As discussed at the Oct 27, 2021 Event:
The Native American Experience in Boulder and Beyond
Special thanks to Jim England for this comprehensive bibliography
I. ESSENTIAL READING:
Margaret Coel, Chief Left Hand: Southern Arapaho (1981). “Left Hand’s pragmatism and perception of the inevitability of the White invasion are important themes in Indian-White relations, and the author has done well to integrate such themes into her narrative.” [Choice]
Elliott West, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado (1998). “For all-round excellence in the full sweep of the western story, West occupies the pinnacle. A truly fine book.” [Robert Utley]
Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970). Intended for lay readers and provides a panoramic portrayal of the progressing stages of the Nineteenth Century Indian Wars, including Sand Creek, incorporating first-hand Native accounts.
II. GENERAL TRIBAL HISTORIES.
Loretta Fowler, The Arapaho (2009). “Her well-crafted volume brings ethnohistory to young adults and general readers, presenting them with a new look at the Arapaho past and present.” [Great Plains Quarterly.]
Virginia Trenholm, The Arapahoes: Our People (1970).
Donald Berthrong, The Southern Cheyennes (2012). An “accurate, highly interesting account of the Cheyennes’ life on the Great Plains, their system of government and religion, and their relation to the fur and hide trade during their last years of freedom.” [Univ. of Okla. Press.]
Thom Hatch, Black Kettle: The Cheyenne Chief Who Sought Peace but Found War (2004). “[T]his much-needed volume” also includes “general information about Cheyenne society, politics, customs and culture.” [Historynet.com.]
Stan Hoig, The Peace Chiefs of the Cheyennes (1980).
Lillian Shields, “Relations with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes [sic] in Colorado to 1861,” 4 Colo. Mag. 145 (1927), found at https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/media/document/2018/ColoradoMagazine_v4n4_August1927.pdf.
Virginia Simmons, Ute Indians of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico (2011).
Charles Marsh, The Utes of Colorado: People of the Shining Mountains (1982).
J. Donald Hughes, American Indians in Colorado (2d. Ed. 1987).
Peter Nabokov, Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-2000 (Rev. Ed. 1999).
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III. BOULDER’S WHITE “SETTLERS.”
Boulder City Council, A Resolution Declaring the Second Monday of October Each Year to be indigenous People’s Day (2016), found at https://www.boulderfriendsmeeting.org/wp-content/friends9x4Q/2018/06/Boulder-Indigenous-Peoples-Day-Resolution-1190.pdf.
Amos Bixby, “History of Boulder County,” in O. L. Baskin, History of Clear Creek and Boulder Valleys (1880), found at https://www.google.com/books/edition/History_of_Clear_Creek_and_Boulder_Valle/VRI1AQAAMAAJ?hl=en. Pp. 377-78 contains an early telling of the apocryphal tale of the supposed first meeting in present-day Boulder County between the gold-rushers from Nebraska City, Nebraska and a local group of Arapahos. An expanded and somewhat more plausible retelling of this encounter is in Phyllis Smith, A Look at Boulder: From Settlement to City 12-14 (1981). A thorough reexamination (and debunking) of this “origin story” can be found in Thomas Meier, The Early Settlement of Boulder: Set I n Type—Cast in Bronze—Fused in Porcelain; “It Ain’t Necessarily So” (1993).
IV. TREATIES OF FORT LARAMIE AND FORT WISE.
A treaty negotiated in 1851 between the United States and various tribes, including the Arapaho and Cheyenne, near Horse Creek, Wyoming, became known as the Fort Laramie Treaty. Unlike almost all other Indian treaties, instead of effecting the transfer of Indian-occupied lands, this Treaty recognized full Indian ownership of various lands in the Rocky Mountain area. For example, it provided full title to the Arapaho and Cheyenne of almost the entire Front Range and Eastern Plains of Colorado (about 51 million acres in total), including present-day Boulder County. The gold-rushing White “settlers” who began arriving 7 years later were therefore nothing but unlawful trespassers. With the federal government taking no steps to prevent or restrict such trespassing, those “settlers” began agitating for extinguishment of the Indian title to the Front Range mining areas. This resulted in a new treaty in 1861, the Fort Wise Treaty, negotiated with some (but by no means all) of the Arapaho and Cheyenne leaders. This treaty in effect extinguished the Indian title, except for a much smaller parcel in southwestern Colorado.
National Park Service, Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 (Horse Creek Treaty), found at http://npshistory.com/brochures/scbl/horse-creek-treaty.pdf. Includes text of Treaty.
Leroy Hafen and Francis Young, Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the West, 1834-1890 (1938). Pp. 177096 discusses the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty.
Remi Nadeau, Fort Laramie and the Sioux (1967). Ch. 5 discusses the 1951 Fort Laramie Treaty.
Burton S Hill, “The Great Indian Treaty Council of 1851,” Nebraska History 47 (1966): 85 -110, found at https://history.nebraska.gov/sites/history.nebraska.gov/files/doc/publications/NH1966Indian_Treaty_1851.pdf. Dated and condescending, but summarizes what preceded, and what occurred at, the Treaty Council.
Paul VanDevelder, Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire Through Indian Territory, Chs. 5 and 6 (2009). Well-written summary of the lead-up to, and the unravelling of, the Fort Laramie Treaty.
Stan Hoig, White Man’s Paper Trail: Grand Councils and Treaty-Making on the Central Plains, Ch. 9, “Protecting the Santa Fe Trade” (2006).
