{"id":80,"date":"2026-05-10T15:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T15:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=80"},"modified":"2026-05-10T15:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T15:04:11","slug":"silas-soule-died-for-refusing-to-whitewash-the-sand-creek-massacre-his-actions-are-more-relevant-than-ever-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=80","title":{"rendered":"Silas Soule died for refusing to whitewash the Sand Creek Massacre. His actions are more relevant than ever."},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Story first appeared in:<\/p>\n<p>On a windswept day exactly 161 years after his murder, Silas Soule\u2019s white marble headstone attracts few visitors. A small bouquet of artificial flowers adds a splash of color that sets this marker apart from the rows of other military graves, while a couple of patriotic pins lie in the dust at its base.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=79\">Silas Soule died for refusing to whitewash the Sand Creek Massacre. His actions are more relevant than ever.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>By evening, someone has added an unopened can of Coors.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The date the 26-year-old Soule died \u2014 April 23 \u2014 doesn\u2019t draw nearly as many people to this section of Denver\u2019s Riverside Cemetery as some other days. In October or November, the annual Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run brings a crowd to honor the Army officer shot to death in 1865, only a few months after he told Congress the truth about the Nov. 29, 1864 slaughter of about 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people, mostly older adults, women and children.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On or around July 26, a minister often marks Soule\u2019s birthday by setting up a lawn chair beneath an umbrella and reading his historic letters aloud, including the one that chronicles his refusal to follow orders from Col. John Chivington, a Methodist minister turned Army officer, to attack the peaceful encampment.<\/p>\n<p>But on any day, Soule can stir introspection.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>LEFT:<\/strong> Gerald Horner, a volunteer for Historic Denver, takes note of some of the mementos left at the gravesite of Captain Silas S. Soule at Riverside Cemetery on April 23 in Denver. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun) <strong>RIGHT: <\/strong>Capt. Silas Soule posed for this portrait in his military uniform sometime between 1860 and 1865. (History Colorado )<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cA lot of times I\u2019ll drive up behind somebody, and they\u2019ll be standing there with their hands in their pockets, just staring at his grave, kind of contemplating life,\u201d says Mike Warner, general manager of the cemetery just north of downtown. \u201cBut some people obviously want to talk and chitchat about him. They leave coins sometimes on his headstone. He gets flowers, especially around Memorial Day. Last year, he got plates of food.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Coloradans observe the 150th anniversary of statehood and 250th of the nation\u2019s founding, the figure of Silas Soule once again looms large \u2014 primarily for the role he played in pushing back against the instigators of a particularly dark day in territorial history. But Soule also will be remembered for courage that outlived his assassination on the streets of downtown Denver, and for bending what began as Sand Creek\u2019s tragically flawed historical account back toward truth.<\/p>\n<p>His significance has gathered momentum, especially in the last quarter-century, and echoed across the years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Copies of Soule\u2019s correspondence were discovered around 2000, when a Denver-area resident found them among family documents stored in a trunk. Those letters proved instrumental in establishing the location of the massacre as a National Historic Site. Last October, a distant relative of Soule\u2019s donated the originals to the Denver Public Library.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The controversial \u201cOn Guard\u201d statue of a Union soldier at the state Capitol \u2014 on which Soule\u2019s name is included among those who kept the territory out of the hands of the Confederacy \u2014 was amended in 2002 to clarify that Sand Creek was, in fact, not among the battles fought in the Civil War era, but a massacre. (And in the course of social justice protests after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the statue was toppled.)\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In 2010, History Colorado placed a plaque marking the location of Soule\u2019s assassination on a building at 15th and Arapahoe streets. And in 2014, then-Gov. John Hickenlooper issued an official apology to the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes \u2014 150 years after the Sand Creek atrocity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The History Colorado Center opened a new Sand Creek exhibit in 2022, assembled with extensive tribal input. The role of Silas Soule figures prominently. And in 2023, federal officials officially renamed Mount Evans to Mount Blue Sky, a nod to Cheyenne and Arapaho cultures while erasing territorial governor John Evans for his influence on the Sand Creek Massacre. One of the finalists: Mount Soule.