A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek

by Ari Kelman

In the early morning of November 29, 1864, with the fate of the Union still uncertain, part of the First Colorado and nearly all of the Third Colorado volunteer regiments, commanded by Colonel John Chivington, surprised hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho people camped on the banks of Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. More than 150 Native Americans were slaughtered, the vast majority of them women, children, and the elderly, making it one of the most infamous cases of state-sponsored violence in U.S. history. A Misplaced Massacre examines the ways in which generations of Americans have struggled to come to terms with the meaning of both the attack and its aftermath, most publicly at the 2007 opening of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. This site opened after a long and remarkably contentious planning process. Native Americans, Colorado ranchers, scholars, Park Service employees, and politicians alternately argued and allied with one another around the question of whether the nation’s crimes, as well as its achievements, should be memorialized. Ari Kelman unearths the stories of those who lived through the atrocity, as well as those who grappled with its troubling legacy, to reveal how the intertwined histories of the conquest and colonization of the American West and the U.S. Civil War left enduring national scars. Combining painstaking research with storytelling worthy of a novel, A Misplaced Massacre probes the intersection of history and memory, laying bare the ways differing groups of Americans come to know a shared past.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Native American, Grad School, Civil War, Westerns

384 pages, Hardcover

First published February 11, 2013

About the author

Ari Kelman is McCabe Greer Professor of History at Penn State University, where he teaches a wide range of courses, including on the Civil War and Reconstruction, the politics of memory, environmental history, Native American history, World War II, and America in the 1960s. He is the author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Harvard University Press, 2013), recipient of the Avery O. Craven Award, the Bancroft Prize, and the Tom Watson Brown Book Award, all in 2014, and A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans (University of California Press, 2003), which won the Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize in 2004.

Kelman’s essays and articles have appeared in Slate, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, The Times Literary Supplement, the Journal of Urban History, The Journal of American History, and many others. Kelman has also contributed to outreach endeavors aimed at K-12 educators, and to a variety of public history projects, including documentary films for the History Channel and PBS’s American Experience series. He has received numerous grants and fellowships, most notably from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Huntington Library. He is now working on two books, Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War and For Liberty and Empire: How the Civil War Bled into the Indian Wars.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s what we know for certain about Sand Creek. On November 29, 1864, soldiers of the First and Third Colorado, commanded by Colonel John Chivington, attacked the Cheyenne and Arapahoe village camped along the banks of the creek. At least 150 Indians were killed, many of them women and children. After that, agreement ends. Ever since the confrontation, people (the white participants, the Indian survivors, historians) have been grappling over the meaning. Even the actual location of Black Kettle’s Cheyenne village is uncertain.

Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre tells the story of the creation of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. It is an accomplishment that is bigger than it appears on the surface. Oh, another National Park? Big deal. How hard can it be to slap together a visitor center and sell a few key chains? We’ll put a statue over there. An old cannon over there. Also, a parking lot. Done. You’re welcome, NPS.

It turns out it’s harder than that.

A Misplaced Massacre is narrowly focused on the memory of Sand Creek, and the ultimate issue of whether it was a battle (fought between matched warriors) or a massacre (in which innocents were slaughtered indiscriminately). In broader terms, though, it is a book about historiography, about how history is created, changed, and recreated. It is about how we remember, and how we remember differently from people before us. (This notion probably strikes some as odd. How can history change? Isn’t it an immutable, universal truth? Short answer: No. Napoleon is right. It’s a fable agreed upon). Though Kelman never makes the parallel explicit, I kept thinking back to what I’ve read about the September 11th Museum, and the attendant difficulties of interpreting history in such a way that it is palatable to a variety of constituencies.

The story Kelman tells is filled with a dizzying cast of characters. (A list would have been helpful). There is Laird Cometsevah, a Cheyenne Chief and massacre* descendant who pushed hard for Sand Creek to be memorialized at a specific location, in a very specific way, and who didn't trust the NPS to do it justice. (He also wanted reparations paid under Article 6 of an 1865 treaty between the Cheyenne & Arapahoe, and the Federal Government, a desire that a) tended to put him in a bad light; and b) caused him to be rather ruthless in his requests, even to the point of excluding other Indian views). There is Bill Dawson, almost an archetype, the conservative western rancher who claimed to own the land upon which the massacre took place, but who managed to form a very good working relationship with Laird and other Cheyenne representatives who came to perform ceremonies on his ranch (the basis of their relationship was likely a shared distrust of the US Government). There is historian Jerome Greene, former historian for the Park Service, who finds himself drawn into that uncomfortable place where verifiable fact clashes with cultural memory. There are the Bowens, who own a ranch nearby Bill Dawson, and who claim that Black Kettle’s village actually rested on their land. (And who must have given the historian-archaeologists fits with their amateur excavations). There is also a rotating cast of NPS officials who faced the impossible task of making everyone happy. (Everyone was a bit unhappy, which I suppose is the mark of compromise).

