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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 9, 2013)
fr1 News from Indian Country Pgge 9 Spilygy Tyrrcoo Jgnugry 9, 2013 Massacre descendants seek justice 148 years later ANADARKO, Okla. (AP) They dance for the dead. The foreman, the minister and the princess in the buck skin dress stom p and twirl and sing on a gymnasium floor protected by a tarp. A bout 100 people watch from chairs arranged around a drum circle. All o f them are family, in a way, bound to a terrible event 148 years ago on the banks o f an ice-en crusted creek in Colorado. The old lawyer is here, too, the former Oklahoma attor ney general who smoked the truth pipe in a tepee as the C heyenne arro w keep er looked on. They gather every year— d e scen d an ts o f th e Sand C reek M assacre and their unlikely allies— in a long search' for justice that started w ith optim ism , languished and now has a breath o f new Ufe. •¡ t 15,000 d e scen d an ts have been identified— a step that trust leaders believe is neces sary. H o m er Flute, a form er auto-pafts- factory foreman whoi has headed th e tru st since 1990, sits on the gym's wooden bleachers and consid ers th e unlikely g ro u p o f people in his company. “Sand Creek is like a cob web,” Flute says. “It links in all different directions, and you don’t know where it’s go ing. You find people you didn’t know existed, and they are kin to you somehow. The idea is you belong to these people and they belong to you.” Killing, desecration I t is one o f the darkest marks on Colorado’s history. O n a clear night in N o vem ber 1864, 700 men un der th e com m and o f Col. John Chivington set o ff from F o rt Lyon on the E astern 463 killed Plains. Tensions had been running A t daw n on Nov. 29, 1864, Colorado soldiers at high in the Colorado Terri tack ed p eacefu l In d ian s tory, where white settlers and camped on the banks o f Sand Indians w ere. clashing over Creek in what is now south land. That April, Arapahos had eastern Colorado, slaughter ing an estimated 163— mainly slaughtered a ranching fam women, children and the eld ily east o f Denver, inflaming erly-—and desecrating their public opinion. Y et th e re h ad b een bodies. The backlash was so se progress toward peace. The vere, the U.S. government not great peace chiefs— W hite only acknowledged wrongdo Antelope and Black Kettle o f ing but promised reparations the Cheyenne, and Left Hand b f land and cash to survivors o f the A rap ah o — w ere camped on Sand Creek un and relatives o f victims. That promise— spelled out der governm ent assurances in an 1865 treaty— remains they would be safe. Chivington, a fierce aboli unfulfilled, according to de scendants and their attorneys, tionist and former Method i Cham pions o f the cause ist minister, had a different have died or moved on. And view. H e rallied his m en descendants who once stood against the “red scoundrels,” as allies now view one another urging them to rem em ber their own women and chil with scorn. But on this early Decem dren. The first shots were fired ber day, in a town that calls itself the “Indian Capital of at daybreak^ as the village o f the Nation,” descendants re about 100 lodges, almost en ceive a rare progress report.' tirely Cheyenne with a few The newly expanded legal Arapaho, began to stir. T h e village was largely team fo r the Sand C reek Massacre Descendants Trust em pty o f m en, who. w ere has opened a dialogue with away hunting buffalo. The D epartm ent o f Interior offi cavalrymen fired from sand cials about the claim. A t the bluffs and pounded targets least, the discussions could lay w ith shells from m ountain the groundwork for a federal howitzers. Soldiers paid no heed to lawsuit, the lawyers say. A nd.after decades o f re the large American flag and search and recruitment, about smaller white flag beneath it tied to a lodgepole in the vil lage. Witnesses described Indi ans on their knees begging for mercy, children clubbed in the head and a w om an’s belly sliced .open. Indians hid in p its dug in th e sandy creekbed. Once the killing was over, the desecration began. White Antelope’s ears and genitals w ere cu t o ff. O n e m an claimed to have a cut out a woman’s heart and impaled it on a stick. Body parts were taken as trophies and put on display in a Denver theater. Initially, the incident was hailed as a heroic battle. But recriminations came quickly in congressional and military hearings the following year. Soldiers wearing uniforms that should be “the emblem o f justice and humanity” had executed a “foul and dastardly massacre,” , a congressional committee found. Chivington suffered no consequences; by then, he was out o f the mili tary. Sand Creek was a defin ing m om ent in relations be