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s just been, I think, a growing recognition of the tragedy and the state\u2019s role in it for decades now,\u201d says Jason Hanson, chief creative officer and director of interpretation and research at History Colorado. \u201cAnd these were each steps along the way. And as that recognition has grown and become more widely appreciated, Soule\u2019s role at Sand Creek has also become more known.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>LEFT:<\/strong> Members of the public attend the  opening of the Sand Creek Massacre exhibit at History Colorado on Nov. 19, 2022, including a prominent quote from Soule. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America) <strong>RIGHT: <\/strong> A statue depicting a Union soldier was toppled on June 25, 2020, in front of the state Capitol Building in Denver. (Eric Lubbers, The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2><strong>Letters that changed history<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Soule\u2019s correspondence, including letters from Lt. Joseph Cramer, a fellow officer in the Colorado Volunteers who also refused to attack the encampment, had far-reaching effects. It triggered two federal investigations and provided a record that kept the horrific events of that day from settling softly into history as simply another battle of the Western Indian wars.<\/p>\n<p>Revelations about the Sand Creek Massacre stood as a stumbling block to Colorado statehood, along with territorial efforts at the time to disenfranchise Black men, who\u2019d had voting rights since 1861. Even though President Abraham Lincoln was trying to fast-track the process to add states and shore up political support at the time, Colorado\u2019s push for statehood wouldn\u2019t find traction for another decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCounterfactual history is always treacherous,\u201d says William Convery, a former Colorado state historian who spent years with History Colorado and now works as director of research for the Minnesota Historical Society. \u201cBut it\u2019s possible that Sand Creek could have been swept under the rug, that the outrageous lies that John Chivington said about what happened there \u2014 that they killed 600 Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors \u2014 might have stuck. And it could have been a nonissue in terms of Colorado statehood.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut once the knowledge of what really happened at Sand Creek became public,\u201d he adds, \u201cColorado was going to have a very difficult time becoming a state until it cleaned up its act.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Little wonder that Soule, though remembered in a Rocky Mountain News account of his well-attended funeral for \u201cgood discipline and moral courage,\u201d had powerful enemies. It seems likely that his murder could have been retaliation for his actions surrounding Sand Creek. A suspect was arrested but later escaped and the crime went unpunished.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So while Soule\u2019s story may be having a moment, especially as the state\u2019s sesquicentennial celebration invites Coloradans to turn their gaze to the past, it\u2019s worth noting that, from a historical perspective, he probably remains underappreciated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd that\u2019s not by accident,\u201d Hanson points out. \u201cThere was a concerted campaign to try and discredit and erase him from our memories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Newspaper clippings from the Rocky Mountain News, founded in 1859 by unabashed civic booster and editor William Byers, tell an unvarnished story.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the first anniversary of the massacre, the paper lamented that the soldiers \u201cwho on that occasion bore arms in our defense have been villified, slandered and maligned\u201d while insisting that \u201cthese men, true to every instinct of patriotism, nobly acquitted themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>There was a concerted campaign to try and discredit and erase him from our memories.