*I will be referring to Sand Creek as a massacre. Despite dissenting opinions from amateur western historians like Greg Michno (who seems intent on getting the Indians to apologize to white America), the weight of all the evidence is that Sand Creek was not a battle. The fact, highlighted by Michno, that the Indians fought back, does not change this. If a man walks into your house and shoots you dead, it is still murder, even if you tried to club him with a baseball bat. Same thing when soldiers charge into a village.*

Kelman approaches this topic as a journalist. He talks with everyone, he provides intimate character portraits, and he never takes sides. This is one of the issues I had: the never taking sides. At a certain point, bending over backwards to be unbiased becomes a bias in itself. Kelman’s refusal to editorialize allows unfair statements made by one person to stand uncorrected by the other. (I’m thinking mostly of the attacks made on the NPS, which were completely unfair. I felt nothing but sympathy for the Park Service as they were crushed – with smiles on their faces! – between history, cultural traditions, and political correctness). Kelman’s adamant refusal to take a position also leaves the nagging historical mystery – where was Black Kettle’s village? – dangling in the air.

This leads to my second issue: this is a great work of journalism, but not of history. One of the strangest things about A Misplaced Massacre is how vague Kelman is in describing the massacre itself. His work is a compendium of competing visions of this event, yet he does a poor job of clearly laying out its historical reality. There is no baseline version of events, which makes it difficult to gauge how the meaning of Sand Creek has changed over time, and depending on who is doing the interpretation. Anyone who comes to this book without having read something about Sand Creek before is going to be hopelessly lost. (Or worse, hopelessly disinterested).

Like I said, I knew a few things about Sand Creek (I’ve read the congressional testimony!) going in, so I greatly enjoyed this. It is written in an engaging manner that kept me glued to all the story’s twists and turns. (If “twists and turns” can be applied to the field of historical preservation). Once I opened the front cover, I didn't close it for long stretches. (It definitely needed some photos, though).

This is an interesting moment in America, because we are having national debates about historical iconography and their meanings. A tragic shooting led us to reconsider the propriety of having a Confederate Battle Flag flying on public grounds. President Obama gave a mountain back its original name, angering a lot of non-stakeholders in the process (Alaska has been in favor of this change for years). In my hometown of Minneapolis, there is a push to rename Lake Calhoun, the place where I used to collapse during cross country practice.

It’s a complicated issue. On the one hand, certain actions seem obvious to avoid insulting or hurting swaths of our own citizens. On the other hand, if each generation tries to scrub the history of the previous generation, then we are left kidding ourselves about our past. It’s a delicate balance. A Misplaced Massacre is not about this, per se, but it is another example of that ongoing struggle.

Anyway, while you ponder that, I will be making plans to visit the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. Southeast Colorado, here I come! Hawaii can wait for another year. I can’t wait to see the look on my wife’s face when I tell her.

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the best I've ever read. Ari Kelman, in 280 pages (an impressively concise book for such a complex and serious subject), explores what the Sand Creek Massacre meant in 1864, how its interpretation has been disputed since, and what it means today to different people.

Instead of a chronological telling of the massacre, a close following of the development of the Sand Creek Massacre memorial site guides the book’s narrative, which starts with the opening of the site in 2007. Immediately, I, as a reader, felt like I was in good hands. Kelman outlines who speaks at this ceremony and dissects what they say (and what they don’t) with the knowledge he has gathered writing the book. A county commissioner didn’t talk about the massacre at all but about the jobs the memorial site would create to assuage local concerns about the site’s effects on their way of life. He was followed by then-governor Bill Ritter, who, Kelman says, “offered an all-things-to-all-people speech,” in which he “focused on a safe message of healing through memorialization, extolling the resilience of Native people, and spoon-feeding his audience rhetorical pabulum by calling on Coloradans to ‘teach our children so that we never forget.’ Rather than demanding that the assembled crowd confront the massacre’s grim details, Ritter suggested that they should remember the image of comity constructed at the ceremony, which…abjured Chivington’s Sand Creek story by demonstrating that Native Americans and whites had finally ‘found a way to live in peace without conflict.’”

