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Southern Arapahos Are Part of Boulder's Spirit
by Judy Mattivi Morley

Stand along Boulder Creek west of Broadway, near the mouth of Boulder Canyon, and listen. Imagine silence broken only by the rustling of the wind and the sound of the water tumbling in its bed. That was how the Southern Arapaho Indians experienced the beauty and tranquility of the Boulder Valley over 150 years ago. Although the Arapahos no longer live in the vicinity, their influence and hospitality allowed Boulder to exist today.

The Arapahos, an Algonquian language tribe, originally resided in the Great Lakes area of Minnesota, where they farmed the land and lived in small communities. Anglo-American settlement along the East Coast pushed other tribes into the interior of the continent, forcing the Arapahos and their traditional allies, the Cheyennes, to migrate west. By 1700, the tribes had adopted a nomadic lifestyle made easier by the Spanish introduction of horses to the Great Plains. The name Arapaho probably comes from a Pawnee word meaning “buyer” or “trader.” Although other tribes referred to them as “dog eaters,” the Arapahos called themselves simply Inuna-ina, meaning “our people.”

As the tribe moved west, it split into two informal groups after crossing the Missouri River. One group followed the North Platte River into present-day Wyoming; the other group migrated along the Arkansas River. The Northern Arapahos allied with the Northern Cheyennes and Lakotas. The Southern Arapahos camped near present-day Pueblo but hunted buffalo as far north as the South Platte River and Boulder Creek. Because the Southern Arapahos were a small tribe, they lived with their traditional allies, the Cheyennes, who helped them fight against the Pawnees.

Enter the Whites
After the gold rush in California in 1849, all Plains Indian tribes grew accustomed to seeing more and more white gold hunters passing through their land. To protect their hunting grounds, the Northern and Southern Arapahos joined the Cheyennes, Sioux, Shoshones, Crows, Assiniboines, and Arikaras in signing the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which allocated western territory to each of the tribes. The Northern and Southern Arapahos and Cheyennes got a huge patch of land, stretching 200 miles east from the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, between the Arkansas and North Platte rivers. The Southern Arapahos generally camped between the Arkansas River and the South Platte, but hunting parties occasionally ventured as far north as Boulder Creek. The tribe considered Valmont Butte, now in east Boulder, a sacred site, and frequently held rituals and ceremonies there. It was one of these northern hunting parties that encountered the first white settlers to the Boulder Valley in the fall of 1858.

Led by Captain Thomas Aikins, these gold seekers came from Fort St. Vrain, 30 miles east. Aikins was originally headed for the Cherry Creek gold strike in Denver, but a look at the mountains outside Boulder convinced him that their size, character and pattern of rock outcroppings signaled gold. Instead of turning south to Denver, he and his group continued west, stopping to camp by the red rock formation along Boulder Creek near where Pearl Street, Fourth Street and Canyon Boulevard now merge just west of downtown. A band of Southern Arapahos, probably camped near Valmont Butte, immediately rode to meet them. The leader of the Native Americans was Chief Niwot, or Left Hand. According to the first accounts, Niwot and his deputies, including Bear Head and Many Whips, greeted the white men and then promptly told Aikins and his party to go away.

A Curse and a Dream
It was at that moment that Chief Niwot proclaimed his legendary curse. According to the chief, the curse of the Boulder Valley was its breathtaking landscape: “People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.” Niwot threatened the gold seekers, telling them to leave: “You come to kill our game, to burn our wood, and to destroy our grasses.” Refusing to leave, the white men prepared to defend themselves against an Arapaho war party. Aikins and his group avoided any hostilities, however, by flattering Chief Niwot, plying him with exotic fare like canned beans and salt pork, and getting him drunk. Although Bear Head and Many Whips returned to the Arapaho camp to raise a war party, Niwot advocated peace with the gold seekers.

After three tense days, with the threat of a battle hanging palpably in the air, Niwot rode into Aikins’ camp once more. One of the Arapaho shamans had received a dream from the Great Spirit the night before. In the dream, the holy man saw a great flood covering the earth and swallowing the Arapahos, while the whites survived. Niwot interpreted this to mean that gold seekers would flood his homeland, and he could do nothing to stop it. Peace with the whites, Niwot realized, was the only way his people would avoid being swept away by the flood. Niwot and his fellow chief Little Raven, who had recently welcomed white settlers to the Denver gold camp, maintained their stance of peaceful coexistence with the whites. The Arapaho chiefs were so welcoming that the newcomers named the first county in the territory after the tribe, as well as streets in both Denver and Boulder.

The chiefs did not get much in return for their kindness. Whites continued to encroach on Arapaho land, and a rash of settlements broke out along the Front Range. The Arapahos had their last big buffalo kill in 1860, near Red Rocks amphitheater. An 1862 Sioux uprising in Minnesota made frontier settlements like Boulder jittery and suspicious of the Indians they initially thought were friends. By 1864, tension between whites and Arapaho warriors was at a boiling point. Indian raids on wagon trains and outlying settlements intensified that year, culminating in the brutal murder of the Hungate family on their ranch 25 miles southeast of Denver. In reaction, Territorial Governor John Evans ordered the peaceful Arapahos and Cheyennes to camp near Fort Lyons, on Sand Creek. The governor raised the Third Colorado Regiment of Infantry, led by Colonel John Chivington (who coincidentally was a Methodist minister), to patrol the prairies for hostile Indians. Chief Niwot, along with Chiefs Little Raven and Black Kettle, did as they were told, camping at Sand Creek and refusing to make war on their new white neighbors.