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jason Hanson, <em>chief creative officer and director of interpretation and research at History Colorado<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>In 1865, a November headline trumpeted an election-year \u201cSoldier\u2019s Sand Creek Vindication Ticket\u201d of candidates. Even after the turn of the century, the paper reported that the \u201cheroes\u201d of Sand Creek held a reunion, camping out on the prairie described as \u201cthe site of the struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And that \u201cOn Guard\u201d statue? The report of its unveiling in 1909, published 44 years to the day after Soule was murdered, featured an accompanying account of Sand Creek from an officer who allowed that, \u201cThe men did not go to take prisoners; they were all determined to give the Indians a taste of their own medicine \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By then, Convery notes, what he calls the \u201cJohn Chivington school of interpretation\u201d had become the prevailing storyline \u2014 that what the soldiers had done at Sand Creek was necessary to protect settlements and, essentially, create Colorado. Additionally, the \u201cpioneer generation\u201d had begun to die off and wanted to be remembered for their hardships and sacrifices, and to secure a place in history as heroes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo that meant taking what I believe to be fuzzy memories of the circumstances and really playing up the danger and the threat that many pioneers of the time felt that the Cheyenne and Arapaho communities represented,\u201d Convery says. \u201cTalking about the sacrifice and the duty of Colorado soldiers to establish the state, and to preserve it for the Union, sort of overwhelmed the story of the moral atrocity that took place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But in 1995, in an editorial under the headline \u201cSiding with the killers,\u201d the Rocky Mountain News offered something like a historical mea culpa for its failures more than a century earlier, during the run-up to Sand Creek and afterward. It noted that defenders of Byers had argued that he was \u201cmerely a man of his time in his lust to clear the plains.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The editorial also pointed out that other men of their time recognized Chivington\u2019s attack for what it was \u2014 the \u201ccold-blooded murder of a largely defenseless village.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Men like Silas Soule.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>A connection and a journey<\/strong><\/h2>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>LEFT:<\/strong> Byron Strom, a distant relative of Silas Soule, reads from Soule\u2019s letter describing the atrocities at the Sand Creek Massacre during a stop of the annual Healing Run at Soule\u2019s grave in Denver\u2019s Riverside Cemetery on Oct. 20, 2024. Northern Cheyenne leader Otto Braided Hair, left, stands behind him. (Photo provided by Byron Strom) <strong>RIGHT: <\/strong>Artificial flowers and other mementos are left at the gravesite of Captain Silas S. Soule at Riverside Cemetery on April 23. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>In the summer of 1983, a 37-year-old community college teacher named Byron Strom and his family boarded the Amtrak train south of their home in Des Moines for a trip to visit relatives in California. They stopped in Denver along the way and Strom, the great-great nephew of Silas Soule, made a sightseeing trip to the state Capitol.<\/p>\n<p>There, he first saw the statue of the Union soldier honoring the Civil War-era men of the 1st Colorado Cavalry. Soule was among those memorialized. His inclusion sparked Strom\u2019s interest in that significant slice of family history.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew about Silas, but I didn\u2019t know very much,\u201d Strom says. \u201cWhen I saw that marker on the front steps of the Capitol, that\u2019s the place where I started my searches, and started asking questions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He eventually found Soule\u2019s grave at Riverside, and as the headstones grew weathered or damaged and needed to be replaced, he asked if he could have one of the discarded markers, which he placed on family farm property he inherited south of Manhattan, Kansas.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>This story first appeared in  Colorado Sunday, a premium magazine newsletter for members. Experience the best in Colorado news at a slower pace, with thoughtful articles, unique adventures and a reading list that\u2019s perfect for Sunday morning.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>SUBSCRIBE<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Strom had become much more fluent in family history by 2003, when he learned about the Sand Creek Spiritual Healing Run, the annual 173-mile event from the Sand Creek site near Eads to downtown Denver. Launched by Arapaho and Cheyenne descendants in 1999 to commemorate those who died in the massacre, the run for the first time would include a stop to pay respects at Soule\u2019s grave at Riverside Cemetery.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Strom attended the ceremony, and carried with him a copy of perhaps the most significant of Soule\u2019s letters \u2014 the . When Strom arrived at Riverside, Otto Braided Hair, a Northern Cheyenne tribal leader, made a request.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis was not planned, you understand,\u201d Strom recalls. \u201cHe asked me to read this letter that describes the terrible atrocities that were happening to these Indians \u2014 I mean, in stark terms. And I did that, feeling very uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not difficult to imagine Strom\u2019s discomfort. The letter spares few details, from the horrific acts of that day to the backlash Soule faced when he rejected the plan to slaughter innocents.