Guests: Ricky Candy, Tony Cartwright, Kendall Collie, Fred Mosqueda, Chester Whiteman

Archival Tape: Blanche White Shield, Colleen Cometsevah

Resources:

• A Misplaced Massacre by Ari Kelman 
• Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes' website
• Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
• Dec 2, 2022: The betrayal at Sand Creek by Colorado Matters

Oral Histories Of The Sand Creek Massacre From The Cheyenne And Arapaho Tribes Located In Oklahoma

Noel Black: Hey, it's Noel, and this is the first episode in a series about the Sand Creek Massacre. Throughout the series, we'll focus on sharing Cheyenne and Arapaho accounts and oral histories, and you'll be hearing a lot less from me than usual in order to keep the focus on their stories and their accounts. In this episode, you'll be hearing from Fred Mosqueda, Blanche White Shield, and Colleen Cometsevah. You'll also hear from Kendall Collie, Ricky Candy, Tony Cartwright, and Chester Whiteman. They're all members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes and descendants of the massacre's victims. Some of these recordings were made in the late '90s and early 2000s as part of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Sites designation. They are recordings of elders who are no longer with us, and their knowledge of the Sand Creek Massacre was presented as part of History Colorado's exhibit, The Sand Creek Massacre - The Betrayal that Changed Cheyenne and Arapaho People Forever. This is the first time they've been shared outside of a museum or an archive. But before we get started, the tribes have asked that we give a little bit of background on what happened. The Sand Creek Massacre was the deadliest day in Colorado history, and it changed Cheyenne and Arapaho people forever. On the morning of November 29th, 1864, U.S. troops under the command of Colonel John M. Chivington attacked a peaceful camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho people made up mostly of women, children, and elders, along the big Sandy Creek in southeastern Colorado, near the present-day town of Eads. The scale of the massacre was horrifying. More than 230 men, women, and children were murdered in the most brutal ways imaginable.  U.S. troops mutilated living and dead bodies, taking body parts as gruesome trophies back to be paraded and displayed in Denver. The massacre resulted in the permanent removal of all Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes from their rightful homelands in Colorado. Many Cheyenne and Arapaho people still live in Colorado, though many more live in Oklahoma, where the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribe is headquartered. What follows are the stories and oral accounts of that horrible day that forever changed the lives of Colorado's original landkeepers. First, we'll hear from Fred Mosqueda, tribal historian for the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, recorded at the Sand Creek Massacre site in 2022. 