Atrocity at Sand Creek
Chivington and the Third Colorado failed to find any hostile Indians on the prairie, however. In frustration, they headed for Sand Creek. Despite the testimony by Major Edward Wynkoop, commander of Fort Lyons, that the Indians at Sand Creek had not been raiding, Colonel Chivington and his men attacked at dawn on November 29, 1864, completely surprising the sleeping natives. Chief Black Kettle was sure there was a mistake, and hastily raised both a U.S. flag and a white flag of surrender. As bullets rained down on the scattering Arapahos and Cheyennes, Chief Niwot stood in the middle of the battle, arms folded, refusing to fight the white men he claimed were friends.

Niwot’s stoic defense of his “friends” was unmerited. The Third Colorado Regiment mortally wounded Niwot, and he died a few days later. No exact statistics exist on the number of natives killed at Sand Creek, but estimates range from 150 to 500, with most historians placing the number at approximately 180. Most of the dead were women, children and old people. The Sand Creek Massacre was such an atrocity that President Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the Civil War, called for a Congressional investigation into the tragedy. Congress ruled the “gross and wanton” incident a “massacre” rather than a “battle,” censured Colonel Chivington for his actions, removed Governor Evans from office and placed Colorado under martial law.

Citizens in Colorado were not as quick to condemn Chivington and the Third Colorado. Chivington returned from the massacre a hero, and Silas Soule, the only man who dared to testify against Chivington in the federal proceedings, received a gunshot wound that killed him before he took the stand. Longmont, Colo., named a street in Chivington’s honor, and only removed Chivington’s name in March 2005. The Sand Creek Massacre ushered in three decades of Indian wars in the West, and fighting between whites and the Arapahos continued on the eastern plains of Colorado until 1869. The Treaty of Medicine Lodge, signed in 1867, put the Southern Arapahos on a reservation in Oklahoma, but resistance continued until 1869, when General Eugene Carr, assisted by William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, defeated Cheyennes and Arapahos at the Battle of Summit Springs, ending the Cheyenne and Arapaho presence in Colorado. The Northern Arapahos continued to resist white settlement until 1876, fighting Custer at the Little Bighorn before going to the Wind River reservation in Wyoming.

Alive and Well?
Over the years, reports filtered out of Oklahoma that Niwot did not die at Sand Creek, but rather was alive and well on the reservation. Since the chief made it off the battlefield alive after the Sand Creek Massacre, official accounts never confirmed his death. Photos of an Arapaho named Niwot appeared in the late 19th century, which only fueled the rumors of Chief Niwot’s survival. Niwot did not go with his people to Oklahoma, however. A younger warrior named Niwot, probably a distant relative of Boulder’s chief, emerged as a leader of the Arapahos in Oklahoma, and was confused in news reports with the legendary chief who welcomed the first white settlers to the Boulder Valley.

Arapahos today are a thriving tribe, although they retain few ties to Colorado. As of the 2000 census, more than 7,400 Northern and Southern Arapahos lived in the United States, and over 99 percent of them lived on the reservations in Wyoming and Oklahoma. Native Americans still hold annual ceremonies on Valmont Butte, and the American Indian Movement has joined efforts to preserve the site from development, but AIM’s councils do not include any Southern Arapahos.

Recently, a Golden-based firm called Council Tree Communications attempted to revive the Arapaho presence in Colorado. The developer tried to use the century-and-a-half-old Arapaho/Cheyenne land-rights dispute as a basis for building a casino near Denver International Airport. The firm filed claims for 27 million acres, arguing that the land was given to the Arapahos and Cheyennes by the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Council Tree Communications offered to drop the claims if the U.S. Department of the Interior would approve a real estate development, including a casino, American Indian cultural center, luxury golf course and hotel, and retail center. The Department of the Interior turned down the claim, and Governor Bill Owens has openly opposed the project.

Whatever the outcome of the casino controversy, the legacy of the Southern Arapahos in the Boulder Valley is unmistakable. Without their hospitality, Boulder would not be the city it is today. Niwot’s curse was half correct—the breathtaking landscape draws increasing numbers of people to Boulder—yet so far their presence has not ruined the area’s natural beauty. Although there is little tangible evidence of the Arapahos in and around Boulder, other than the statue representing Niwot beside Boulder Creek, the place names, sacred sites and public art serve as reminders of those who were here first.

For more on the Southern Arapahos, visit www.nativeamericans.com/Arapaho.htm. See www.santafetrailscenicandhistoricbyway.org/scmasacre.html for a moving report on the archaeology of the Sand Creek Massacre site.

Judy Mattivi Morley, Ph.D., teaches history at the University of Colorado at Denver and Metropolitan State College. Her second book, Making History: Historic Preservation and the Creation of Western Civic Identity, will be published this year. She also owns Denver History Tours, LLC (720-234-7929; www.denverhistorytours.com), offering many different walking tours of Denver.

Photos credits in order of appearance: 1) Leanin' Tree Museum; 2) Denver Public Library, Western History Collection.