Kelman then outlines what the other settler speakers say; most of them offer self-congratulatory speeches, a washing of the hands. Other speakers follow. What stuck with me was that Little Coyote, the Northern Cheyenne tribal president, “reminded the assembled dignitaries that the Northern Cheyennes could not treat sickness with memories, could not feed their children on apologies, and could not find shelter within multicultural bromides.”

From the get, Kelman succinctly exposes the nuances surrounding people’s attitudes toward Sand Creek. How people have narrated its history to themselves and to each other is fascinating and Kelman does an excellent job of capturing the conviction, ambivalence, and agendas of all involved. He writes about the Native Americans’ understandable wariness of the federal government, here represented by the National Park System, the disagreements between Native American nations about the creation and maintenance of the site, scientists’ unintentionally offensive enthusiasm for the site, locals’ concerns about the effects of the site’s opening, and more. Kelman refuses to characterize Native Americans as a monolithic group of “noble savages” in much the same way he resists the urge to paint rural Coloradans as rednecks.

Kelman tackles these complex issues with the emotion they deserve without resorting to hyperbole or exaggeration and he does so using vivid, beautiful language. The people in the book are real to me. Especially interesting to me were Black Kettle, a leader of the Southern Cheyenne who survived the massacre, Alexa Roberts, the NPS employee that oversaw much of the memorial’s development, brothers Steve Brady and Otto Braided Hair, whose great-grandfather was at Sand Creek, and Silas Soule, a captain with the Colorado 3rd who refused to let those under him participate in the massacre. Soon after the massacre, Soule started writing to as many people as he could, calling the massacre what it was and asking for an investigation into Chivington. Days after he testified against Chivington, he was murdered in the street at the age of 26; many believe he was murdered because of his testimony.

Jim Druck, a Jewish businessman, also interested me. He bought the site and gave it to the victims’ descendants in exchange for an advantageous business contract with them. But his decision was driven by more than business savvy. “At Sand Creek,” he said, “I could see that they were feeling the same things that I felt at Dachau…I could see in their eyes, I could see in their body language, what they were feeling. It’s crushing. You can’t talk. You can’t say anything.”

I’ve lived in Denver for nearly a decade now and have passed by place names peppered throughout the book. I worked on Wynkoop Street for five years, I lived near Downing Street in Capitol Hill, I’ve driven down Evans and past Byers. I figured that, like most cities, these names came from racist, profit-motivated settlers. I was depressingly correct. I wish that these place names were replaced with Soule or Black Kettle or something that doesn’t honor the people who committed atrocities. (And they were atrocities. Eyewitness accounts (from whites and Native Americans) relate how a pregnant woman was eviscerated, her fetus ripped from her, how the soldiers raped the women, how most of the dead were scalped, how the soldiers cut off the genitals of the murdered to bring back home as trophies, and more.)

Kelman highlights how the Sand Creek was not an aberration or the work of a few “bad apples,” as military apologists will have you believe, but a logical result of years of federal policy designed to exterminate Native Americans and take their land. He points out how much Governor Evans was intent on making Colorado a state (and that he wanted to be its first senator) and how he saw Native Americans as an impediment to “progress,” the progress, this time, taking the form of a railroad. He also examines how the wars fought between Native Americans and settlers were not separate from the Civil War but rather a logical outgrowth of it. Lincoln needed another Union state for reelection, and while Colorado did not gain statehood until 1876, the push for statehood meant that Native Americans had to go.

Kelman never once questions that the massacre was a battle, which I appreciated. From the very beginning, it’s clear that he won’t be distracted by people foaming at the mouth about “political correctness,” people obsessed with a fictitious story that characterizes settlers and federal policy toward Native Americans as positive. As Primo Levi wrote, “Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.” By systematically meeting these deniers with evidence, Kelman effectively and respectfully shows that they are wrong.

Perhaps the book’s greatest strength is in its refusal to accept any sort of easy healing and its insistence on connecting the past to the present and the future. He doesn’t shy away from hard truths and encourages us to face our past, and ourselves, honestly.

[Mikayla Hildebrand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somehow interesting and boring at the same time.

