American Indian Liberation: Paddling a Canoe Upstream

Abstract

I recall my second visit to the site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre to honor Cheyenne and Arapaho people, and especially the peace chiefs, who had died in that unprovoked and murderous surprise attack on their peaceful village. Just after midnight, several hours before a dawn ceremony, two of us walked out from the cottonwoods at the old village site in the hollow at the bend of the creek bed and ventured into the prairie a couple of hundred yards. As we stood under the light of the moon, we were quietly stunned by the sounds of a large and busy village coming from the cottonwoods. In the middle of this semiarid Colorado ranchland, miles from the nearest town and more than a mile from the nearest house, we distinctly heard children playing, dogs barking, neighing horses, men singing around a drum, people calling to each other. It reminded me of my first visit two years earlier, on the anniversary of the Massacre.