Sand Creek Massacre Project

In May 1999, the Sand Creek Massacre Project Team completed its successful search for the site of the Sand Creek Massacre. On the banks of Sand Creek in Kiowa County, Colorado, an archeological team that included tribal members, National Park Service staff and volunteers, and local landowners, found evidence of the Indian village that was attacked by the U.S. Army on November 29, 1864. On that day, approximately 700 soldiers led by Colonel John Chivington had struck at dawn, following an all- night ride from Fort Lyon 40 miles to the south. By day’s end, almost 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, many of them women, children, and the elderly, lay dead. One hundred thirty-five years later, as the archeological team swept the area with metal detectors, they found evidence of that horrific struggle. Here, among the shattered plates, utensils, hide scrapers, awls, and trade items that were once part of the daily lives of almost 500 Indian people, the survey team also found fragments of the weapons used to attack and kill them.