Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders push to rename Oklahoma site

Stories handed down by survivors recount what occurred as a bloodbath. Other proof backs them up.

Yet when individuals go to the land right now, the very first thing they see is its official identify: Washita Battlefield National Historic Site.

Cheyenne leaders requested Congress within the Nineteen Nineties not to label the place the place dozens of their ancestors have been killed in a shock assault as a battle. The identify caught, although, and the National Park Service has managed the western Oklahoma site ever since. Now tribal leaders are renewing their push for “battlefield” to go amid a broader reckoning by the U.S. authorities to rethink racist or in any other case offensive landmark names and how they got here to be.

“If you’re going to tell a story, tell it accurately and truthfully,” stated Cheyenne and Arapaho Gov. Reggie Wassana. “Don’t make it sound as if the genocide was proper and right.”

In the final yr alone, U.S. officers modified the names of 643 streams, cliffs and different geographic options after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland moved to erase a racist time period for Native Americans from her federal lands. Seven of these locations have been in Oklahoma.

Leaders of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, which function a joint authorities in Concho, have repeatedly requested Interior Department officers about including Washita Battlefield to the listing, Wassana stated. 

But its identify was written into legislation, and altering it may require one other act of Congress. The strain to change the site’s identify comes as lawmakers in Oklahoma and different conservative states take steps to restrict how historical past and race are taught. Oklahoma’s new prime faculties official, Ryan Walters, pledged on the marketing campaign path to roll out “patriotic” coaching for historical past lecturers.

Kenny Points, the park ranger who supervises the Washita site, stated he and different park workers work with Cheyenne and Arapaho officers to be certain the tribes’ perspective is represented in displays and occasions. He declined to remark concerning the park’s identify or any inside discussions surrounding that. 

Wassana stated that whereas park rangers do work with tribal leaders, the site can by no means absolutely painting the tribes’ viewpoint as a result of its identify obscures actuality. Black Kettle, the Cheyenne peace chief who led the encampment, was in search of peace. He was killed alongside together with his spouse and an unknown variety of Cheyenne males, girls and youngsters.

Because the occasion just isn’t referred to as a bloodbath, the a whole bunch of people that journey to the site each month go away with a muddled understanding of what occurred, Wassana stated. More than 15,100 individuals visited in 2021. 

The Park Service usually explains what occurred as a tragic tradition conflict, a phrase that federal officers have used to describe the occasion since a minimum of the Nineteen Sixties. 

“To us, it was an invasion,” stated Max Bear, the tribal historic preservation officer for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. “The culture clash was, ‘We want this, and we want you out of the way.’” 

The site is an instance of historical past advised from the mainstream Anglo American viewpoint — that violence on the Plains was inevitable within the United States’ westward growth, stated Jeffrey Shepherd, a University of Texas at El Paso historical past professor who has researched the Washita site extensively. 

“So the question is, ‘Well, why is that the normative baseline history?’” Shepherd stated. “Where are Cheyenne, Arapaho and (other) Native perspectives? Why aren’t they valued?’” 

The debate over how historical past is taught in public faculties provides additional urgency to making certain accuracy on the Washita site, stated Bear, who’s Cheyenne, Arapaho and Kiowa. 

“I would like to see it changed in my time so I can better explain it to my children,” he stated. “I have to explain to my son — before I even talk about the Washita massacre — explain first why it’s called a battlefield, not a massacre site.”

The United States already acknowledges an analogous site in Colorado for what it was: a bloodbath. 

In November 1864, troops attacked Cheyenne and Arapaho households tenting for the winter, killing greater than 200 individuals. The grounds are actually referred to as the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. 

U.S. officers eyed the land the place Cheyenne individuals had lived and hunted for 1000’s of years for growth, notably after the invention of gold within the Rocky Mountains in 1858, stated Henrietta Mann, a Cheyenne historian and elder and distinguished scholar of Native American research. 

Black Kettle, one in all 44 Cheyenne peace chiefs, survived Sand Creek. He signed treaties that progressively lower his nation’s land base as a result of he wished to attain peace with the brand new overseas authorities, Mann stated. 

“All he ever wanted to do was have his children sleep throughout the night,” she stated. 

In late 1868, Black Kettle and his band arrange camp for the winter alongside the Lodge Pole River. The river, which cuts throughout what’s now southwestern Oklahoma, is understood right now because the Washita.

It offered an ample supply of water, and the encircling cliffs supplied shelter, making it a favourite winter campsite, stated Mann, two of whose great-grandmothers traveled with Black Kettle’s band. Other bands of Cheyenne, Arapaho and Kiowa arrange camp close by. 

Meanwhile, Gen. Philip Sheridan tapped Custer to lead the Army’s post-Civil War marketing campaign towards the Cheyenne. Some factions of Cheyenne society advocated for warfare as a method to defend their nation and defend their residents. But the army’s new technique of all-out battle didn’t make any distinctions. 

“The ultimate fact at Washita is you’ve got a peace chief who is working towards reconciling the internal dynamics of what to do,” stated Mann’s son, Alden Whiteman, who’s Arapaho and Cheyenne. 

Custer charged with the seventh Cavalry into Black Kettle’s encampment at daybreak on Nov. 27, 1868, virtually 4 years to the day after the Sand Creek bloodbath. 

