{"id":2866,"date":"2026-07-22T10:03:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T10:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradospringsmoverss.com\/?p=2866"},"modified":"2026-07-22T10:03:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T10:03:38","slug":"colorados-150th-anniversary-somber-occasion-for-native-americans-who-lost-territory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradospringsmoverss.com\/?p=2866","title":{"rendered":"Colorado\u2019s 150th anniversary somber occasion for Native Americans who lost territory"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rick Williams is an Oglala Lakota citizen and a descendent of the Northern and Southern Cheyenne Indian people, all tribes with historical roots in Colorado. In the 1850s, his great-great-grandfather had a winter camp on Cherry Creek in what is now Denver.<\/p>\n

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Despite connections to the state that run deeper than those of many Coloradans, Williams isn\u2019t celebrating this year\u2019s 150th anniversary of statehood. His reasons: the broken treaties that deprived Native Americans of their lands; the upending of Native American communities during the gold rush and influx of settlers; the decimation of the bison herds that sustained tribes for centuries; and the removal of Native Americans from Colorado to other regions.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people today are excited by the celebration\u201d of statehood, Williams said.\u00a0 \u201cFor me, it is a dishonorable disgrace that insults my ancestors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over hundreds of years,\u00a0 lived full-time or have connections to what is now the state of Colorado.<\/p>\n

But by the time Colorado became the 38th star on the American flag in 1876, the Cheyenne and Arapaho people had been forced out or left for Oklahoma, Montana and Wyoming. Around 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people were killed in the Sand Creek massacre on Nov. 29, 1864.\u00a0U.S. Army Cavalry Col. John Chivington, an ordained Methodist Minister, led the attack on a camp of about 750 mostly women, children and elders about 170 miles southeast of Denver.<\/p>\n

As proponents continued to pursue statehood, the Utes, who inhabited roughly the western third of Colorado under an 1868 treaty, clashed with settlers and U.S. troops moving into their lands. They saw their territory continue to shrink until the northern and central bands were forced onto a reservation in Utah.<\/p>\n

Other bands of Utes were relegated to land in the southwest corner of the state, where the\u00a0Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute reservations are today.<\/p>\n

Native American lives and communities were lost despite federal laws passed from the 1790s to 1834 that identified most of the lands west of the Mississippi River as Indian territory. The 1851 Fort Laramie treaty gave the Cheyenne and Arapaho sovereignty over the Platte River basin if they allowed white migrants to pass through and the government to build forts.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou come to 1857, 1858, and all of a sudden, you have 100,000 people coming into the state and they\u2019re all here illegally,\u201d said Williams, an educator and the former CEO and president of the American Indian College Fund.<\/p>\n

The 1861 Fort Wise treaty drastically shrank Cheyenne and Arapaho lands from an area between the North Platte River and the Arkansas River to land between the Arkansas River and the Sandy Fork of the Arkansas River, now known as Sand Creek. President Abraham Lincoln ratified the agreement, which tribal leaders denounced.<\/p>\n

Northern Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne who were forced out of Colorado went to reservations in Wyoming and Montana. Under the Medicine Lodge treaties of 1867, the Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne went to reservations in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

Even with all that was lost, tribes still see Colorado as a part of their heritage. The Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute reservations are currently the only ones federally recognized in the state, but other Native American people with strong ties to Colorado have maintained their presence. Some never left. Many moved to Colorado or made trips to what they considered their ancestral homelands.<\/p>\n

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The U.S. Census Bureau found in 2020 that more than 100,000 people who identify as American Indian\/Alaska Native alone or in combination with one or more races were living in Colorado. Those numbers rose from the 2010 Census and the upward trend is expected to continue, according to the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs.<\/p>\n

Denver was one of five cities designated as relocation centers as part of the federal Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which was intended to assimilate Native Americans by encouraging them to leave reservations. Since then, the Denver Indian Center has been a place for Native Americans looking for community, said Nehemiah Tsosie, the director.<\/p>\n