Fred Mosqueda: You come here to me. You spend time listening, listening to it and feeling it, you know. It's a sad place, you know. It's not, not one to be celebrated. First thing I thought of when I was coming today is, I told my wife, we top that hill. So there's the killing grounds. And that's what it was. The deceit, the lying, the dishonesty, all that ended here with this massacre. That was the end result of the government not being honest and using them as a pawn.  When they had the meeting at Camp Weld, that set everything in motion, that gave Chivington and Evans the pawns to put a feather in their hat for political reasons, they, that's what they were doing, but also to get rid of 'em because they didn't want us in Colorado. We were in the way. To me, it's just it's it's just a horrible thing that the Arapahos were completely just tore to pieces. And that was the intent of, of, of the people doing this, was to mutilate and to make an example, you might say, and they had the right people there to do this. So this is what happened, you know, here, that they were just totally wiped out,  except for the children, and the children ran. The lies and the deceit, that's the thing you have to think about. They were put here. They were told to be here. Curtis called them "prisoners of war". And so they were held here. They were told to stay here. There was nothing here because they were told to be here. This is where it was safe, that when they heard the military approaching, they went out to watch. They probably were thinking, well, maybe we're going to get some more rations today because they were starving here. So they went out there to see, you know, maybe they're bringing us rations, maybe they're bringing us word of where we can go, what we're going to do, you know, what's going to happen. Instead, they were fired upon. They were destroyed as they stood there. No adults survived that attack. Only children ran from the Arapaho camp. You know, our people always said that, you know, they weren't given proper burial, they weren't given proper songs and prayers and medicine, ways that we help our people to go across. You know, they didn't, they weren't painted. These things were were not allowed because they weren't here. They were butchered. I told you, when you get here, you listen and you feel because there's some spirits that are still here. And they're still questioning, you know, maybe they're they're, they come here just to try to tell us something. But we won't forget 'em for what happened to them. We learn from what happened to them. But there's that feeling here. The times have allowed us a chance to educate the people. People are more open now to listen to our, to our history, listen to who we are, what what would happen to us. You know, they want they want to know, you know. And so we have to be ready when when that opportunity comes to educate. There's a lot of people still that that support, you know, Chivington, that supports, you know, Byers and Evans and all them that were prominent in Colorado history. They still support him, but I think by, they're starting to listen to us a little bit. So we got to be ready to educate 'em on who we were back then in the 1850s, who was the Arapaho people. And we had to be able to tell them right then. We have to be able to be ready to educate them, not only them, but schools too. We can go into schools, we tell these stories of who we are, you know, who we were in the 1850s. And then they see us today that, you know, we're still Arapaho people, we still got that same belief, that same feelings. We we still have the same medicines. We still have the same songs from there to now, but it's just that we've had to adjust in this world, but we can still educate them and tell them, you know, who we are, you know. They see the streets, Arapaho Street, Cheyenne, you know, and you know, Nawat, you know, what they call Niwot. And we tell them who he was. We tell them his sister made it to Oklahoma. You know, she's buried there in Banner, Oklahoma. And we can tell them, you know, who who their descendants are today. You know, we can tell them, you know, they're still living. They know the stories. And we have to be ready to tell them, to educate them of who the Arapaho people are and who we we still are today. The times have just made it so that they they're listening a little more than they did before. And we have to be ready for that. You know, Sand Creek cost a lot of things, there was a lot of ripples from from this, what happened here, you know, there was a lot you know, there was a lot of distrust to the United States government. A lot of things happen. And, you know, we had to pay for a lot of things that because the way we reacted to it.  When you was born Arapaho, you know, there was certain things that happened in your life. But the main thing they taught you was always to take care of each other. And I think, if everybody, the non-natives, you know, the tribes, if they can all look at that and say, that's how we survived, is by taking care of each other, why can't we all start to look at what happened and realize that, yes, we're never going to forget this. Yes, we're always going to have this in the mind. We're always, it's part of history, it's part of Colorado history, it's part of United States government history. But we can learn from it. And you you have to understand why sometimes we have a little distrust while we question things, while we're a little leery about government and how the, how our treaties don't really didn't really take care of us.  But then use that to all look at each other and say, well, we have to take care of each other if we're going to make it. That's so, that's how Arapahos made it, you know, and I think that's the thing that they should look at, because then it would be a better place everywhere if we just don't take care of each other. 

Noel Black: Next, we'll hear oral histories of the Sand Creek Massacre from Blanche White Shield, a Cheyenne elder and descendant of massacre victims. This was recorded more than thirty years ago as part of founding the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. 