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But Strom stood and read the document, which in the immediate wake of the massacre had helped blow an ear-splitting whistle on the actions of Chivington and his soldiers that would eventually resound in the halls of Congress.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>\u2026any man who would take part in the murders, knowing the circumstances as we did, was a low lived cowardly son of a bitch.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 From Capt. Silas Soule\u2019s letters to Maj. Edward Wynkoop on Dec. 14, 1864, two weeks after the Sand Creek Massacre<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>It recounts how Soule, having learned of Chivington\u2019s plan to attack the peaceful encampment at Sand Creek, told other officers at Fort Lyon \u201cthat any man who would take part in the murders, knowing the circumstances as we did, was a low lived cowardly son of a bitch.\u201d When his remarks were relayed to Chivington and others, Soule wrote, \u201cyou can bet hell was to pay in camp.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Soule wrote that he told another officer he \u201cwould not take part in their intended murder, but if they were going after the Sioux, Kiowa\u2019s or any fighting Indians, I would go as far as any of them. They said that was what they were going for, and I joined them. We arrived at Black Kettles and Left Hand\u2019s Camp at daylight.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But when Chivington gave the order to attack, Soule immediately saw the plan for what it was. Both he and Lt. Joseph Cramer, a former gold seeker-turned-officer with the Colorado Volunteers, refused the order. Much of the rest of Soule\u2019s letter to Wynkoop bears witness to the atrocity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbut every word I have told you is the truth, which they do not deny.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When Strom finished reading, he nearly cried as the Cheyenne and Arapaho women lined up before him and, each in succession, embraced him. It\u2019s a traditional tribal gesture to show care, concern and respect, especially during a time of mourning.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The memory still stirs emotions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was quite an eye-opening time for me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>\u201cIt\u2019s necessary for us to hear\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>When Otto Braided Hair, a descendant of Sand Creek survivors, first saw Soule\u2019s letter to Wynkoop and tried to read it, he recalls that its unfathomable truth stopped him again and again.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt probably took me a whole year or more to read the whole letter,\u201d he says. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t imagine that there was somebody out there that would kill grandmas and grandpas and kids and women like that \u2014 and babies. Still, there\u2019s no rhyme or reason, even today, even after this long. Why would somebody go to that extent? Evilness. Evilness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And yet, he asked that the letter be read aloud that day \u2014 as well as at subsequent gatherings at Soule\u2019s grave over the last 20 years or so \u2014 fully understanding how difficult a story it is to tell. And how much harder a story it is to hear.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=77\">Bill allowing Coloradans to sue ICE agents heads to Polis\u2019 desk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s necessary,\u201d Braided Hair says. \u201cIt\u2019s necessary for us to hear that, and for all people to hear that, because it\u2019s the truth, and it\u2019s something that was almost forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>It\u2019s necessary. It\u2019s necessary for us to hear that, and for all people to hear that, because it\u2019s the truth, and it\u2019s something that was almost forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Otto Braided Hair, <em>Northern Cheyenne descendant of Sand Creek survivors<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>By his estimation, if both Soule\u2019s and Cramer\u2019s soldiers had joined the attack on the \u201cchiefs\u2019 camp,\u201d there may have been few, if any, survivors as the Cheyenne and Arapaho desperately tried to elude or outrun the slaughter. He allows that he might not be here himself if not for Soule refusing his orders, setting an example that influenced other well-trained, veteran units.