Sand Creek’s National Recognition

The establishment of Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in 2000 was the product of decades of advocacy by Cheyenne and Arapaho descendants and by historians and journalists who had worked to document and publicize what happened at Sand Creek.

The site’s name is itself significant.

Congress did not call it the “Battle of Sand Creek” or the “Sand Creek Engagement.” It called it the “Sand Creek Massacre” — using the word that the congressional investigation of 1865 had used, acknowledging in federal law what the federal government’s own investigation had concluded in 1865.

The legislation establishing the site included specific findings about what happened at Sand Creek — that it was a massacre, that the camp was there under military protection, that the victims were overwhelmingly women, children, and the elderly.