INDIAN WARS

I relocated to Denver, Colorado in 1998. Continuing to explore battlefields, I found that the quarrels continuing to rage over sites of conflict between Euro-American settlers and the indigenous nations that called them home had little to do with property rights. It was, and remains a battle over who has the right to remember how things happen. From the genocidal slaughter of a Cheyenne-Arapaho peace-camp at Sand Creek, to the fight between Cheyenne Dog Soldiers and US Army Pawnee scouts at Summit Springs, I sought to visit these sites with the same reverence one might bring to Auschwitz or Dachau. We are told that The War Between the States was fought to deny anyone the right to own another human being. The savagery visited on ancient societies by an industrial modern military raises questions about the professed moral integrity of self-described liberators. These windswept sites are far more haunting than eastern battlefields cluttered with monuments, markers, and statuary; bringing to mind the words of Joshua Chamberlain.

“. . .bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate the vision-place of souls”