Leroy Hafen, Far West and Rockies Series, V. 1X: Relations with the Indians of the Plains, 1857-1861. A Documentary Account of the Military Campaigns, and Negotiations of Indian Agents (1957).
Michael Troyer, "Treaty of Fort Wise," Colorado Encyclopedia, found at https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/treaty-fort-wise.
Homer Hoyt, “Appraisal of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Lands, Covering Parts of the States of Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, and Nebraska, October 14, 1865,” prepared for the Indian Claims Commission, 1958, found at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000001730831&view=1up&seq=9. In the early Nineteen Fifties, an Arapaho and Cheyenne claim before the Indian Claims Commission sought the fair value of the 51 million acres granted them in the Fort Laramie Treaty and then retracted in the Fort Wise Treaty. In the proceedings on this claim, this appraisal was presented, arguing for a value of about 4.5 cents per acre. It includes considerable discussion of the Indian presence on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and the gold-rushing Whites’ invasion. Other valuable historical analyses presented in this claim before the Commission are collected in book form, titled Arapaho-Cheyenne Indians (Garland Publishing, 1974), including Gussow, “Cheyenne and Arapaho Aboriginal Occupation,” Hafen, “Historical Development of the Arapaho-Cheyenne Land Area,” and Ekrich, “Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians.” The Commission’s final findings as to the claim are also included.
V. SAND CREEK MASSACRE, LOCAL IMPACTS.
In response to Colorado Governor John Evans’ call in 1864 for “Indian fighters,” a company of Boulder County volunteers was formed and began “training” at a “Fort Chambers” located near the then-thriving town of Valmont. This company took an active role in the Sand Creek Massacre in late November of 1864.
Zoom Presentations: A Remembrance at Fort Chambers 1.0 (2020) and 2.0 (2021), available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8pJa-wMORA, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eqrHF1sNnQ.
Patricia Limerick, What’s In a Name” Nichols Hall: A Report (1987), found at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aP1-GP4GJvWfDhUPU-nxq7vpj8e29Qmz/view. Analysis prepared in the University of Colorado’s consideration of changing the name of its dormitory named after David Nichols, a captain of the Boulder troops at Sand Creek.
VI. SAND CREEK MASSACRE, GENERALLY.
University of Denver, John Evans Study Committee, DU Sand Creek Portfolio (2014), found at https://www.portfolio.du.edu/evcomm/page/45573. Contains a large amount of Sand Creek resources and documents, including Gary Roberts’ extensive doctoral dissertation, copies of original documents, and extensive bibliography.
Gary Roberts, Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy (2016).
Stan Hoig, The Sand Creek Massacre (1961).
Patrick Mendoza, Song of Sorrow: Massacre at Sand Creek (1993).
Bruce Cutler, The Massacre at Sand Creek: Narrative Voices (1995).
Kellie lee McKeehan, “Be Sure to Get the First Shot”: American Indians, Violence and the Press in Colorado, 1860-1880 (2017), found at https://www.proquest.com/openview/009fd70087bb6a2bd646fd8457b52055/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y. Master’s thesis, exploring the role of Colorado’s earliest newspapers, particularly the Rocky Mountain News, in creating “a platform to denounce Native Americans and thereby encourage the increasing violence between American Indians and Anglo-Americans.”
Scott Williams, Colorado History Through the News: The Indian Wars of 1864 Through the Sand Creek Massacre (1997). Reprints of contemporaneous local newspaper accounts, especially from the Rocky Mountain News.
Robert Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848-65, Ch. 14, “Plains Aflame” (1967).
Jerry Keenan, The Terrible Indian Wars of the West: A History from the Whitman Massacre to Wounded Knee, 1846-1890, Ch. IV, “The Central Plains” (2016).
Louis Kraft, Ned Wynkoop and the Lonely Road from Sand Creek (2011).
VIII. General Indian Law.
Walter EchoHawk, In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided (2018).
Charles Wilkinson, American Indians, Time and the Law (1987); Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations (2005).
Vine De Loria, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969); Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence (1974); American Indians, American Justice (with Clifford Lytle) (1983); The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty (with Clifford Lytle) (1984).
Steven Pevar, The Rights of Indians and Tribes (2012).
Felix Cohen, “Original Indian Title,” 32 Minn. L. Rev. 28 (1947), found at http://www.scripturalaw.org/Original-Indian-Title.
Lindsay Robertson, Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands (2005).
Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (1975).
Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (2020).
Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier (2005).
IX. Websites:
Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma: http://www.cheyenne-arapaho.org/; http://cheyenneandarapaho-nsn.gov.
Arapaho Language: http://www.native-languages.org/Arapaho.htm.
Northern Arapahos: http://www.northernarapaho.com.
Wind River Reservation: http://www.wind-river.org/reservation.asp.
Native American Rights Fund, National Indian Law Library: http://narf.org/nill/index/html.
X. LOCAL MUSEUMS.
Museum of Boulder, https://museumofboulder.org/exhibit/boulder-experience-gallery-4/. As part of its Permanent Exhibit, this Museum has an award-winning exhibit presenting the history of the Arapahos in Boulder, including Boulder’s connection to the Sand Creek Massacre, all prepared in conjunction with the Northern Arapahos.
Longmont Museum,https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-e-m/museum/exhibitions. As part of its Permanent Exhibit, this Museum presents the history of local tribes in the area, and includes information about the local residents who were part of the troops at Sand Creek.