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe should be everybody\u2019s hero,\u201d he says of Soule. \u201cRespecting life shouldn\u2019t depend on what color an individual is or where they\u2019re from. A human is a human. So for that reason, he\u2019s heroic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Strom considered his distant relative\u2019s letters, feeling their weight, he\u00a0 inevitably tried to imagine himself in Soule\u2019s position. He wondered whether he would have that kind of moral courage, under similar circumstances, to do the right thing. And gradually, over the years, the exceptional nature of Soule\u2019s actions sank in \u2014 not just his refusal at Sand Creek, but also his short lifetime largely devoted to the abolitionist movement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo do the kinds of things he did when he was 18, 19, 20, fighting there in Kansas, moving slaves up into Lawrence, chasing after bushwhackers, all of those kinds of things,\u201d Strom says, \u201cthat\u2019s just out of my league.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>A short, impactful life<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Mount Prospect Cemetery, later renamed Denver City Cemetery, stood as Denver\u2019s primary burial ground through the latter half of the 19th century, accommodating everyone from paupers to smallpox victims to military veterans. Silas Soule was buried there in a section dedicated to soldiers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Technically it was federal land. But the city pushed Congress to redesignate the 160-acre parcel as park land, which it did in 1890. That launched a massive transfer of the dead to Riverside Cemetery. Allegations of abuse of corpses and thousands of bodies left behind tainted the undertaking \u2014 circumstances that eventually gave rise to the ghost tours on the present-day sites of Cheesman Park and the Denver Botanic Gardens.<\/p>\n<p>The veterans were moved en masse to Riverside, once a tree-filled setting but ravaged over the years by disease, drought and loss of water rights. Today, manager Warner notes, the cemetery is \u201cembracing our prairie,\u201d his euphemism for the parched, almost treeless landscape of dirt, weeds and native grass.<\/p>\n<p>Still, many historically significant Coloradans are buried here, including Augusta Tabor, philanthropist and wife of silver baron Horace Tabor; Clara Brown, the Black pioneering philanthropist dubbed \u201cAngel of the Rockies\u201d; and John Evans, the territorial governor and superintendent of Indian Affairs who, while he had no part in the planning or execution, has been determined by some studies to have \u201chelped create a situation that made the Sand Creek Massacre possible.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut Silas Soule,\u201d Warner says, \u201cI get the most people asking about him, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Born in Maine to strict abolitionist parents, Soule moved with them to Kansas in the 1850s. By age 16, he\u2019d acted as a conductor in the Underground Railroad, doing the dangerous work of guiding escaped slaves to safety. He fought as what was known as a Jayhawker in guerrilla warfare against pro-slavery forces from Missouri. He considered himself an ally of John Brown, and after the abolitionist\u2019s execution in 1859, participated in a dangerous though failed attempt to rescue two of his followers at Harper\u2019s Ferry, Virginia.<\/p>\n<p>He also famously corresponded with the poet Walt Whitman.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But Soule was also a soldier. After a brief foray into the gold fields in the Pikes Peak region, he joined the Army and served with the Colorado 1st Regiment of Voluntary Infantry under the command of Chivington \u2014 with whom he fought invading Confederate forces and heroically turned them back at Glorietta Pass in New Mexico.<\/p>\n<p>Chivington promoted him to captain when the regiment was converted to a cavalry unit. Soule dealt with Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs during peace talks, including the Fort Lyon negotiations attended by the Cheyenne chief Black Kettle and the Arapaho chief Left Hand that had produced a truce. His presence and understanding of the tribes\u2019 intentions ultimately informed his decision to refuse the attack order at Sand Creek.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As he made clear in his correspondence, he had no issue with fighting warriors from combative tribes. But he would not kill innocents.<\/p>\n<p>The backlash to his choice proved severe. Though the federal inquiry into Sand Creek came to little action \u2014 Chivington\u2019s success at Glorietta Pass served as a firewall to prosecution \u2014\u00a0 it did effectively derail his political career. His antipathy for Soule was well known.<\/p>\n<p>Soule wasn\u2019t blind to the danger, and repeatedly predicted his own death.<\/p>\n<p>Three weeks after marrying Hersa Coberly, the daughter of a prominent saloon owner, and less than three months after his testimony at the military inquiry, Soule had left the Army to put Sand Creek behind him. He was working as a provost marshal, a kind of military policeman, in Denver. While walking home with his wife on an April night, gunshots lured him toward a city alleyway near what\u2019s now 15th and Arapahoe streets.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>In the end, he gave his life for his principles, and I think his example stands out for us today in our current political climate.