Blanche White Shield: They said that some old magic chiefs, they really want make of peace with all of it. And they've been, you know, having the maintenance to having peace and peace in this truth. They really trust white men. And they they don't like to cheat, like once they become a chiefs, they got to be honest. They got to be sincere and love their people and help them in good way.  Since they've become a chiefs, they can't argue with anyone. If somebody hurts them, they've got to take their pipe and smoke, that's all they could do. And this pure old mans, that Black Kettle and another one, let's see, what's his name? Is it, is it sitting in there? they were there when? Just a few days before we talked to them. They went to soldier camp, and they, they want, they really want a peace. And they came back together and somebody told them, let's let's going come and attack you. No, they won't go there. No, we're just making a peace work them soldiers, they call them bluecoats too, they didn't pick their word warning, Indian is not dead once they   make a screen. They or somebody, they take it serious.  Yes. You? No. We, they wouldn't hurt us. And next thing they know,  they come those bluecoats and shooting at them. And it's when they start shooting at them, this Black Kettle and White Emerald, they've got that flag. I guess they got that flag from those soldiers. Somebody told them to wave it. So. Oh, soldiers went and picked you. Just the way that you're already making peace, told them. So what they did, they raise up their flag. Instead the bluecoats destroyed. And then they shoot at them. A lot of them scatter out, the women and children. They scatter out, try to hide in the banks. And uh, one woman was carrying a, she was pregnant, she start to run and jump into that bank. I guess that baby born  and one old lady came running that been hiding there.  She thought that baby could take care of them.   And then the guy, my husband's relative, that was his grandma's son, came running. He jump into that bank that, his religion was it common crowns that caught? It was their religion. Not for fun, their way not to do. And now.  He came and jumped into this. Just that. And this woman, this nurse, Oh, no, you came to the wrong place. When he look at a list of babies born, no, he jumped out right away, cautious backward. That means he was happy seeing the baby. Just stop that. He start to run, run off, tried to run, soldiers gun him, shot him down and. Next day, they knowed that my husband's, that grandma, they brought her there, she got shot down that there are kids here and taken this, they cut her up everywhere.  She was still breathing and alive. She was Spanish, Spanish woman. She was still alive and she had a little girl. This little girl, I guess she got escape from that camp. Some way this, this mother, that Spanish woman, she was all cut up. And they, took care of her a child you know that could to survive and anyway she was dying.  She was asking for her, the girl, little girl, and, they told her, it already, she already run off. She got escaped. Oh, she was happy.  Later she died.  She was a Spanish woman and her her, the one that got shot down, that that, crown and this little girl. I guess she had two kids. And, once she died, I don't know what what they do there. And, I say. Anyway, that's what, that's what they tell us, grandma's choice, I can't go, but lot of them got shot down. They were all relatives at his sister's. Oh, I never let that go in their family. They, they kept together. Like, this was the, Black Kettle's village. That's that's all I can, I can remember. 

Noel Black: This is Colleen Cometsevah, a Cheyenne elder whose family memories and histories of Sand Creek were also recorded as part of founding the National Historic Site. 

Colleen Cometsevah: Well, the only thing I ever heard was from my maternal side. Of course, some information from my paternal side,  my paternal grandfather Paul used to tell us that his grandfather, Big Jake, was at Sand Creek and that he survived, but he did not go into any specifics. They just said that he survived. And on my maternal side, my great great grandmother was Young Woman Stone who was buried in the colony cemetery. She died in 1905, I think it was, I don't know. Anyway, she was married about four times, and she had four grown sons, xxx and Sioux. Sioux was my maternal grandmother's father, and he was a half brother to Mary (last name?), Mary Little Bear (last name?).  Sioux was the one that was mentioned in George Bent's book, as one of the first young men at Sand Creek to see the soldiers. He had gone out to check on the family's horses and he was met by another young man named Kingfisher, running back to the camps. And he was shouting and the soldiers were, white men were running off their, everywhere he looked he could see the soldiers coming from the South. He ran back to his camp, to their teepee. His mother and father were already gone. So they grab that weapons and put on his war bonnet and they ran out to dodge between them or behind the teepee so that they could get a good shot at and he ran upstream with the soldiers right behind him shooting every step of the way. He said when he got to the tents and he tumbled in the pits since nearly all the fellas were shot down or gone but he survived and so did his mother and father. And then, my mother's father shot her father was named Irving Good Blanket, the Cheyenne name was xxxx. Well, he told my grandmother. I guess after they were married, that his grandparents were both killed. Thankfully, his grandfather's name was Sioux with two missions. But there weren't any no more authors Cheyenne name, and translated, that means Sioux message to. And his, he had two wives. Wife number one Blackfoot woman also killed at Sand Creek. So that was my great great grandfather and great great grandmother and wife number two survived. She later remarried because of multiple more families. My maternal grandmother was named Minnie Sioux Goodblanket,  her mother's name was Walking Woman and Walking Woman's father was Black Kettle number one, and her mother's name was lost there, which is, the justice who translated the stories of love. Both of these were killed at the Washita but Sioux and his three brothers were half-brothers, would be two brothers and were all half-brothers to Sioux or those that are, I'm getting mixed up then. Sioux and his two brothers were half-brothers to Little, Little Bear. Anyway, I heard these stories from the time I was a little girl, and from time to time they would talk about it. That's how come I knew I was descended from someone at Sand Creek. 

What were some of the stories that you heard? 

