{"id":45149,"date":"2021-08-17T18:59:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-18T00:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-governor-voids-1864-order-to-kill-native-americans\/"},"modified":"2021-08-18T00:59:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T00:59:00","slug":"colorado-governor-voids-1864-order-to-kill-native-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-governor-voids-1864-order-to-kill-native-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado governor voids 1864 order to kill Native Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Colorado
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signs an executive order that rescinds proclamations from Colorado Territorial Gov. John Evans in 1864, at the Capitol in Denver on Tuesday. Polis handed sage to the various tribe representatives and speakers after signing. (Rebecca Slezak\/The Denver Post via AP)<\/span>Rebecca Slezak<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Colorado governor voids 1864 order to kill Native Americans<\/p>\n

DENVER \u2013 Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday rescinded a 19th century proclamation that called for citizens to kill Native Americans and take their property, in what he hopes can begin to make amends for \u201csins of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1864 order by Colorado\u2019s second territorial governor, John Evans, would eventually lead to the Sand Creek massacre, one of Colorado\u2019s darkest and most fraught historic moments. The brutal assault left more than 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne people \u2013 mostly women, children and elderly \u2013 dead.<\/p>\n

Evans\u2019 proclamation was never lawful because it established treaty rights and federal Indian law, Polis said at the signing of his executive order on the Capitol steps.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt also directly contradicted the Colorado Constitution, the United States Constitution and Colorado criminal codes at the time,\u201d the Democratic governor said to the crowd.<\/p>\n

Polis stood alongside citizens of the Southern Ute, Ute Mountain, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, many dressed in traditional regalia. Some held signs reading \u201cRecognize Indigenous knowledge, people, land\u201d and \u201cDecolonize to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ernest House Jr., who served as executive director of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs under former Gov. John Hickenlooper, said Polis\u2019 order is important to the state\u2019s government-to-government relations with tribes, the acknowledgment of history and a movement toward reconciliation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s oftentimes the general community think of American Indians as the vanishing race, the vanishing people. And I think it starts with things like this,\u201d said House, a citizen of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. \u201cIt gives us a place that we were important and that our lives were important.\u201d<\/p>\n

A broader push for reconciliation and racial reckoning has occurred across the U.S. in the wake of George Floyd\u2019s death at the hands of police, including efforts to remove Confederate monuments and statues of slave traders, colonizers, conquerors and others. Some states, including Colorado, have banned Native American mascots in schools.<\/p>\n

That movement coupled with renewed attention to Evans\u2019 history also prompted Polis to create an advisory board to recommend name changes for the highest peak in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, known as \u201cMount Evans.\u201d Discussions are taking place within the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs to choose \u201cmore culturally sensitive names,\u201d said Alston Turtle, a councilman with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.<\/p>\n

\"Eugene
Eugene Blackbear Jr. prays before various Native American tribe leaders speak and Gov. Jared Polis signs an executive order that rescinds proclamations from Colorado Territorial Gov. John Evans in 1864, at the Capitol in Denver on Tuesday. (Rebecca Slezak\/The Denver Post via AP)<\/span>Rebecca Slezak<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Evans governed the territory of Colorado during three years of the Civil War, from 1862 to 1865. He resigned after the Sand Creek massacre happened under his order.<\/p>\n

Col. John Chivington led the Nov. 29, 1864, slaughter. He and his soldiers then headed to Denver, where they displayed some of the victims\u2019 remains.<\/p>\n

The massacre is one of several long-ago terrible events that many Americans don\u2019t know about, such as the Snake River attack in Oregon in 1887, where as many as 34 Chinese gold miners were killed. Others occurred within the lifetimes of many Americans living today, like the 1985 bombing by Philadelphia police of the house that headquartered the Black organization MOVE, killing 11 people.<\/p>\n

Rick Williams, a Lakota and Cheyenne descendant who studies Native American history, found the original Evans\u2019 order while researching the aftermath of the Fort Wise Treaty of 1861, in which U.S. government representatives met with Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders to establish a reservation along the Arkansas River in eastern Colorado. Williams said only 10 people signed the agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next two years, it was hell for Indians because they didn\u2019t sign the treaty, and they tried to kill as many of them as they could. And when that didn\u2019t work, (Evans) issued an order to declare war,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

One of Evans\u2019 orders deemed Native Americans \u201cenemies of the state,\u201d and the second called for Colorado citizens to kill and steal from them, Williams said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signs an executive order that rescinds proclamations from Colorado Territorial Gov. John Evans in 1864, at the Capitol in Denver on Tuesday. Polis handed sage to the various tribe representatives and speakers after signing. (Rebecca Slezak\/The Denver Post via AP)Rebecca Slezak Colorado governor voids 1864 order to kill Native Americans DENVER […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45149"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}