By Mike Bowen, co-author, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site
The Sand Creek artifacts Chuck Bowen found with his metal detector were meticulously documented, each with a photo and GPS coordinates.
The photos provided a timestamp and the GPS provided the location of the artifact. The artifacts are bagged with a card that documents the latitude and longitude, along with the date collected. The GPS coordinates were loaded onto satellite imagery, and when they are viewed on a computer, they show how big the Sand Creek village and battleground areas were. The Sand Creek event stretched for several miles. George Bent said their camps were two to three miles long (George Bent to George Hyde 5-3-1906), and that was the case with Sand Creek, based on artifact locations. (The blog continues below these photos).
The massacre story says the Indians were camped below the bluff at the National Park Service Sand Creek historic site. However, no period artifacts have been found there. If that story was true, it would have been littered with bullets. Where are all the bullets that were supposedly fired on that sleeping Indian village?
There is a reason why bullets or other artifacts haven’t been found below that bluff.
There wasn’t any action there.
According to George Bent, a Dog Soldier (warrior) in Black Kettle’s village, the Indians saw the soldiers coming from several miles away and most fled the village. Very little fighting took place in the village. Most of the Indians that didn’t flee sought shelter at Black Kettle’s lodge, and it is documented that most of the bullets fired in the village were at his tipi. Chuck found a tipi site that fits this description. It was the only one with lots of bullets.
Not only did the Indians flee the village, the village wasn’t below the bluff. That area would have been littered with village artifacts including arrowheads, kettle fragments, knives, spoons, and coffee grinders, to name a few.
No period artifacts were found below that bluff.
Fred Werner, who was accompanied by Larry Finnell on several trips, searched the site owned by Bill Dawson at the time, with metal detectors. They were very experienced. Finnell found hundreds of artifacts at the Summit Springs site near Sterling.
Werner wrote a book titled The Sand Creek Fight, and he details his many trips made over multiple summers to that site. There is a common theme in his book.
“I found absolutely nothing except a few junk items – tin cans and wire,” Werner stated. “Neither of us had found a single battle relic” (The Sand Creek Fight, page 167).
That comment is made multiple times throughout his book, yet he still concluded there were artifacts to be found below that bluff. With such experience, it doesn’t make sense he would come to that conclusion.
We encourage you to check these facts for yourself. Werner, or anyone that accompanied him, didn’t find a single period artifact. Many others have searched, and they all came away not finding anything either.
All of the period artifacts that were discovered, were found over a mile up the creek from the bluff. However, that bluff is very important to the Sand Creek story.
“At daylight in the morning the command was forty miles away from the fort. Just as the sun came up the command reached the top of a ridge overlooking the valley of the Big Sandy, from which point a large Indian village could be seen scattered along the north bank of the stream about three miles away,” Irving Howbert said.
He said the Indian village stretched along the creek, starting about three miles up the creek from the bluff. His distance of how far the village was from there lines up with where Chuck and Sheri found artifacts.
It’s not a coincidence that Chuck found artifacts starting at least two miles up the creek from that bluff and Howbert said the village was about three miles up the creek. Howbert’s account and Chuck’s artifact discovery locations corroborate each other.
The artifacts Chuck found were on private property, on the Bowen family ranch. See chapter eleven in our book, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site, to see how Chuck helped the NPS find artifacts which likely included the Arapaho camp.
There is also the map Lt. Bonsall made. He went to Sand Creek four years after the event and measured the distance of the village. He documented his camp site (camp no. 2) as being six miles from a placed called Three Forks, where three military trails fork off in different directions. Three Forks can be seen on maps and satellite imagery. When Chuck was researching Sand Creek in the early ‘90s, he looked at 1936 aerial agricultural photo maps, and he could clearly see those three trails. Just above Bonsall’s camp, he documented the village at about 2 ½ miles.
Chuck found artifacts in a six mile stretch that fits Bonsall’s documentation of the village location. Just like with Irving Howbert, Bonsall’s map and Bowen’s artifact locations corroborate each other.
It’s incredible that a strip map made in 1868 and an account in the early 1900s from a Sand Creek soldier both verify the other.
Chuck also found artifacts in other locations as well. Our book goes into great detail about the artifacts Bowens found at the Lost Sand Creek Site.
Most battle artifacts were found miles away from the village location and in various directions. This shows there were running battle locations which lines up with Little Bear’s account. He got up early that morning and crossed the creek to get his horse and from a high hill he looked south toward the lodgepole trail and saw the soldiers several miles away as a long black line.
Another piece of evidence is a gun that was found at Sand Creek in 1891.
From our book:
The Albright family arrived in Sheridan Lake from Kentucky in 1887, only twenty-three years after the Sand Creek event. Buster was eleven. His younger brother, Kiowa, called Ki, said to be the first white child born in the newly formed Kiowa County. It was established on April 11, 1889, and Ki was born four months later.
Gillette Fluke came to the area from Iowa with his family to homestead near Water Valley, north of Chivington, the same year the Albrights came. Gillette was nine years old.
Buster, a fifteen-year-old cowboy, worked for the SS Cattle Ranch in 1891. While riding his horse along Sand Creek, he found a Starr Army revolver, Patent Jan. 1856. His cowboy friend, Gillette, only thirteen when the gun was found, documented the location of the find on a small piece of paper. He didn’t date the document.
This is to certify that W. H. Albright found & old Cap & Ball gun the summer & year of 1891 west of the Indian Battle ground on Big sandy creek ten miles north of Chivington Colorado gun was made by the star arms Co Patent Jan. 1856 Seal no# 24227 A. G. Fluke
We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site
They documented the gun being found ten miles north of Chivington. Chuck made a significant Sand Creek discovery on the Bowen family ranch ten miles north of Chivington. This area on the ranch was littered with artifacts that could only be from Sand Creek. It’s important to note that the distance of ten miles misses the NPS historic site by over 1 ½ miles. The details of this discovery are in our book.
The artifacts are the only objective piece of evidence. They do not lie, and over 4,000 period artifacts tell us precisely where the village and battle was on November 29, 1864. The artifacts that Chuck and Sheri Bowen found are truly a preponderance of evidence.
It’s conclusive that the artifacts are accurate. The next question is, how do they change the Sand Creek massacre story?
See more in our book, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site.
This discovery has been lied about and suppressed. Read our book and come to your own conclusions. The facts of the artifacts are clear.
Sand Creek was celebrated as a battle in Colorado Territory. It quickly turned to the massacre narrative by Colonel Chivington’s known enemy, Lt. Colonel Sam Tappan. He had family back east that owned newspapers. We go into detail in our book how this happened. The massacre story is now being used to destroy patriotism.
The massacre story tugs at the heartstrings, but it isn’t an accurate account.
It’s concerning that schools will be bussing young impressionable children to the NPS site to hear a fabricated tale about how horrible their white American ancestors were. The massacre story isn’t supported by the artifacts, and it’s also not supported by the majority of eyewitness accounts.
We invite all of the area schools to bring your students and their parents to our book programs to hear the truth about the artifacts.
The artifacts tell us the accurate Sand Creek account.
See part 1 here: Truth Wins Part 1.
See part 2 here: Truth Wins Part 2.
Learn more about Chuck and Sheri Bowen’s Sand Creek discovery and our book on this website.
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There are over 100 photos of artifacts and maps in our book, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site.
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