I appreciate that. I can just look at kevin if i need. Kevin, you teach, right . In addition to blogging. Er, in sorry, pete. Blo and so,gg youre used to being front of unruly crowds. G and you may also have some experience with a particularly nerve wracking speaking engagement. One of those engagements wrote youre not quite sure where the subject matter of your talk fits with the event at hand. And then, adding to that, you learn that perhaps, i dont know, cspan is going to broadcast your talk live on television because, hey, you know, live television. Ppen this stills, happens apparently. But if youve done any public ae speaking, you also know that yu moment where a that sense of re calm settles over you. I know that pete knows that because ive now watched him speak beautifully a number of times in the past couple of days. I just want to let you know, e thiss not happening to me right now. And so, without further ado. As many of you may know, on november 29th, 1864, approximately 700 troops from the 1st and 3rd colorado regiments led by colonel john shifington attacked an encampment in a bend of sand creek in Southeastern Colorado o territory. Some 900y native people who believed they had recently made peace with white authorities fled up the dry creek bed that e morning. 0 the onslaught left somewhere between 150 and maybe as many ae 225 of them dead. The overwhelming majority of whom were women, children or the elderly. Shifingtons surviving troops combed the field for what one of them called trophies, scalps, fingers and the genitalia of victims and then burned the village before returning to denver, colorado, where they co were greeted aslo heroes. Were in the weeks after sand creek, the men exhibited their plunder at a downtown theater. Nearly a century and a half later on april 28th, 2007, the n National Park service opened its 391st unit, the Sand Creek Massacre NationalHistoric Site. The ceremony that day was equala parts celebration and memorial service. After drum groups went silent a cheyenne chief had a prayer and then the colorado governor at s, the time, leaders of four native american tribes, local politicians and Park Service Officials all shared their views of what the Historic Site might accomplish in the coming years. T the speakers for the most part struck an optimistic pose. The site, they said, honored thy honor of the sand creek victims, it promised longdeferred healing, that was a word used regularly, longdeferred healing to the affected tribes and it also offered a blueprint for or future cooperation between thet native americans and federal authorities. Collective remembrance, they indicated, if it was situated in a sufficiently sacred place, could heal a rift cut by violence between cultures. Now, i think probably most of you already know this, but rial memorials arear always shaped b polit politics. Contemporary concerns inflect how history is presented at such places because memorial designers look to the present t. And the future as well as the past when they do their work. Nai this is especially true of National Historic sites. Hav federal officials have long viewed commemoration as k a kinf of patriotic alchamey for unity by appealing to shared perceptions of the past. Ntent. This is about as good as it gets for civil war content. Im kidding. You can take, for example,s president fi lincolns first inaugural address. The president suggested if americans would pay heed h to, quote, the mystic cords of memory from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hert stone across the nation, end quote, the cords would quuns again, quote, swell the chorus of the union. End quote. At sites around the united nts states, sentiments like en president lincolns, sentiments of events abiding faith in the nationalizing power of faith ar carved into stone. The monuments are supposed to serve the nations interest by linking together its peoples by an also legitimating federal authority out of common goes, memories, the theory goes, e americans have and will continue to forge common identities. Memories of sand creek speakerse at the Opening Ceremony suggested would play this role s allowingit visitors to the National Historic site to heal deep wounds. The justification for collective remembrance in the United States in recent years from the murray building in Oklahoma City to wer the 9 11 memorial in Lower Manhattan has often rested on a. Similar premise. The idea is that these memorials will comfort stricken ing communities and also a grieving nation. That the sand creek site was going to be the first unit in the National Park system to ch d label aner event in which feder troops had killed native people a massacre promised to deepen its utility in this regard. I by remembering shifingtons victims and the countrys history of racial violence visitors would supposedly be able to transcend their own prenlgss. This paltive vision, a vision, again, predicated on the ideas that memorials allow people to heal, this vision sufficient seo fused most of the speeches early in the ceremony. But as some of you may know or d as you may already have a sense, sand creek is a very unlikely source for these sorts of utopian sentiments. Ces, and so, dissenting voices, those of the native people, lly, especially, who participated in the memorialization process rejected what they saw as a hollow offer of painless reconciliation. This is eugene little coyote, the chairman in the northern Cheyenne Tribe and feared it might be a stalking horse for ae olderrn project for the federall governments plongstanding efft to strip tribal peoples of the distinctive identities. And so, rather than accepting tg the site t as a symbol of feder power, they portrayed the memorial as determination. Ce and other participants at the Opening Ceremony expressed suspicions for a host of additional reasons because