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 William Convery, <em>former Colorado state historian<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>After sending Hersa home, Soule soon found himself the target of an ambush. He fired and injured one attacker, but the return fire, from Charles Squier, struck him in the head and killed him. Speculation swirled that the assailants, who had both served under Chivington, may have acted at his direction. But nothing was proven, and Squier later escaped from custody. Soule\u2019s killer was never brought to justice.<\/p>\n<p>After Soule\u2019s historical role reemerged in the 2000s, the possibility of a memorial near the site of his death gained momentum. Northern Cheyenne tribal leaders like Steve Brady Sr. and LaForce Lonebear wanted something substantial, like a statue. But Convery, then working for History Colorado and exploring the options, recalls that discussions with the city were complicated by a possible competing memorial for a family that had been struck and killed by a vehicle at that intersection.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Thinking the negotiation could drag on for years, Convery approached managers of a building at the location and directly broached the idea of a small memorial plaque. They quickly agreed, and in 2010 it was installed. Though disappointed that nothing more was done, tribal leaders attended the unveiling. And each year, the Healing Run visits the site after paying respects at Soule\u2019s grave at Riverside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI never thought that that would necessarily preclude a longer conversation about a bigger memorial (for Soule),\u201d Convery says, \u201cbut I felt that this was sort of the politics of the possible at the moment. In the end, he gave his life for his principles, and I think his example stands out for us today in our current political climate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Otto Braided Hair notes that while the current priority is completion of a Sand Creek memorial sculpture later this year at the state Capitol, the importance of a more substantial commemoration of Soule remains an objective.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI still want to see that,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s trying to carry out what Steve and LaForce and others wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>\u201cI take rituals very seriously\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Nancy Niero initially encountered Silas Soule on her first day working at the Colorado Historical Society in the mid-1990s. She remembers descending a staircase and seeing his portrait positioned next to a tepee. The image of a young man in his Civil War-era uniform reminded her of a young Ron Howard, the actor and director.<\/p>\n<p>She asked who Silas Soule was and heard a compelling synopsis: He disobeyed orders at the Sand Creek Massacre, wrote a letter that forced a congressional inquiry and then was assassinated for speaking truth to power.<\/p>\n<p>From that moment on, he kept popping up in her life. When she worked as a historic preservationist at Riverside Cemetery, there he was. When she attended seminary at the Iliff School of Theology, he surfaced again as the subject of multiple independent study projects \u2014 a biography, a theological construction and a social justice play built around him.<\/p>\n<p>She figured that would be the end of it. But when she returned to school in 2019 for her doctorate of ministry, she found him (or, she allows, perhaps he found her) once again \u2014 this time as she worked on her thesis around racial justice.<\/p>\n<p>Now, as an ordained clergywoman in the United Church of Christ, racial justice theologian, and\u00a0 author, Rev. Dr. Nancy Niero marvels at how someone from the past can \u201cmake such a profound connection in lots of different ways. It\u2019s been a journey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For many years, around his July 26 birthday, she has read aloud the entire collection of Soule\u2019s letters at his grave. Despite moving to the Pacific Northwest, she continues to honor that commitment, and has planned this summer\u2019s observance for 9 a.m. on July 25. It takes her about two and a half hours to read the letters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI take rituals very seriously,\u201d Niero says, \u201cand I wasn\u2019t going to let a move get in the way of me continuing to show up on that day, for whoever gathers with me. It\u2019s a very public event, because it\u2019s a public cemetery, and so people bring chairs, water bottles, umbrellas. It\u2019s quite the thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her fascination and regard for Soule resulted in what she terms \u201ca divine intervention moment\u201d that prompted her to write a book, \u201cWitness at Sand Creek: The Life and Letters of Silas Soule.