Public Memory of the Sand Creek Massacre By Lindsay Calhoun

markers that have been placed in downtown Denver and on the site.²² In addition, local activist groups and schools have begun to memorialize the event through local theatrical performances and to criticize the honor accorded Colonel Chivington and his accomplices on streets and buildings that carry their names. Finally, commemoration takes place presently through narratives presented in the media and through documented oral histories. Eventually, commemoration will most likely take on a more traditional physical form.²³

In terms of artifacts and methods of analysis, I specifically examine print media and official government documentation of the Sand Creek massacre—or battle, as it was also called—in the year following the event, November 1864 through November 1865. I examine the most widely available regional paper of the time, the Daily/Weekly Rocky Mountain News, and two eastern newspapers from New York, the New York Tribune and the New York Times. I also examine the final report from Congress on the investigation into the Sand Creek attack that was published in the eastern press in 1865. Essentially, I investigate the first draft of the historical narrative of Sand Creek that journalism and media produced, and I explore the ways that narrative influences the current construction and development of the Sand Creek memorial. Because the year following the incident is the period of densest media coverage of Sand Creek, it seems appropriate to consider the media’s role in constructing both the battle narrative and the massacre narrative of Sand Creek.²⁴

I located several indigenous or Native American media sources that discuss Sand Creek and have included them in the textual data set. Also incorporated are twenty-first-century media reports from around the country, including local and national newspaper coverage of the ongoing commemoration of Sand Creek. I investigate the ways massacre and battle narratives simultaneously emerge in these texts and how their simultaneous emergence has served multiple national interests in terms of nation, unification, and statehood for Colorado. In addition, I explore