[Craig Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are very few challenges facing historians than figuring out how to craft Native American history in a way that gives full consideration to both written (often "white") and oral (often tribal) sources, perspectives and world views. The Sand Creek massacre--contemporary spin doctors tried to recast it as a "battle"--is one of the thorniest cases, in part because of the multiple Native nations involved (Northern and Southern Cheyennes and Arapahoes), in even greater part because of the long-standing (and justified) distrust of any government agency or agreement in Native communities. When the stakes were raised by the movement to establish Sand Creek as a national historical site, the difficulties were raised to yet another level.

All of that makes Ari Kelman's achievement in A Misplaced Massacre one of the highest order; the Bancroft Prize and countless other academic honors confirm the point. Answering Patricia Limerick's call for a new narrative form responsive to the multicultural complications of Western history, Kelman waves together several overlapping stories, each with its own internal logic. Part of that involves the events of November 29 , 1864 when two regiments of Colorado volunteers under the command of John Chivington laid waste to a Native encampment, whose leaders had been assured that they were under the protection of the American government. Part involves the contemporary response to those events: the Army issued a clear condemnation, many white Coloradoans created a narrative in Chivington's defense. (The basic pattern would play out after My Lai more than a hundred years later.) But Kelman gives equal weight to the detective story of figuring out what happened at Sand Creek (and, crucially, exactly where), of negotiating the many people and groups (including landowners, Native nations and groups of academic and amateur historians, some backed by internet trolls), and of finding a way through the political bureaucracy, a task that at several points seemed utterly impossible. By the end, all of the strands come together in a satisfying manner, in part because Kelman knows that resolving all of the question is, and will remain, impossible.

And all of that's complicated by the backdrop of the Civil War, which has usually been ignored or treated as a footnote in the Sand Creek story.

The highest achievement of the book, however, is structural and stylistic. Kelman's a good storyteller with an eye for character and detail, but he's an even better historical architect. As I made my way into the book, I found myself wondering why certain key scenes and (seemingly) bits of background information were introduced more than once. Those repetitions aren't a problem; they're central to what the book does. When we come back to a scene we thought we knew in a new context, we realize we didn't actually understand it's full ramifications. Depending on the angle of entry, either the National Park Service, the landowners or prominent Native participants can seem unjustifiably intransigent and contentious. They dig in on their stories and methods, refusing or failing to acknowledge alternatives. That's precisely the issue at the core of Native history. By returning to the moments several times, Kelman invites, without forcing, us to develop a way of reading that can accept seemingly unreconcilable perspectives, which can't in fact be reconciled within either perspective. But they can co-exist and, in a wonderful twist introduced when a new participant arrives late in the day--a retired criminal investigator and Western history buff--some crucial issues in the Sand Creek story come together in a way that no one saw coming.

Can't say enough about how much I admire this book. The truth in reviewing part acknowledges that I knew Kelman when he was an undergrad at Wisconsin many years ago, but had no idea he'd become a professional historical until I heard about the Bancroft. The main message isn't changed a bit by the personal connection: if you're interested in history, especially the histories of Native Americans, race, or historical memory, read it.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since 6th grade when an excellent teacher first introduced my class to a more complete history of the interaction between Native Americans and the U.S. government, I have been fascinated by this topic. If you're like me, you will want to read this book. It tells the story of the efforts of the National Park Service to create a memorial to the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. The process took almost a decade and was complicated by negotiations between the four tribal groups who descended from the massacre victims, land owners where the massacre occurred, local and national politicians, the Park Service itself, and local businessmen. Oh, and the fact that the creek apparently moved, and these groups couldn't even agree on exactly where the massacre took place.

Did I say massacre? For more than a hundred years, it was described as a battle, not a massacre. And that was just one point of contention. After describing the events of Nov. 28, 1864, Kelman describes the various historic sources of information and the delicate balancing act that the park service performed in bringing everyone together in agreement on how to proceed with the memorial. Alexa Roberts of the park service in particular had incredible patience to keep tempers and egos from getting too far out of hand. A great story of western history and how it can still have repercussions today.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful book on memory, place-making, and the ramifications of settler-colonialism, as refracted through the successes and challenges of Native American and Euro-American collaboration in making the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