\u201d Niero paired a personal essay with each of 25 letters Soule wrote from 1860 to 1865, and also combines historical detail that adds to what she describes as \u201ca contemporary call to moral clarity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Niero recently sent a copy of her book to the Aurora office of Colorado\u2019s U.S. Rep. Jason Crow. He, along with five other Democratic lawmakers with military or intelligence backgrounds, produced a video last November titled \u201cDon\u2019t Give Up the Ship,\u201d advising members of the military to follow their oath to the Constitution and refuse unlawful orders. The Justice Department\u2019s attempt to indict Crow and the others for their remarks failed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was captured by that video,\u201d Niero says, \u201cbut I\u2019ve also been sitting with how we get to the place where we understand an order is illegal. And does it begin with: Is it immoral?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Crow, who grew up in Wisconsin before migrating to Colorado, didn\u2019t learn about Soule until shortly after the controversial video, when he read an article that drew the contemporary parallel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously it\u2019s not lost on me, the comparisons,\u201d Crow said, noting not only Soule\u2019s refusal to follow unlawful orders and the consequences, but also how history has treated him.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In April, Crow spoke to students at Harvard University about what he termed a \u201cnew American patriotism\u201d that can bring people together, protect democracy and ensure leaders\u2019 accountability.<\/p>\n<p>More broadly, he says, there\u2019s a need to \u201crebalance the net rhetoric\u201d between rights and responsibilities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDeciding to take a stand on principle when you go against those around you is one of the hardest things you can do, and that requires a tremendous amount of courage,\u201d Crow says. \u201cAnd I think this current moment in our politics right now shows maybe more than anything else, what we\u2019re lacking is not necessarily an understanding of what the right thing to do is, but courage by folks to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Strom, now 79, has long been aware of the fraught nature of Soule\u2019s decision to defy orders. As a Vietnam veteran, he recalls the My Lai Massacre of 1968, and the helicopter pilot who intervened and reported the murder of villagers \u2014 and felt backlash before eventually being awarded the highest citation for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The modern accounting of Silas Soule, the sea change that has cast him now as a man of moral conviction, owes much to the way social justice movements have steered the nation toward a more expansive view of history, says Convery, the former state historian. He points to the Civil Rights Movement and parallel recognition of Native American and Chicano rights as igniting a historical reconsideration and a resolve to include voices previously silenced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese movements,\u201d he says, \u201call taking place at the same time, really brought these marginalized voices back to say, \u2018Hey, we need to reassess what was seen as a heroic westward expansion, a peaceful westward expansion, and see it for what it really was.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chris Tall Bear, a Sand Creek Massacre descendant and Sand Creek Massacre Memorial Committee member representing the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, agrees with that assessment and describes Soule as \u201ca vital counternarrative to the \u2018war exploits\u2019 and colonialist rhetoric that often sanitize our shared past.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u200bWhile Colonel Chivington weaponized religious nationalism to justify a massacre,\u201d Tall Bear wrote in an email, \u201cSoule understood that true duty is bound by the laws of humanity, not just the commands of a superior. By ordering his men to hold their fire while a peaceful village was decimated, he did more than save lives; he preserved the integrity of the law against a tide of state-sanctioned annihilation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hearing the echoes of those fraught circumstances in our more recent past makes Soule\u2019s courage feel \u201cstrikingly contemporary,\u201d he adds. Today he hears some equate that kind of courage with a lack of loyalty.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSoule reminds us that the military\u2019s soul is found in its conscience, not its kill count,\u201d Tall Bear wrote. \u201cHe was a whistleblower who sacrificed his life to ensure the truth of Sand Creek could never be buried by the \u2018Great American\u2019 myth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/coloradorelocationreport.com\/?p=76\">Lawmakers kill bill that aimed to fund childcare for thousands of poor Colorado families<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The army captain&#8217;s letters and testimony helped unmask efforts to hide the massacre&#8217;s brutal truth behind a facade of frontier myth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colorado-history"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Silas Soule died for refusing to whitewash the Sand Creek Massacre. 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