Colleen Cometsevah: Just that, the soldiers, the way they mutilated the dead, some of them, they didn't die immediately,  they killed them. And that they did that that one day and then they came, they stayed overnight in the Indian camp and they plundered the camps and burned them the next day and I heard from different families, different stories, such as the mother that was hurt and was hurt, a little girl, she managed to catch horse. She jumped on and rode that horse by her little girl, that little girl held out her arms and her mother grabbed her by the arm and put her on the horse. And then this lady I was telling you about, all this stuff she says that her great great grandmother was the little girl. And she'll tell you how she was covered, that put in the hole and covered,  to say in their lives what to do. And she she said she survived them in a sacred area, and they out with these two, two small children and their father caught one of the horses that was running loose through the camp and put his little son and daughter on the horse's, horse, and told them to keep on going and gave them a stick or something to keep switching and the two little kids ran the horse for five minutes, looking him down lay down and died from exhaustion. And different families that we talked to about Sand Creek in the past years would tell us things like that, so they they're very much alive in stories and they're handed down to  children, grandchildren. 

Noel Black: Kendall Collie, Ricky Candy and Tony Cartwright are members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.  In 2022, they generously shared their stories of the Sand Creek Massacre as part of a public remembrance held in Boulder, Colorado. 

Kendall Collie: My name is Kendall Collie. I'm a Cheyenne from Hammond, Oklahoma. I'm a direct descendant of Elwood. The place we come from is called Hammond. Hammond, Oklahoma. The population is roughly around 500-ish, and it's 50% Cheyenne and 50% Caucasian. Almost every family there is a direct descendant of Sand Creek and Washita.  My family here, Sarah Orange; her mother, Jolene Orange. They're from the Fingernail family. Their sons, Derrick Whiteskunk and Darren, they're part of the Whiteskunks. They're direct descendants. Also my step, my father-in-law is here. He comes from Standing Waters. And White Mans, they're also direct descendants. The story is of Yellow Dress there at Sand Creek. The mother was carrying the baby whenever the cavalry attacked. The mother, the baby was shot in the leg, which also passed through the mother. The mother died there, but the baby survived. In here, in recent times,  whenever our people would gather, they will honor that baby, which was a full grown woman, now a elder. They would cater to her needs. They would honor her when we gathered. And that was a story of Yellow Dress. And here are some of the names are, that are from Hammond, such as White Shield, Fingernails, Whiteskunks. This is just going off the top of my head.  Magpies, Little Man. Little Man is, was from there. But I just wanted to let you know that our Cheyenne people who are still here and we're doing really good. Thank you. 

Ricky Candy: Good afternoon. My name is Ricky Candy. Cheyenne from Hammond, Oklahoma. Family, come up here. It's kind of hard to tell these, these Sand Creek Washita stories. The way we heard it, you can feel it when they tell you. But. My Cheyenne name is Ishimahas, it means  Redman, and there's a lot of, a few other people that carry that name. But how I'm here and my family. Said. This chief named Red Moon, he made a place for us in Hammond and Cheyenne, say, Ishimaha Heaven, it just means Red Moon's Haven. How we ended up there was during Sand Creek, he was, he was still a young man. He wasn't, he wasn't chief yet, I believe his father was. I believe his father had gotten shot. Red Moon had got shot when he started running off. He made it, a lot of 'em didn't. But. If he, if he didn't make it, if he didn't, he didn't run, you know, I wouldn't be here. So I just want to say thank you for having us. Not. 