The center was the place where Tsosie went when he moved to Denver from Kirtland, N.M., in 2019 for work. Tsosie, a member of the Navajo Nation, was homesick and couldn\u2019t find the kind of food he was used to.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe center had a community meal, a community social gathering. They were singing powwow music,\u201d Tsosie said. \u201cIt seemed like it was medicine for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams, who grew up in western Nebraska, lives in the Denver area. He founded the nonprofit People of the Sacred Land, which has researched and publicized the history of Native Americans in Colorado and advocated for restoring the status of tribal nations in the state.<\/p>\n

Native Americans might not see Colorado\u2019s sesquicentennial as a reason to celebrate, but some see opportunities to reestablish connections.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have nothing to do with the anniversaries because we were not here. We were confined to a reservation in Oklahoma when Colorado became a state,\u201d said\u00a0Fred Mosqueda., the Arapaho outreach specialist on the tribe\u2019s language and culture program for the jointly governed Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes in western Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

Mosqueda, whose ancestors were at Sand Creek, travels frequently to the Denver area. He was an adviser on the History Colorado Center\u2019s Sand Creek exhibit. He and other tribal members are working with Boulder County on a project that could restore bison on county open space. He supports developing an American Indian Cultural Embassy in Denver.<\/p>\n

The Vibrant Denver Bond Package approved by voters in 2025 includes $20 million for the embassy, proposed on open space on Denver International Airport land. Ernest House Jr., a Ute Mountain Ute Tribe member, was selected to lead the planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Rick Williams first brought the idea, I told him \u2018The Cheyenne and Arapaho want to buy the first office,’\u201d said Fred Mosqueda.. \u201cIt\u2019ll bring all the tribes together, under one roof.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes are also looking to work more closely with the Colorado state government, Mosqueda added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at becoming a part of Colorado again, to come home in a sense,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Deadliest day in Colorado history\u2019<\/h4>\n

The resources, plains and mountains of present-day Colorado provided food, shelter and a way of life for Indians throughout the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lived on the buffalo. We followed the buffalo,\u201d Mosqueda said. \u201cI think there was a northern herd and a southern herd. I think they congregated where they crossed over to each other out there on the Eastern Plains.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was water year-round and other wildlife. \u201cThis was the perfect place to live. Much of our medicines still grow there today,\u201d Mosqueda said. \u201cWe still go back to get them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The area was also a sweet spot for non-Indians, or \u201cEuro-Americans,\u201d advancing West. Middle regions of the country proved easier for people on the move because the climate was often better for growing crops, soils were fertile and the Mississippi, Ohio and other rivers provided transportation networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat middle area had always just been kind of easier, more enticing,\u201d said\u00a0Thomas Andrews, a history professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and director of the Center of the American West.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s appeal soared when gold was discovered near present-day Denver in 1858-59. Thousands of people flooded in to look for gold or set up businesses and farms to supply the miners, according to the History Colorado Center.<\/p>\n

The gold rush, followed by discovery of other minerals and development of irrigation on the Front Range spurred more growth, Thomas said.\u00a0 At the time, \u201cColorado is easily the fastest-growing, most vibrant part of the inner mountain West.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado became a territory in 1861, but it took five tries over 17 years for it to become a state, said Katherine Mercier, an exhibit developer and historian at the History Colorado Center. She believes a major reason was the conflict resulting from settlers moving onto Indian lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to become a state, you need land. If you have native people living on the land, then it\u2019s not available for mining, or for agriculture, or for establishing your colony, or building (an irrigation) ditch,\u201d Mercier said.<\/p>\n

Many of the people in power trying to make Colorado a state saw native people as an obstacle and tried to move them off much of the land to clear the way, she added.<\/p>\n

Mercier consulted with tribes when developing the history museum\u2019s exhibit on Colorado becoming a state in 1876, the 100th anniversary of the United States. That earned Colorado the nickname of the Centennial State.<\/p>\n

Andrews sees the presence of Native American tribes as just one of many issues playing into Colorado\u2019s struggle to being admitted to the Union. There was reluctance among some to become a state because residents would have to pay taxes to run the government, he said.<\/p>\n