The actual variety of Cheyenne individuals killed stays unknown. Custer believed it to be greater than 100, whereas survivors thought the quantity was decrease. An estimated 21 troopers additionally have been killed in later preventing as males in close by campsites discovered of the assault and responded. Troops took survivors captive, destroyed meals and provides, and killed a whole bunch of horses. 

U.S. officers instantly hailed the assault as a victory for Custer. 

But such indiscriminate killings elevate basic questions concerning the United States’ dedication to legislation and order and whether or not it considered Native individuals as people deserving of simply remedy, Shepherd stated. “They just essentially gave Sheridan, and then Custer, the powers of judge, jury and executioner,” he stated. 

Soldiers left a carved stone on the site to mark the violence, in accordance to newspaper tales from the late 1800s.

For Cheyenne individuals, Custer’s assault finally touched off the reservation period and greater than a century of financial wrestle. 

The reverse was true for the rising United States. As the inhabitants moved west, Congress divided up tribal reservations into particular person sections of land assigned to tribal residents, referred to as allotments. The land left over was opened to white settlers, which occurred in 1892 to the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation in present-day western Oklahoma.

News tales touted the area’s fertile land and boasted about Custer’s nice victory. 

The space’s rising non-Native inhabitants wished to construct a state park on the site to appeal to hunters and vacationers. In 1934, residents of close by Cheyenne launched the Washita Battlefield Memorial Association to advance their trigger. The editor of the native Cheyenne Star newspaper was named the group’s president. The paper was recognized for its storefront window show of objects looted from the site, together with human stays, which it claimed belonged to Black Kettle, in accordance to a 1959 article in The Daily Oklahoman.

The push for nationwide recognition of the site gained prominence across the century mark of the assault. Federal officers deemed it a nationwide landmark in 1965. A fictionalized account of what occurred served because the backdrop of the 1970 Hollywood hit “Little Big Man,” starring Dustin Hoffman. 

While the film portrayed the assault as a shock to the Cheyenne encampment, the prevailing narrative about what occurred remained a battle. “This view of westward expansion and frontier expansion, this conflict between civilization and savagery as people viewed it, and the inevitability of westward expansion really framed their sense of history,” Shepherd stated. “Plus, you’re in Oklahoma. The land runs and taking Native land are just embedded in Oklahoma history.”

In 1968, native boosters organized a reenactment of the battle for the site’s a hundredth anniversary. Organizers paid $300 to six males to act as cavalry troopers. But the boys set off sooner than deliberate by firing blanks, scaring the Cheyenne and Arapaho individuals who had agreed to camp on the site for the occasion, Shepherd stated.

“You can say ‘We were just joking’ or ‘It was just a reenactment,’” he stated. “To do that just disrespects the legacy of the violence, and it really just marginalizes the Cheyenne and Arapaho perspective.”

It wasn’t till the late Nineteen Eighties — after on line casino gaming began to give tribes an financial foothold — that Native individuals started to have a collective voice in selections made on the native, state and federal ranges, Wassana stated. 

U.S. Rep. Frank Lucas, who grew up in Cheyenne, emphasised the significance of together with the tribes when he co-sponsored a invoice in 1994 for the federal authorities to take over the Washita site.

The proposal handed in 1996 and required the Park Service to contain Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders of their plans for the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site.

While tribal leaders supported formal recognition and protections for the site, their requests to Congress not to name it a battlefield went unheeded. Its identify was written into legislation.

In a press release, Lucas stated he and everybody else concerned in crafting the legislation “were extremely dutiful in ensuring the history of the tragedy of the Battle of the Washita was properly honored and remembered.”

“It was my intention then and it remains the intention of the local National Park Service, myself, and all other parties to preserve and interpret the historical significance of the hallowed land that we call the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site,” he stated.

In 1998, the Park Service organized a symposium that introduced collectively Mann and different historians to debate whether or not the occasion was a bloodbath or a battle. Mann nonetheless remembers a few of the arguments she tried to deflect:

Black Kettle advocated for peace, not battle. The army positioned sharp shooters across the camp to kill, whereas Cheyenne individuals jolted awake by the gunfire had to scramble for bows and arrows or discarded army tools, she stated. Many males have been gone on a looking journey.

“One has to be fair in terms of analysis, and I know history has never been very fair to us,” Mann stated. “Even contemporary views tend to carry the kinds of justifications” that folks apply to occasions similar to Washita.

According to a transcript from the occasion, army historian Paul Hutton defined that Cheyenne individuals had recognized the federal government was looking for them. “Thus I suppose, in a military sense, (they) had been given fair warning,” he stated. 

What made the naming of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site completely different is that “massacre” had a champion in Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell. And public notion of U.S. historical past was altering, since that site was authorized by Congress a few decade after Washita.

But different efforts to incorporate Indigenous views into federal landmarks have confronted pushback. Several tribes have pressed since 2005 to change the identify of a nationwide monument in Wyoming. Changing the identify of a nationwide monument requires congressional or presidential motion. 

Congress has by no means acted on the request. In 2021, the state’s two U.S. senators launched a invoice to block the tribes. Although it didn’t go, the proposal could possibly be reintroduced this yr.

Wassana stated he and different Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders gained’t cease till the Washita site is renamed, even when their path to make it occur stays uncharted.

“We want the change for accuracy and history,” he stated, “for future generations.”