On November 29, 1864 peaceful American Indian men, women, and children under the protection of the United States flag were slaughtered indiscriminately by United States soldiers. In 2007 the National Park Service opened the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site to protect the geographic location of the carnage and provide a venue to teach the public about the tragic events which preceded and followed the killing at Sand Creek. Ari Kelman’s masterful book, A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek focuses not on the horrendous events of the soldiers’ murderous rampage itself, but on the history of the memory of the Sand Creek tragedy, and how those memories affected the creation of the National Park and shaped relations between American Indians and European Americans from the nineteenth century to the present day.
The title of the book refers to several ways in which the memory of the massacre was “misplaced” by various groups of Americans, a theme that recurs throughout the book. Not only had the location been forgotten, misplaced, or misidentified by white Americans, but non-Indian and Indian Americans often disagreed over where the massacre should be situated in US history. White Coloradans had a rough sense of the location of the land upon which the killing had taken place, whereas tribal descendants of the victims knew for certain where their ancestors had died (and felt insulted when white archaeologists proposed alternate maps of the massacre location based on archaeological evidence). Some Coloradans had included Sand Creek in a list of Civil War battles recorded in a monument to Coloradan Union Civil War service. However, as the twentieth century progressed, the Sand Creek massacre was disassociated from an increasingly glorified Civil War (page 55). Eventually, late-twentieth century whites decided Sand Creek should be excluded from inclusion in Civil War memory and instead relegated to the “Indian Wars”—a viewpoint not shared by “Native people gazing east from the banks of Sand Creek,” for whom the Civil War “looked like a war of empire, a contest to control expansion into the West, rather than a war of liberation.” Kelman proposes that the correct placement for the massacre is within both the Civil War and the Indian Wars, “a bloody link between interrelated chapters of the nation’s history” (xi).
There is nothing simple about the memory of the massacre or the creation process of its National Park. Kelman navigated his subject matter carefully, clearly articulating an otherwise dizzying variety of perspectives and agendas surrounding the Sand Creek memorialization project. The page-turning narrative is superbly written; Kelman moves expertly and grippingly between recent history and the more distant past as the reader wonders if the competing interests in the site—National Park Service, American Indian massacre descendants, ranchers, landowners—will ever understand each other amicably or be able to agree on the Park’s formation.
Kelman’s heavy reliance on in-person interviews allows him to tell much of the story in the participants’ own words. With professionalism and sensitivity he steps back and objectively portrays the frustrations, hurt feelings, and competing stories of the many individuals and groups involved. Occasionally, however, one wishes that Kelman had registered his opinion as a historian, such as on the merits of the unscientifically gathered evidence of a competing landowner who claims to have part of the Sand Creek site (a map of the NPS site with the competing landowner’s location roughly marked would have sufficed if Kelman did not wish to comment directly). Additionally, the later chapters contain repetitive portions, as Kelman cycles back to history he has covered previously before he adds fresh material. It struck this reviewer as regrettable that Kelman did not seek permission to access the oral histories collected by American Indians during the site search process, as he was therefore unable to quote from them (page 311, footnote 56). A section of oral history retelling would have been useful in addition to the published eye-witness sources he used, in lieu of which an explanation of his decision not to include oral histories would have been appropriate—were the stories considered by tribal members to be too private in nature for the readership of Kelman’s book? The book’s text is accompanied by excellent endnotes: they contain a rich breadth of sources and are an ideal template for any researcher hoping to find Kelman’s sources. Overall this is a fascinating and important book highlighting ongoing strains in U.S. history, and highly recommended for all American historians.

[Addison Vallier · Rating 4 out of 5]

2/12/2025
"Upholding patriotic orthodoxy sometimes {demands} collective amnesia, rather than remembrance".

[John Sprinkle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply brilliant!

[Anson Cassel Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between the time I ordered this book for my college library and the time I read it, Misplaced Massacre had won the 2014 Bancroft Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the field of American history. The book should therefore stand head-and-shoulders above the average historical monograph, and it does.

In November 1864, during the American Civil War, a former Methodist minister, Colonel John Chivington, and the 3rd Colorado Volunteers attacked an encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians—at least nominally under the protection of the United States government—in the high plains of eastern Colorado. Between 70 and 163 Indians, mostly women and children, were killed; but ten soldiers also died. Chivington, who boasted that he had killed at least five hundred warriors, claimed the encounter to have been a battle. Several contemporaries and a majority of modern commentators have more accurately described it as a massacre.

Kelman’s book is only tangentially about the engagement itself and largely concerns the complex process by which the property became a national historic site—the first with “massacre” as part of its nomenclature. Kelman early became a “participant-observer” of the extended debate over how the event should be commemorated, not only investigating archival records, but also attending public hearings and conducting more than a hundred interviews with tribal leaders, National Park Service employees, local landowners and residents, and a smattering of politicians, historians, archaeologists, and casino operators.

