By Mike Bowen, co-author, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site
Today marks the 148th anniversary of Colorado becoming a state. Colorado became a territory on February 28, 1861.
According to colorado.gov, the Colorado State Constitution was drafted March 1, 1876, approved by the voters on July 1, and went into effect August 1, 1876.
Colorado became the 38th state to enter the Union under the flag of the United States. Known as the Centennial State, Colorado’s statehood was 100 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The Centennial State has two official state songs, “Where the Columbines Grow,” by A.J. Fynn, adopted in 1915 and “Rocky Mountain High,” by John Denver, adopted in 2007. In 1992, the Square Dance was adopted as the state’s official folk dance. The state animal is the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, the Lark Bunting is the state bird, and the state flower is the Columbine (archives.colorado.gov).
Katherine Lee Bates got her inspiration for the song, “America the Beautiful,” while on top of Pike’s Peak in 1893. For those that enjoy the mountains, Colorado has 91 “fourteeners” (mountain peeks over 14,000 feet).
Another moniker for Colorado is “Colorful Colorado,” seemingly for the beauty of the Rocky Mountains, however, the plains have a beauty all their own.
Arguably the most controversial event in what was Colorado Territory, took place on the plains, November 29, 1864, on Sand Creek. Nearly 160 years after the Sand Creek event, many still aren’t aware of what actually happened that day. It can be tough for some to hear that a story that has been told for 160 years is just that, a story.
We don’t have a dog in this fight. We’re not related to anyone that was at Sand Creek. The only connection is that Chuck Bowen grew up on that part of Sand Creek. In the early ‘90s, he and his wife Sheri were contacted by an independent archaeologist who believed the Sand Creek Battle Ground Monument marked the wrong location—he believed the actual site was further up the creek, possibly on the Bowen family ranch. We go into detail about this in our book, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site.
Our interest is to share about the incredible Sand Creek site discovery made at what we call the Lost Sand Creek Site and how this discovery changes the massacre story.
The massacre claim needs the bluff at the National Park Service Sand Creek site for its story. It provides the idea that the Indians couldn’t see the soldiers approaching and were killed as they came out of their tipis. If that was true, that area would be littered with bullets, arrowheads, cannonball shell fragments, the lead balls that went inside the cannonballs, kettle fragments, knives and much more.
No period artifacts have ever been found below the bluff. The closest the NPS came to finding artifacts at that site was over a mile from there where they found a small amount of artifacts. Over two miles up the creek from their site is where over 4,000 artifacts were found on the Bowen family ranch.
See a sampling of photos of artifacts here: Artifacts.
The 4,000 battle and village artifacts Chuck and Sheri Bowen found were documented with GPS coordinates and a photo. These coordinates were loaded into satellite imagery and when looking at them on a computer, they show how spread out events actually were at Sand Creek.
The massacre story claims the Indians were camped clustered together below that bluff. George Bent, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier (Warrior) said in a letter to a historian, that the Indian camps were two to three miles long (Bent to Hyde 5-3-1906). Sand Creek is known as a dry creek and rarely has running water. The village would have been scattered along the creek so tipis were close to small pools of water, fed by underground aquifers. The artifacts prove that Black Kettle’s village stretched along Sand Creek for about three miles.
Instead of being killed as they came out of their tipis, the Indians saw the soldiers off in the distance, “as a long black line” (Bent to Hyde 4-14-1906). Most of the Indians fled the village by the time the soldiers arrived. See Little Bear’s account in chapter four of our book, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site.
None of us were there at Sand Creek on November 29, 1864. The artifacts are the only tangible piece of evidence we can get information from. Oral history cannot be verified. The artifacts tell a very clear story of a running battle.
We’re constantly told to trust the science. But we’re never told to trust the science concerning Sand Creek. Why is that? It’s because there isn’t any physical evidence that verifies the massacre claim. The physical evidence corroborates the running battle story by soldier Irving Howbert.
Sometimes truth is difficult to accept.
Since the Lost Sand Creek Site discovery is about the artifacts, documenting those artifacts is a big part of our book. We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site includes over 100 photos of artifacts and maps. Many maps show how far the artifacts were from the NPS site and how stretched out everything was at Sand Creek. Check it out in our book.
Truth matters. Truth wins.
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You can learn more about the Lost Sand Creek Site discovery on this website. The truth about Sand Creek needs to be known and needs to be shared.
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