Toni: Oh, my name is Toni. I'm Southern Arapaho. I grew up near Calumet, Oklahoma on my grandparents' allotted land. I was raised by my grandparents, John and Rose Charcoal Pedro. I come from the Pedro, Charcoal and Dyer family. The story that I'm going to share with you today was told to me by my grandmother, Rose Charcoal Pedro. Sand Creek November 29th, 1864. On this morning, an Arapaho woman was inside her teepee with her two small children, a boy and a girl. The mother told the children that the soldiers were in the camp and that she was going to cut open the back of the teepee, and when the soldiers come to the door, they are to run out the back and to run and to run and to keep running. So they did as they were told while their mother fought the soldiers at the teepee door.  This gave them time to escape. A day or two after the attack, these children were found wandering by a Mexican family. They were able to get the children to go back with them to their cabin. This family took care of these children as their own for a couple of years. They gave the boy the name Pedro and the girl the name Maria. One day, the Mexican man was away from his home. He seen a group of Indians riding south. He stopped and told them and somehow got them to follow him home, where he showed them the Indian children, believing maybe the children might belong to their tribe. The leader spoke to the children in Arapaho, and the children understood. The leader told him, these are our children. This group of Indians took the children with them. They were going to the agency at Darlington, Oklahoma. They turned the children over to the authorities at the agency. They asked the children their names, who their family was. The children only remembered their mother's name. The agent gave them first names, Tony Pedro and Maria Pedro. They kept the names Pedro as their last name. That is where my family name Pedro came from. That little boy, Tony Pedro, was my great-great grandfather. Proud. 

Noel Black: Finally, we'll hear from Chester Whiteman, descendant of the massacre's victims and a tribal historian for the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. This was recorded at the History Colorado Center in 2023. 