Kelman writes well and rarely descends into jargon or preservationist theory. He is to be commended for having aimed the book squarely at the educated general reader. Few books of my acquaintance so well direct the thought of laymen towards the meaning of historical memory and the purpose of historical commemoration.

Nevertheless, Kelman decided to adopt “a nontraditional architecture” in writing this book, using “the central narrative of the historic site’s creation as the book’s spine” and fleshing out “that tale with flashbacks to the era of the massacre and various moments when people struggled over Sand Creek’s memory.” (x-xi) Unfortunately such a course often leads to a disjointed account, the only advantage of which seems to be demonstrating that modern Americans are capable of as much vanity, greed, folly, and general cussedness as their ancestors—though fortunately without the gunfire.

The book is also too long. Most readers outside Kiowa County will probably find wearying the amount of detail about the book’s considerable cast of characters. Discussions that occurred during the many meetings Kelman endured could have been more concisely summarized. Sometimes there is actual repetition, as when, on page 72, the Colorado state historian says that when forced to choose sides, he threw “his hat in with the Cheyennes” and on page 153 says that when forced to choose between his colleagues and the Indians, “I was with the Cheyennes.” Sometimes I wished an editor had just scribbled in the margin, “We hold this truth to be self-evident,” as with the following: “Internet-based discussion fora allow people with a variety of shared interests to congregate in cyberspace....[but with] participants distant from one another, their identities obscured by pseudonyms, the Web can become an echo chamber, amplifying heated discussions.” (222-23)

[Ruben · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book when I visited Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site a while ago. At that time I didn't pay much attention to the content of the book, but it turned out this is a rare meta-history book i.e. history about history, describing the painful process of searching for the massacre location and establishing the national historic site.

Like any real histories, there are no good guys in this book. National Park Service (NPS), Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, land owners and local folks, each with different perspectives and interests, bicker about how to memorialize Sand Creek Massacre (or "battle", for some fringes). The tribes see the massacre in 1864 as an event of living memory, and their mistrust of the federal government as well as their internal politics made the process greatly complicated, even though establishing the site was of their interest. NPS, on the other hand, is bound by the processes and the laws, sees the massacre as a historic event of the past, and had difficulty in balancing the scientific / academic evidences and tribal oral stories and values. And then there were local folks in Kiowa county where the site sits, some of whom don't see it as a "massacre" but rather a "battle". This book reveals that the conflict of values between cultures repeat itself one and a half century later, though mercifully without blood this time. Even though I knew the site eventually opened and the opening ceremony was described in detail in the first chapter, I felt relieved reading the text when the long and winding process finally resulted in the establishment of the site in 2007.

While I found this book a lot more interesting than I originally thought, it is not particularly readable. The story frequently switches back and forth between the past and the present, which was perhaps necessary to illustrate how the past was connected to the present, but it may be difficult to follow if you don't know the basic knowledge of events around the massacre. Also the author somehow didn't put a break between paragraphs in a single chapter, while each chapter was around 40 page long which was a bit beyond my short attention span. If I were the editor I'd put a subchapter, or split each chapter into smaller pieces.

[Marjorie Elwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very dense, thoroughly researched tome that reads, in parts, like a mystery, with the mystery being: where was the actual site of the massacre? The author recounts the known facts of the November 29, 1864, Sand Creek Massacre, as well as the interpretations and mythology ever since, particularly as they have played out in the creation of the National Historic Site. A complex narrative.

"For in the end, this story of memorializing Sand Creek suggests that history and memory are malleable, that even the land, despite its implied promise of permanence, can change, and that the people of the United States are so various that they should not be expected to share a single tale of a common past. Sometimes their stories complement one another; sometimes they clash. Sometimes they intersect; sometimes they diverge. Depending on who tells it, the story of Sand Creek, for instance, suggests that the Civil War midwifed, in President Lincoln's words, 'a new birth of freedom,' but also that it delivered the Indian Wars; that it was a moment of national redemption for some Americans, but of dispossession and subjugation for others. NPS officials and the descendants will never concur on every element of Sand Creek's interpretation, but they might agree that the historic site should challenge visitors to grapple with competing narratives of U.S. history, to struggle with ironies embedded in the American past. If that happens, then perhaps the massacre will no longer be misplaced in the landscape of national memory."

