The physical evidence at both sites is not merely antiquarian.

It contributes to the ongoing process of historical reckoning — the effort to understand what happened with as much precision as possible, as a foundation for the moral and political accounting that the events demand.

The establishment of both sites as National Historic Sites, with the involvement of descendant communities in their management, represents one form of this reckoning.

The language of the founding legislation — which explicitly uses the word “massacre” for Sand Creek — is a formal acknowledgment of what the events represented.

Black Kettle’s Speeches and Their Significance