the n federal government was unpopular on colorados eastern plains, especially when it insinuated itself in a local land use dispute, because of charges of i socalled Political Correctness hoveringly over maryland news grave at the time eastern colorados eastern ev representative called at revisionism and because of a gnawing sense that the word massacre somehow indicted the United States army. In the wake of the september rv 11th attacks with the nation tht embroiled in two wars overseas sot observers believed in 2007 that a memorial that questioned the militarys rectitude in any way necessarily flirted with antiamericanism. Over the next half hour or so, e im going to suggest that the controversies in 2007 echoed a f century and a halfs wrangling over sand creeks memory pivoting on a series of thorny a questions. First of all, whos culpable for the bloodshed at sand creek . Betteras understood adds a batto or massacre andns what was the h relationship of politics and violence on the american border lands . And also, between the process of continental expansion and the po twon wars, the civil war and th plains indian wars, spawned by that process. That process of expansion. Eek se when the sand creek site sponsors tried to answer these questions, they learned that the massacre remained history front in an ongoing culture war. Collective remembrance it turned out could tear scabs from old wounds as heal them and so while each new fight over american memory highlights the challenge of agreeing on a single historical narrative within the confines of a society like the United States, the case of sand creek proved unusually complicated, especially so because competing stories of thh massacre itself haunted the memorialization process. Ries alo the first of those stories belonged to a methodist minister and an abolitionist of John Shivington. He saw the violence as a noble part of civilizing the American West and preserving the union. Indeed, he saw those two ng processes as inextricably intertwined and used the gallons of blood along sand creeks banks to depict a master stroke. On november 29th, 1864, in the afternoon with cheyenne and his arapa arapaho corpses still cooling nearby that his men attacked an indian village, quote, brisling with 1,000 warriors. He already at this time began an process ofg exaggerating the accomplishments of his troops. He went on to say that his men killed several chiefs and hundreds of their followers. Ld r he would later on increase that number to 500 and ultimately to l0 or 700. He then justified the attack byd pointing to department ri dagss he said was committed by the fallen enemy at sand creek. His men hasad claimed his me he claimed had whipped, quote, savages, end quote, guilty of tb desecrating white bodies. This was an outrage he indicated surely demanded a quick reprisal dealt by a sure hand. For the remainder of hi life, john shifington said that sand creek was a glorious battle. He made that argument in large e measure by pointing to the bloodshed civil war context andr to the settlers remains he claimed his men had recovered er there. In spring in1865, for example, o testified to federal investigators looking into sande creek, quote, rebel emissaries sent among the indians to incite them, end quote. What he was saying is white coloradoans facing peril, the union facing peril from the ree. Men killed at nt to sand creek and pointed to the dakota uprising in minnesota. The decision to fight with the confederacy and a cheyenne warrior, a man of george bent, had served as the souths agent in the runup to sand creek o fh promising colorados native American Peoples that, quote, with the great father at washington having all he could do to fight the children of the south the indians could regain their country. End quote. In this way, John Shivington ee made the victims at sand creek enemies not just of white oodshe settlers id n colorado, but of u union morest broadly. The bloodshed then game a triumph not just in the indian wars but also of the civil war. Finally, in 1883 nearing the end of his life, he spoke publicly for the last time about sand creek. Het addressed a colorado herit. Organization at its annual banquet. He remained very popular in colorado until he died. With he addressed this Heritage Organization and concluded the remarks, i believe the last nd words he said on the subject of sand creek, quote, i stand by sand creek. A man of captain silas sole did not. Prior to h arriving in colorado four years before the massacre, sole lived in bleeding, kansas, where as asigh lie of john brown he was an abolitionist jay fight hawker. He refused to commit the troopsr under him to the fight at sand creek and he later wrote to a friend of his, a former norabl commander, nede winecoop, he si it sullied the fight for the union and also the process of settling the west. And that native and not white bodies desecrated there. World o soule depicted a world of civilized indians and savage whites, cataloged the terrible s cruelties visited upon the sand creek dead. And e bodies of men, women and children he said had all been hacked apart. E woul he wrote to winecoop, quote, thd that he would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there. tsdo isd creek wrote the barber in the slavery has come unaided assassination of mr. Lincoln. The barbarism of centrica is commented in the assassination of captain soule, this was a statement that foreshadowed some abolitionists decision to gravitate toward the Indian Reform Movement in the years after the passage of the 13th amendment. Three federal Indian Reform Movement in the years after the passage of the s 13than amendment. Them c three federal investigations eventually determined that sand creek had been a bad act. One of them went so far to call it a massacre but john findings shivington and others refused