[Alex Milton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek tells the contentious story of the remembrance of the Sand Creek Massacre from the 1864 attack to its National Historic Site designation in 2007. The book focuses on early debates surrounding early memorial references to the massacre as a battle, and federal attempts at reconciliation through the creation of a monument. Based in extensive original research into Bureau of Indian Affairs records, National Park Service documents, and interviews, Kelman focuses extensively on debates between Cheyanne and Arapahoe leaders and federal authorities on the location of the massacre. With federal records ignoring Native American oral histories, instead relying on the accounts of Colonel John Chivington who carried out the attack, Kelman connects the debate surrounding the physical location of the attack with wider skepticism towards the legitimacy of Native American historical sources. He effectively argues that federal insistence to follow United States military records over Native American accounts and resistance towards the term “massacre” mitigated the monument’s effect in reconciliation. The book holds meaningful contributions in understanding the power of memorialization, not only for reconciliation, but also an avenue for additional division.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Misplaced Massacre was an exhausting, tedious, yet very powerful recounting of, what was to me, a vague piece of Colorado history. His research and commitment to piecing together nearly every aspect (I think that this book came out slightly before the Sand Creek Memorial was built) from a fairly objective point of view was incredibly impressive. I felt like a tragic event like this would bring people together when it came to creating this memorial, but I was/am naive. Politics, infighting amongst both tribes and the NPS and their constituents, and greed among the people who owned the historic land played center stage in its creation. Ultimately, Native Americans had the biggest say in how the site would be presented, which is how it should be. Reading a book like this always leads to a lot of historical guilt over how white males (of which I am one), in particular, seem to have this need to destroy what is beautiful and what they can't and won't understand, especially other races, religions, and cultures. At least the end result of the saga of the Sand Creek Massacre site will educate people in an honest, sincere, and respectful way - and that's a good start.

[Julia Bilderback · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another book I had to read for my graduate level course in Historiography at Adams State University. This book is actually very important for people to read right now. On a top level it deals with public history and the creation of a historical site. On a deeper read it deals with history as memory and how sites of all kinds serve to help us remember our past. With historic sites being destroyed by both our government and common people right now, we need to remember why they are there in the first place. Even if we do not agree with what they represent or if they are in the way of building a wall, they should not be destroyed. This book covers some of the tough questions and situations that are ran into when a site is trying to be formally recognized.

This book is very important to Colorado since the site it talks about is here. I still have not had the chance to visit, but I would like to. To me it is very important to go to historic sites to help us understand what happened. This could be a day trip for for people that live in the Denver Metro area.

[Kathy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

As another reviewer wrote, this is not everyone's cup of tea. I am embarrassed to say I have lived in Colorado almost 50 years and I know next to nothing about this fabulous state (aside from reading Centennial by James Michener which is what brought me out here), but I am now correcting that. Oh the IRONY - I bought this book at the shop in the Byers-Evans Mansion during a tour. There truly are two sides to the stories of how Byers and Evans are perceived in Denver versus the descendants of Sand Creek. I found it a very deep read but I couldn't put it down, because I wanted to know if there was a resolution reached by everyone regarding the massacre site. I won't give it away. I will be going to see the site for myself however, though I have no idea what to expect. Kelman's writing encourages me to find out more of what other history I've missed.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Untangling competing versions of even "simple" questions, such as where exactly did the Sand Creek Massacre/Battle happen, is a common task for historians. Perhaps historians of text literate societies, with all the examined participants long dead, can avoid some of the challenges of those engaging with more recent events. "Recent," being extremely relative. The historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnologists and family members contributing to the memorialization of the Sand Creek Massacre thickened the quality of the eventual memorial, but at the cost of making the process even more painful and slow.
Lots of lesson about doing history are contained in the story of the process of gathering evidence of the original event and learning how to interpret it. This should be read by anyone doing US history, of any type, to avoid some of the ham-handed bumbles of the past.

