how and why the bloodbath occurred may assist forestall one thing comparable from taking place once more.

“That was actually inspirational,” responded Brooke Mills, a junior whose mom is partly descended from the Blackfoot tribe. “Just like the saying that, for those who don’t know your historical past, you’re doomed to repeat it. I really feel like that’s an enormous a part of all of this, too.” 

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, protecting early childhood points and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.