tween whites and Indians in the West. “I t’s never been fo rg o t te n ,” said D av id H alaas, former chief historian o f the Colorado Historical Society and an ally to the Cheyennes in the Sand Creek struggle. “It’s an open wound that still hasn't healed.” | . T he 1865 Treaty o f the Little Arkansas acknowledged “gross and wanton outrages p erpetrated against certain b a n d s” o f C heyenne' an d A rapaho; Article d prom ised land in locations to be deter mined and cash for victims. ‘Going to succeed’ Robert Simpson rem em bers his grandmother coming to him when he was in high school and telling him to write dow n nam es o f ancestors b u tch ered a t'S a n d Creek. O ne day, she said, he would need them. Simpson joined the Army, fo u g h t in V ietn am and worked as a sheriff’s deputy. L ater in life, he atten d ed sem in ary an d b ecam e a Methodist minister— just like C hivington, th e villain o f Sand Creek. A soft-spoken bear o f a man who apologizes when he gets em otional about Sand Creek, Simpson is pastor o f J.J. Methvin Memorial United M e th o d ist C h u rch in Anadarko and a descendants trust leader. “All this was by divine in tervention,” Sim pson said. “We were picked to do th is ' for a reason, and. we are go ing to succeed. It’s been a long journey for all o f us, but we are still going forward.” O ther reparations efforts over the years have gone no w here. Bills in tro d u ced in Congress in 1949,1953,1957 and 1965 failed- In the 1960s, the federal Indian Claims Commission ruled th a t the Sand Creek claims were “individual in na ture and must be brought by descendants.” Tribal members thought identifying the descendants would fall to them. Activity stalled for' several years. T hen, an anthropologist named Jo h n M oore got in volv ed . M o o re so u g h t to solve a mystery central to any claim—identifying the tribal bands at Sand C reek and in the early 1980s destroyed the historical record o f a site that was inhabited by ances tors o f the Paiute Tribe for 5,000 years. A m ong some 2,000 arti facts were the hand-woven baskets the children w ere buried in, a necklace o f un born antelope hooves and an abalone shell, a cordage net for catching rabbits, and moc casins. By the time the artifacts were found, the statute o f limitations had run out on any federal criminal charges, but tbe U.S. D epartm ent o f Inte rior sued Harelson and won a $2.5 million civil judgment against him. Acknowledging in an inter view w ith T he A ssociated P ress at th e tim e th a t he could have done a better job excavating the site, Harelson maintained that amateurs like himself tramping the desert were responsible for many sig n ifican t arch aeo lo g ical Abuse o f the remains o f the children outraged the Pyramid Take Paiute Tribe... finds. The Nevada State Mu seum confirmed he was re sp o n sib le fo r fin d in g the bones o f a prehistoric camel in their collection. B ut the abuse o f the re mains o f th e children o u t rag ed th e P y ram id Lake Paiute Tribe, which said the remains could not be rebur ied without the skulls. State police later recovered two skulls in a separate inves tigation, and said they believed they came from the remains found in Harelson’s garden. H arelson served 30 days in jail rather th a n perform com m unity service for his convictions. filled with tobacco and herbs. To the Cheyenne, “smoking on it” is a sacred vow. Before the dying embers o f a fire, smoke drifted *up through the top o f the tepee, sealing the deal. There would be a paper contract, too, lay ing out Derryberry’s contin- gency*fee. D erryberry said the goal o f the descendants search always was to cast as wide a net as possible. I f someone had one drop o f blood trace able to Sand Creek, that was enough. Shirley Wells discovered h er ancestral ties to Sand Creek while researching her family tree in the 1990s. She has taught the story to h er 11-year-old daughter, Samantha, who is starting a four-year term as the descen dants trust’s princess, travel ing to powwows and other events as an ambassador. “It is sad, but it makes me feel good my ancestors would be willing to sacrifice their lives for us,” she said. “I know they are in heaven and always watching down on us.” Trail of Tears monument plan FO RT SMITH, Ark: (AP) — The Inter-Tribal Council o f the Five Civilized Tribes has accepted the U.S. Marshals Museum’s property offer to build a Trail o f Tears monu m ent in Fort Smith. Muscogee (Creek) Nation Principal Chief George Tiger •sent a letter last m onth to museum officials, saying that the council’s executive com mittee unanimously approved the offer. “This was a very generous and thoughtful ges ture on behalf o f the M u seum Board to com m em o rate the tragic and historic events surrounding the re m oval