Partisan political divides played into the effort because the area was considered heavily Republican, Andrews said, fueling concerns about how statehood would affect national politics.<\/p>\n

Settlers moving West had used various tactics since Colonial times to advance despite the presence of Native Americans, whether through legal moves such as treaties or by instigating conflicts, Andrews said.<\/p>\n

\u201cColorado, when it achieved statehood, was a reflection of the extent to which American settlers had gained power over native peoples, especially on the plains,\u201d Andrews said.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, the rest of Colorado came under scrutiny.\u00a0Less than a year after statehood, newspaper headlines began \u201ctrumpeting the Utes must go,\u201d Andrews said. Under terms of an 1868 treaty, they lived on approximately one-third of western Colorado in exchange for giving up a huge expanse of mineral-rich land.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSettlers and the state government start coming up with pretexts for making life kind of impossible for the northern Ute bands in particular,\u201d Andrews said.<\/p>\n

Nathan Meeker, who founded the agricultural community Union Colony in present-day Greeley and the Greeley Tribune newspaper, became the Indian agent in northwest Colorado in 1878. He clashed with the Northern Utes when he pushed them to be farmers and withheld rations when they resisted, according to History Colorado.<\/p>\n

The Utes killed Meeker and his staff in 1879 when federal troops summoned by Meeker entered the area overseen by the White River Indian Agency in Rio Blanco County. The site was near the present-day town of Meeker, named for the Indian agent.<\/p>\n

The White River band of the Utes, in northwest Colorado, and the Uncompahgre Utes, in west-central Colorado, were force-marched out of Colorado in Utah in 1881. During that period, settlers flooded into the Utes\u2019 former homelands, Andrews said.<\/p>\n

The Southern Ute Agency was established in 1877 to serve the three Ute bands in the southern part of the state. They were confined to a reservation along the Colorado-New Mexico border.<\/p>\n

The 1887 Dawes Act authorized the federal government to divide Indian reservations into 160-acre private lots for individual tribal members. Mercier said the law was intended to remove the Utes from their traditional way of life that included hunting and gathering.<\/p>\n

The Weenuche band of the Utes agreed the land should be owned communally in what Mercier said was an act of resistance. The reservation split into two, with the Weenuche band moving to the west and forming the Ute Mountain Ute reservation. The Southern Ute reservation, to the east, is home to\u00a0the Mouache and Caputa bands.<\/p>\n

Williams refers to the inflow of non-Indians into Indian territory as an invasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn almost every single conflict, there was an attack on Indian people or their nation, their village. The survivors retaliate. And then it escalates,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

Williams worked with several other researchers on a series of reports under the banner of the Truth, Restoration, and Education Commission of Colorado, which concentrated on the displacement and genocide of Native Americans in the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying our people were the most peaceful people. They were really revengeful when somebody did something to them. They didn\u2019t forget,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Williams believes the goal behind the Sand Creek massacre, \u201cthe deadliest day in Colorado history,\u201d was to get Indians out of the way and secure statehood.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was genocidal in that it was an attempt to eliminate a portion of a population,\u201d Andrews said of the massacre. \u201cIt was an attempt to make it impossible for that population to reproduce itself. I think the perpetrators were quite transparent about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Victims were mutilated and scalped. Soldiers took body parts as trophies and paraded them through the streets of Denver.<\/p>\n

Witnesses to the atrocities included Capt. Silas Soule and Lt. Joseph Cramer, who ordered their men to stand down. Both testified against Chivington during congressional investigations<\/p>\n

Less than three months after testifying, Soule was gunned down on a street in Denver.<\/p>\n

Sand Creek happened just two months after Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders seeking peace met at\u00a0Camp Weld, a military post on the outskirts of Denver, with territorial Gov. John Evans and Chivington.<\/p>\n

