Denver museum closes Indian massacre display

Colorado’s new state history museum closed an exhibit on the Sand Creek Indian massacre, one of the state’s darkest chapters, after descendants of the slaughter’s survivors demanded changes in how it is portrayed and complained that they weren’t consulted about the display. A U.S. Army force led by Col. John M. Chivington swept into a sleeping Indian village along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado on Nov. 29, 1864. Troops killed more than 160 Cheyenne and Arapaho, most of them women, children and the elderly. Officials at the time insisted the attack was to avenge American Indian raids on white settlers and kidnappings of women and children. Dale Hamilton, a descendant of Chief Sand Hill, one of the survivors, said curators of the History Colorado Center museum in Denver didn’t consult tribes about the display, which opened in April 2012. The exhibit was closed in June. Tribal historians found some dates were wrong, excerpts from letters left out crucial details, and the exhibit attempted to explain American Indian-white settler conflicts as a “collision of cultures,” claimed Hamilton, of Concho, Okla., where he lives with Cheyenne and Southern Arapahoe tribes. “This wasn’t a clash of cultures. This was a straight-up massacre. All we are looking for is respect for our relatives who were murdered,” Hamilton said...more