Sand Creek Massacre memorial to replace Civil War statue at Colorado Capitol
The memorial will comprise of a massive, 24-foot-tall sculpture of an Arapaho chief, a Cheyenne chief and a Native American woman holding a child
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In front of descendants of survivors of the Sand Creek Massacre, Colorado lawmakers Monday unanimously signed off on a memorial sculpture to commemorate the 1864 atrocity at the state Capitol.
This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.
“Our hope is that this memorial will be a turning point when Colorado says, ‘We are not afraid to confront our past because we believe in a just and honest future,’” said Sen. Kyle Mullica, a Thornton Democrat and sponsor of the memorial resolution.
Both chambers unanimously approved the proposal for the project that will be built in front of the west steps of the building, overlooking Civic Center Park and downtown Denver.
The bipartisan resolution was cosponsored in the Senate by Cheyenne Wells Republican Rod Pelton. In the House, it was sponsored by Democratic Rep. Tammy Story and Republican Rep. Ty Winter.
The memorial will comprise of a massive, 24-foot-tall sculpture of an Arapaho chief, a Cheyenne chief and a Native American woman holding a child.
The current plan is for the sculpture to replace a Civil War statue that was pulled down by protestors in 2020. The location, right in front of the iconic Capitol building, has been boarded off since.
The 1864 Sand Creek Massacre is possibly the worst atrocity in Colorado history.
About 250 Arapaho and Cheyenne civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, were killed by U.S. troops along Colorado’s eastern plains, near the modern day town of Eads.
Otto Braided Hair is a representative for the Northern Cheyenne and a descendant of Sand Creek Massacre victims. He was on the Senate floor during Monday’s vote on the resolution.
“There’s got to be some kind of acknowledgement. That’s a beginning of the healing,” said Braided Hair. “When we first went to go set up the work on the massacre site, they were unfriendly. Today, the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations are recognized, acknowledged, both unanimous support from the House side and Senate side. And I’m just beside myself.”
Braided Hair and other Sand Creek victims’ descendants have been working for decades to memorialize the massacre at the Capitol. Coming more than a century and a half after the initial event, they say this is just one step in the healing process.
“Restorative justice. This is a good step towards that. We’re not there yet. We still got a long way, but this is a good step,” said Chris Tall Bear, also a descendant of the massacre’s victims and a member of both the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes.
About a dozen other Cheyenne and Arapaho community members joined Tall Bear and Braided Hair to witness the resolution’s passage.
The artist, Gerald Anthony Shippen, said he wants the piece to invoke heroism.
“I’m a conduit, you know, to carry this forth,” said Shippen, who is from Wyoming. “This is a statue that represents the people who have survived. The figures will be seven feet tall. So that makes them heroic. The tepee, at about 23 feet tall. That’s pretty much life size, you know, for a tepee.”
The memorial will be installed in 2026.
