Colorado’s land grab

On the 150th anniversary of the Sand CreekMassacre, Colorado admits the eastern half of the state was built on the coerced cession of the Arapaho and Cheyenne homelands.

In this 150th year since the Sand Creek Massacre, Colorado has made to the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes and, in particular, to the descendants of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, an incalculably important admission: The non-Native settlement of the eastern half of Colorado became possible through the coerced cession of Arapaho and Cheyenne homelands.

InWorcester vs. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall recognized that title to lands in possession ofNative people can pass to non-Native people only through the cession of those lands by the Indian tribes to theUnited States and, thence, under the laws of theUnited States to those residing in a state or territory. “The treaties and laws of the United States contemplate the Indian territory as completely separated from that of the states, and provide that all intercourse with them shall be carried on exclusively by the government of the union.”

Native people were in possession of all lands from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast of what subsequently became the continental United States. The land that now comprises the state of Colorado came into the United States through the 1803 Louisiana Purchase with France and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo withMexico. In fact, an 1845 Fremont map plainly shows that the Arapaho and Cheyenne possessed the eastern half of what is now Colorado.

As of 1845, all lands south of the Arkansas River through the San Luis Valley and west of the Continental Divide to California were claimed by Mexico.

Colorado Territory came into being in February 1861 at the outset of the CivilWar. The Union Congress carved it out of the territories of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, NewMexico and Utah to take into one territory the whole of the Continental Divide’s mineral-bearing area running through the heart of the RockyMountains from Wyoming to NewMexico.

The 1864 Sand Creek Massacrewas the pivotal event in the ultimate removal of the Arapaho and Cheyenne people from eastern Colorado. The 1851 Fort

Library of Congress A wood engraving published in an 1868 edition of Harper’sWeekly shows the Seventh U.S. Cavalry charging into Black Kettle’s village during the Sand Creek Massacre.

Library of Congress Cheyenne chiefWar Bonnet, pictured during a visit to President Abraham Lincoln, was slain at Sand Creek in 1864.