A Misplaced Massacre

I was transfixed by Kelman’s story, masterfully, sympathetically narrated. It’s populated by few monuments, and the one squatting at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site is modest and understated. Here even the place of those dark events was in dispute.

Blending history with a gripping account of the struggle over public memory, and centering Native people, Kelman chronicles the modern search for the site (and meaning) of one of the most gruesome acts of government violence in American history, at Sand Creek, where U.S. troops slaughtered more than 150 peaceful Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho campers (mostly women and children)… show more.

Who defines a park and the terms of that definition matter, Kelman reminds us. In the case of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in Colorado, the politics of memory are on full display. Should the event be remembered as a “massacre” or a “battle”? Should the Cheyenne and Arapaho or the National Park Service control interpretation? Whose memory gets priority? And where exactly did the terrible event take place? This book is a gritty, narrative history of how the sausage gets made during park creation (and there’s a hook at the end).

There are so many superb biographies of American sacred sites—battlefields among them—it is very hard to select just one! Historian Ari Kelman’s book comes first to mind. It immerses readers into the dramatic struggles among stakeholders: Native American communities, landowners, the National Park Service, to situate correctly the site and the history of this horrific event. Kelman’s story illustrates eloquently how the American historic landscape can successfully portray even our nation’s “indigestible” histories.