o f our ancestors to Indian Territory. It is also a reflection o f the tribes’ his tory with the U.S. Marshals Service,” Tiger wrote. The monument would rep resent the tribes’ forced jour ney w est into w hat is now the monum ent, which will be paid for by the Inter-Tribal Council. The Museum Board first invited the Five C ivilized Tribes to place the monument in June 2011. While present ing the proposal to the board, Marshals Museum President O k la h o m a d u ring the 19th an d C E O Jim D u n n n o te d century, known as the Trail o f Tears. Tiger serves as president the Five Civilized Tribes, which are the Creek, Chero kee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole nations. T he m u seum will provide the land for that each o f the tribes had passed through the Fort Smith area at least once during the Trail o f Tears. Since then, he said, the M arshals Service and the tribes have worked closely together. Uncovered bones could be 1,000 years old DUNCAN, Okla. (AP) - A Stephens County rancher was on his leased land work in g last week near Mud Creek w hen he made a surprising discovery. He found skeletal remains o f a h u m an an d quickly Man in Paiute grave looting case dies (AP) — A former insurance agent and amateur archaeolo gist convicted o f looting an cient Indian graves in the Nevada desert and later of fering $10,000 in opals for a hit man to kill a former busi- ness p a rtn e r has d ied in prison. The D epartm ent o f Cor rections confirmed that Jack Lee Harelson, 72, o f Grants Pass, died D ec. 14 in the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. T he agency said he died o f natural causes in the prison infirmary. When he was arrested in 1995, authorities said they found the headless mummi fied remains o f two children wrapped in garbage bags and buried uncerem oniously in Harelson's garden. A U.S. D epartm ent o f In terior archaeologist said at the time that Harelson’s unautho rized excavations o f the EL ep h an t M ountain Cave in Nevada’s Black Rock D esert tracking their movements af terward. H e also began w orking w ith L aird C om ets evah, a Cheyenne chief, and his wife, Colleen, who were identifying descendants through records and oral histories. Moore and his graduate students dug through decades-old census reco rd s and o th e r d o c u ments. T h e g o in g w as tough. Cheyenne change their names and use nicknam es. T here were problems with transla tions. By 1990, enough progress had been made to form a new pan-tribal descendants group. Laird Cometsevah recruited Flute, an Apache tribal mem ber known for his organiza tional skills, to head it. The group also hired a law yer— Larry Derryberry, who served as Oklahoma attorney general in the 1970s. In 1991, in a cerem ony n ear th e m assacre- site, D erryberry entered a tepee w ith tru st leaders and the C h eyenne S acred A rro w Keeper, the tribe’s highest re ligious office. The lawyer smoked a pipe In 2005, H arelso n was convicted in a retrial o f try ing to hire a hit man to kill Lloyd Olds o f Brookings, a partner in an opal mine whom H a re lso n b lam ed fo r his grave-robbing conviction. Key evidence came from tape recordings o f conversa tions with an inform ant who to ld H arelso n he knew a hitmarn According to testi mony, Harelson gave the in form ant a jar full ©f opals valued at $10,000 to pay for the slayings. H arelson’s defense attor ney argued he was the victim o f entrapment by police, the hit man never existed, and the tape recordings rtf his m ur der plans rep resen ted the musings o f a lonely old man who never had anyintention o f going ahead with them. Harelson was acquitted o f charges he also w an ted a judge, two state police offic ers, and another partner in the opal mine to be killed. called 911. Stephens County S h eriff Wayne M cK inney said when they arrived at the scene, which was no easy feat, they knew the bones had been there for some time. “We think at least 50 years old,” he said. That was based on some photos they sent to the medical examiner’s office. B ut by later in the w eek, McKinney realized they had something much more inter esting. “We were waiting on a fo rensic archaeologist team,” he said. That team, with an OU professor, arrived and within hours, McKinney said early estimates determine the skull and bones to be anywhere from 800 to 1,000 years old. W arm S p r in g s Gumed Sùtca 1944 Beads, Native American Gifts, Museum, Deli, Grocery, Ice, Fishing Permits, Western Union, Check-Free Bill Pay, ATM and Much More! 2132 Warm Springs St., Warm Springs - ph. 541-553-1597 Winter hours at Museum at Warm Springs The Museum at Warm Springs is now on their winter hours. The Museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. The museum is closed on Sundays and Mondays.