to accept the findings an enso because sand creek represented y such an eaunsettled chapter in e regions history the fight over its memory continued for years n afterward. In em1879, for example, author Helen Hunt Jackson embraced thet cause of indian reform. In letters to newspapers around the United States, she drew on silas soules recollections of sand krik. He used the massacre as a cudulo she said they were peaceful and the troops desecrated the dead. L her charges wrangled this man, a man named william biers and editor of the denver rocky reek mountain new hsad in 1864 and dismissed claims that sand creek had been a massacre. In 1879, biers ignored the ongoing indian wars. He replied to jackson that sand creek had actually pacified thep plains tribesre rather than and spurring them to more violence and said jackson originally frou new england and a woman to boot couldnt possibly understand the feolence at sand creek. He possessed a feat sensibili sensibilities out of place. Helen hunt jackson gave as goode as she got and rebutted the e bo sexism andds regionalism with er patriotic nationalism. Federal troops might better havt spent their time fighting racted confederates. Sand creek inar e this view hadh just been a massacre wu detrablgted from the union war effort. As jackson engaged in this prine war with biers, she worked on ai book about the nations history of mistreating its indigenous an people. Published in 1881, argued only e by overhauling federal indian policy could the United States be redeemed in the eyes of god w. The war, the red river war st and the great sioux war and then known as the custer massacre at the lirtd l big horn just over,r some officials in the department of the interior were primed to embrace Helen Hunt Jacksons calls for reform. But even as the climate surrounding federal tribal relations was shiftding, d adhee shivingtons perspective still had adherence in the west. News including editors at the gunnison democrat and jackson worked on century of dishonest called for, quote, another sand creek, end quote to wipe out th, utes in the wake of another massacre. Infuria infuriated, george bent named william bent an owl woman cheyenne wife weighed in on the history of sand creek. John shivington was an eager perpetrator and silas soule was a reluctantvi witness. Shown here with his wife magpie was a survivor. Wounded he fought for years to keep the memory of the massacre alive. Around the turn of the 20th ed e century, frederickr Jackson Turner speaking in chicago at the worlds fair fretted over ig the closing of the frontier. Conservationists warned of the impending ickes tix of the bison and native peoples that depended on them for survival and readers consumed piles of novels of cowboys and indians. The west in Popular Culture and Public Policy stood at the center of debates about the hado future of the United States and george bent worried that native americans had no voice in these conversations. He begannn relatting tribal history to george bird granelle. Also to james mooney, a renownet smithsonian ephnographer and to george hyde a relatively obscure historian and obscure enough i have no picture of him. I apologize for that. I m keeping him obscure. De omp tigs between historians. In 1906, george bent and george hyde published together six articles in a magazine called s the frontier. In those articles, they debunked John Shivingtons story of sandc creek. Although bent acknowledged as shivington charged in 1865 that he bent had fought with the confederacy, he served in ta sterling crisis first missouri cavalry andn i mocked the men i colorado who talked about rebel plots to ally with the regions indians, end quote. The comanches he noted were foes of texas and the arapahos and shy quecheyennes had no incenti fight with the south. Turning to the massacre, bent relayed details of the betrayal of american and white flags oops flying over black kettles lodgt and of the colorado troops butchery. Bent understood the civil war as a war of tng imperialism rathern liberation. And he concluded that shivington wrought with sand creek the thing he claimed to have fly ex prevented. Conflict that threatened if only briefly expansion into the west. Not surprisingly, the essays outraged John Shivingtons surviving member. Major Jacob Downing resented the charge of a massacre. Thatsome their actions somehow. Dishonored their service and that an indian had dared to spoe suggest that a white man might be he duncivilized. Downing responded to george ben in the denver times labeling hil a cut throat and a thief, a liar and scoundrel but worst of all a half breed. End quote. He then turned his attention tor imbedding shivingtons stories into a civil war narrative that they werena constructing around the United States at the time. T work that culminated in denver with the unveiling of a memoriaa on thetu State Capitol steps in 1909. The monument featured a plaque on the base cataloging battles and engagements in coloradoans fought during the war. Sand creek was among them. Ivil w your lower right. With veterans of the civil war nearing the end of their lives campaigns to shape how future generations would remember the conflict swept the United States. Docu archives at the timeme acquirede documentnt collections, authors published histories and cities unveiled monuments and memorials. As david blight,ff of course, at other skoen lors argued in rece years, the efforts were often intended to inspire onlookerless to em grace a reconciliationist narrative of the war. Carrie janning is here. I apologize. A he reic story of which soldiers fought s bravery and well. The rootsl causes, struggles ove the fate of slavely and in th definitions of citizenship and over the right to shape an emerging american empire in theh transmississippi west could and indeed should be set aside in serv