Chester Whiteman: There's a bow and arrow set right next to your, fireplace. I said, my great granddad made that. I said, I watched him make it, and the tips were German silver, and he cut 'em out with those big old tin snips. He cut 'em out, and then he sharpened them. He said, don't bother them, they're sharp. What I do is bother them, cut me. What I'd like to talk about is like the treaties. You know that the beginning of Sand Creek prior to Sand Creek was that Wynkoop met with Black Kettle, but Black Kettle wouldn't meet with him because of, you know, the stuff that happened before. So he sent some of his, warriors out there to meet Wynkoop, and and they shot one of the guys, you know, Lean Bear, I think it was, and after they, they, settled all that, then they wanted to talk. So Black Kettle came out and talked with him, and they wanted to, talk peace. And I think Wynkoop was kind of on the offensive and he wanted to have war, but when he spoke with Black Kettle that it switched around that he was looking for peace. And Black Kettle said, we'll go get, these captives from one of the other bands and we'll bring them as the offering, peace offering to, you know, further this discussion. So that's what he did. He left and he went and got them captives and brought 'em back, and so that's when they ended up in, in Denver with, Evans and Chivington to talk peace. And when they got finished, they wouldn't, they wouldn't budge on negotiations. So they they pushed Black Kettle and his, his crew off to, Wynkoop to take him down to Sand Creek or to Bent's Fort or Fort Lyons and they say,  here we'll take care of you. So they go down there and however, however they did things and they were asking for rations and different things like that and the government didn't want that. They wanted hostilities, and in the background, they're making the, the First and Third Colorado militia. And when they seen that Wynkoop was getting too friendly with the with the, Black Kettle's bunch, they moved him out and put, I think, Anthony in there, and he cut all the ties off with Black Kettle with his folks that were at Sand Creek. And the First and Third were supposed to be looking for hostiles, and, you know, the funny thing is, all the hostiles were up around Smoky, Smoky Hill Country and Republican River. But he came south to where all the all the ones that were looking for peace, and they agreed because of the, proclamation that Evans put out, that all hostile Indians and all the friendly Indians go to certain locations, and the Cheyennes were going to go to Sand Creek or to Bent's Fort or Fort Lyons. So they already they already did a massacre at Buffalo Springs and killed killed a family or two down there, I think 30 people, something like that, 10 to 30 Cheyennes, and said they were robbing a mail, mail trailer or something, which they have no use for, for mail, you know, and, and, they can't read. They can't write. So how do they justify that? You know, so then Sand Creek happens, you know, and they, they, instead of looking for hostiles then they have so many days left on their, what is it, 100 day, 100 day tour, so they have to find action and he didn't want to go to, up north to fight the real warriors. Instead he picks on women and children, elders that couldn't fight back. And it was it was actually a killing field, you know? And it killed a bunch of young people and elders, and then they did the massacre, the mutilations and paraded them through downtown Denver. And then the treaties came about, was like we still had the 1851 treaty in place from, from the Front Range to Nebraska. That was our territory, you might say, but we never owned anything, you know, we always worked with the land. And Doctrine of Discovery came, and everybody wanted to own this and own that. After the '51 treaty came the, I think it was the Fort Wise Treaty where they gave us some property around Sand Creek in that area. But before the ink could dry, they didn't even have it mapped or surveyed, the 1868 treaty came into play, which just took away, the Fort Wise treaty, which would have kept us in Colorado. But they gave us the '68 treaty, the Medicine Lodge Treaty, and gave us the western, western half of Oklahoma. And then right after they gave us the '68 Medicine Lodge Treaty, then that's when the Dawes Act came into play, and we lost from 5 to 7 million acres of our own property with the 18, the '89, Oklahoma land run. So we really got shortchanged, and we still have, I think we got now, we got probably, maybe 80,000 acres still in tribal control. Maybe, maybe more than that. And that's individual allotments and tribal allotments. And there's a, there's there's one reservation in Oklahoma that's recognized by the, by the government, and that's the Osage reservation. It's still our property, you know, it's we're still holding on to our way of life. We we still have our covenants that were given to us way back, you know, and we still, we still practice those ways of life today. You know, we're we're. We were given a covenant that is about war, but we didn't go out and look for war. If it came to us, then we went to war. And, you know, our our people, I don't know what it was, but our people were, I don't know, huge, huge trophies for the United States government. You don't hear stories about other tribes the way you do about Cheyennes and Arapahos, they were actually hunted, you know, by the government, because they were warriors that would not give. They wouldn't, they wouldn't surrender. And today I'm doing a lot of research on, we touch on Sand Creek a little bit, we touch on Washita a little bit. We're still tracking the 53 ladies that were captured at Washita that were used as a shield so Custer could get out of that war zone there. So we're still tracking those. I think we got about 14 or 18 of them identified. But, and then a lot of research on Little Bighorn, and we we were always left out of the Little Bighorn story, the Southern Cheyennes. But I have a list of all the warriors that participated at the Little Bighorn, and if you look at that list and know what you're talking about, there's a lot of Southern Cheyenne warriors that were leading the war parties at Little Bighorn.  With the Dawes Act, when they open it up for settlement, the Dawes Act gave each tribal member 160 acres of their choosing. And then when they got theirs, then they open it up for for all the, non-Indians and a lot of, a lot of our folks got swindled out of their own 160, you know, and that's still going on today. I used to, be able to if I had if I had a problem or was in a dilemma, you know, I would go down and talk to one of the old guys, you know, one of my instructors, and take him an offering and ask him, because they told me, when you go and ask somebody, you know, if you want, if you want the truth, take him some tobacco, you know, no, no, they have to tell you the truth. So otherwise if you don't take them something like that, then they can tell you anything they want, you know? So I would always do that, follow protocol and ask them, and they would tell me, you know, there wasn't there wasn't a whole lot of things that I had to ask, but sometimes one of these younger guys would throw a curve at me and I wouldn't know how to answer it, you know? So I go and talk to him. And then after all my folks that I got information from were gone, you know, I started looking around, I said, man, who do I go? You know, who do I ask? And I sit there and sit there and light bulb came on, you know. So I have a sweat lodge in the back of my house. So I would go back there and sit and pray a little bit and sit there for a little bit longer. And it was like they were talking to me. The information they gave me was, my answer was in that information. So that's how I, I  still do that today, you know, and, and I try to tell other folks, you know, the knowledge you have, share it please. Because no telling when you're going to, when your number is going to be up, you know, and the knowledge you have if it doesn't get past us, it's gone. And I said, some of you guys have good knowledge. I know because I was there, and some say, well, I'm not going to share anything with him. Okay. Well, I'm not going to beg you, you know, your choice because you know, this is your life. This is the way it's supposed to be and for our next generation to continue on here, we try to try our best to fill in the blanks for these younger generation. They really did that? You know, did they really do that? The soldiers really did that?  I said yeah, you have to understand, I said.  We weren't like this the way we are today.  We were out there on the plains, was moving, doing this and that. I said, Cheyenne people were trophies, I said. It was it was an honor for those folks in the military to take out Cheyennes. I said, and that's that's just simple fact, I said. If you look at everything I said, those we were, we always had a bull's eye on us.