The brutal onslaught also followed proclamations by Evans. The first required \u201cfriendly Indians\u201d to go to certain camps. The second issued Aug. 11, 1864, authorized \u201call citizens of Colorado,\u201d to kill \u201chostile Indians\u201d who didn\u2019t follow the first decree and take their property.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Gov. Jared Polis rescinded the 157-year-old proclamations after Williams discovered that the proclamations were still on the books. Former Rep. Adrienne Benavidez,a Commerce City Democrat who\u2019s now a state senator, supported the effort to repeal the policies.<\/p>\n

Unvarnished\u00a0 truths<\/h4>\n

Boulder County has been working for a while on going from \u201cland acknowledgements,\u201d or publicly recognizing that specific areas were originally the home of Native American people, to meaningful work, said County Commissioner Marta Loachamin of Longmont.<\/p>\n

A proposal under discussion with the Cheyenne and Arapaho people of Oklahoma includes leasing land on county open space for the tribes to steward the land. That could include restoring bison to the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have agricultural leases with many different tenants doing different types of projects and work, research, etc. \u2026 It seemed like an opportunity,\u201d Loachamin said<\/p>\n

In 2025, the county hired Karen Wilde as its first Native American-American Indian Relations Manager. Wilde, a member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, is charged with advancing the work with tribes whose homelands were in Boulder County, officials said.<\/p>\n

The city of Boulder has worked with the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes on plans for managing a site with a connection to Sand Creek. Boulder County residents who mobilized into Company D of the Third Colorado Cavalry at Fort Chambers, along Boulder Creek, took part in the 1864 massacre.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do believe government has a responsibility to understand and to determine how to act accordingly in regards to people being removed from their land and land being stolen and taken,\u201d Loachamin said.<\/p>\n

Denver City Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore supports the creation of an embassy in Colorado for Native Americans who view the state as their homeland. She noted that the proposed site on First Creek at DIA Open Space is near a corner of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, home to a bison herd.<\/p>\n

Gilmore has traveled with Williams and other advocates of the embassy to neighboring states to talk about the project. While promoting the embassy has been \u201can honor and a joy,\u201d Gilmore said she understands Indian tribes\u2019 lack of enthusiasm to mark the state\u2019s 150th anniversary.<\/p>\n

So does Nathan Richie. He is director of the Golden History Museum and Park and is co-chairman of the America 250 \u2013 Colorado 150 Commission, created by the Colorado General Assembly to develop and promote plans for activities around the anniversaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know for certain that this is not a cause for celebration for most Native Americans. The creation of the United States and the state of Colorado came at great cost of their land and culture and people, and so it is not something that they want to celebrate at all,\u201d Richie said.<\/p>\n

However, he said, the sesquicentennial is an opportunity to share the history of how Colorado came to be. Richie said when the commission was formed in 2022, the goal was to ensure there was broad representation on the panel. Positions were created for representatives of the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain tribes.<\/p>\n

The legislation was updated in 2024 to expand the commission. Richie said members wanted to create seats for members of tribes that don\u2019t have reservations in Colorado, but have historic ties to the state.<\/p>\n

Williams said he raised the lack of representation with commission members. He spoke during one of the listening sessions held to gather input from Indian people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had very unvarnished truths to share,\u201d Richie said of the sessions held around the state.<\/p>\n

People made clear that the story of Colorado becoming a state should include talk of the Sand Creek massacre and other atrocities, treaties reneged on and the treatment of children at Indian boarding schools.<\/p>\n

When people question commemorating an event with such a checkered past, Richie answers that two or more different things can be true at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is true that something like Colorado can be created because of great harm to native people and destruction of land and culture and gigantic loss,\u201d Richie said. \u201cIt also can be true that people love the state and are proud of the achievements of individuals who have called Colorado home and wish to make the state that we live in a better place for themselves and for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t diminish us to talk about bad things in our history. It actually makes us much stronger and wiser, I think, as a culture,\u201d Richie said.<\/p>\n

Here is a list of Native American tribes with ties to what is now the state of Colorado, based on information from History Colorado, which acknowledges that there may be tribes connected to the state that are not on the list:<\/p>\n

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