[Salkal]

This book is so cleverly written as an incredibly detailed yet easy-to-process history. The stark criticism of some and uplifting of others within it is remarkably refreshing. It opened my eyes to so much I had heard about, yet lacked a proper education on. It is a good jumping-off point for any future research I want to do surrounding the misrepresentation of the military and tribes in our society. Government moves slowly, yes, but reality is much different from popular media representation of it, even if we are speaking of the late 90s and early 2000s. Between the Dawsons and Bowens, casino development riff-raff, the Midwest small-town culture is one I am unfamiliar with, but got a small taste of. It is truly, not unexpected, but enlightening read.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Besides recounting the history of the Sand Creek Massacre, this book describes the lengthy and fractious process of establishing a memorial. This included reaching agreement between landowners, National Park Service employees, and the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes about the precise location of the massacre; and resolving culture clashes, hurt feelings, and personal agendas. The book bogged down for me at times… there were a lot of players to keep track of, and the back-and-forth might have been almost as frustrating to read about as it was to live through. The ending, with the site finally agreed on and the explanation of why it was so complicated to work out, was worth the ride.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nuanced account of the internal and external struggles to memorialize Sand Creek as part of the National Park Service. I was fascinated by the discussion of memory and the role it plays in how we consider our own past as well as the (often) conflicting perspectives of the various stakeholders in this situation. A portrait of why bureaucracy can move so slowly when looking at building a memorial like the Sand Creek Massacre Historial Site as well as a look into the way that trauma from decades or even centuries ago can still haunt an entire people and the ways in which we can move forward and heal.

[Roger Haak · Rating 5 out of 5]

"For in the end, this story of memorializing Sand Creek suggests that history and memory are malleable, that even the land, despite its implied promise of permanence, can change, and that the people of the United States are so various that they should not be expected to share a single tale of a common past. Sometimes they intersect; sometimes they diverge. Depending on who tells it, the story of Sand Creek, for instance, suggests the Civil War midwifed, in President Lincoln's words, 'a new birth of freedom,' but also that it delivered the Indian Wars; that it was a moment of national redemption for some Americans, but of dispossession and subjugation of others."

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this history book when I visited the Sand Creek Massacre Historic Site in 2019. At the time, I wanted to know more and the book seemed ideal, but realistically the propect of wading through a hefty historic tome seemed unlikely. You need to read a book at the right time, and that was certainly the case here. While the book is more accessible than I anticipated, it's also incredibly detailed and often goes into multi-page asides that don't seem relevant. At times the book is merely hashing out the debates between various parties. That can be tedious, but it also shows how complicated the entire process of memorializing can be.

[Rachel Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emotional and Captivating

I was assigned to read “A Misplaced Massacre” for class and I must say it is one of the best books I have read. I found myself so involved in the story that I did not know what was going on around me. Mr. Kelman did a wonderful job with his descriptions of characters and details of locations. I found myself on a roller coaster ride with the Cheyanne and Arapaho as they fought for their ancestors memory. If you are interested in Native American History then this is a must read.

[andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went near this site last year but it was officially closed. I did stop in town at the NPS center and got this book, had an amazing conversation with Mr. Merlin. This site was 8 miles down a dirt road. After reading this I am compelled to go there. It's such a thorough detail of the whole story up to trying to get the site open that it will have you question every historical marker and location to some degree. I always feel I'm on sacred ground everywhere I go and I hear the echos. This incident defys adequate words but it is pivotal and intensely heartbreaking.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an exceptional book describing how complex the process of memorializing an historical event can be, in this case the Sand Creek Massacre. It shows how deeply events in the past are still rooted into current societies and relationships. It also shows the strained and complex relationship between Native peoples and the US government, and helps show why many Native groups rightly continue to mistrust the US government.

[Brendan Campisi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kelman tells the story of the creation of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, an extraordinarily complex decades-long process involving government agencies, Indigenous nations, historians, scientists, heritage organizations, and more. Kelman's narrative is beautifully crafted, with a keen eye for character, and his discussion of the questions of nationalism, colonialism and the conflicting meanings of historical memory is extremely sharp and insightful. An incredible book.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

a really engaging recounting of the numerous struggles that went along with creating the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in Colorado. Very interesting from a public history perspective and working with collective memories, and showing just what can go into the historical markers, monuments, sites we see and visit.

[Phil Goerner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is mostly about the masacre itself. It has a little on the history of the massacre and the players involved. Really good info on the politics back in the day, and the politics of current history. Interesting stuff – like landowners and locations specifications, etc. Not quite as much story about the Indians and the government and the battle itself. But it was interesting.

[Vincent Rutherford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the most in depth I have ever gone into one of these topics and it was absolutely enthralling. The more I read the more I wanted to know and the more I figured out as I went along. It was quite fascinating to see the story of their challenges and achievements unfold in extreme detail as the story moved along and it was a gripping experience to read and go along for the ride.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably a 3.5. Really good book on the process of making the Sand Creek Massacre NHS. I wish there had been more guideposting by the author on themes and content. Sometimes the narrative timelines felt confusing.