10/29/2025
Meet Delton Demarest, DeltonDemarest.com The Artist who painted the new mural at 1234 Delaware St. Denver CO. 80204. The Mural of the Sand Creek Massacre commemorates the November 29, 1864, attack on a village of about 700 Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people along Sand Creek.
At dawn, approximately 675 soldiers of the 1st and 3rd Regiments, Colorado Volunteer (U.S.) Cavalry, killed more than 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho over the course of seven hours.
Colonel John M. Chivington, a Methodist Minister, led an unprovoked surprise attack on a peaceful camp using small arms and howitzer fire to kill as many Cheyenne and Arapaho as possible. While many managed to escape the initial onslaught, others, particularly noncombatant women, children, and the elderly, fled into and up the bottom of the dry creek channel. The soldiers followed, shooting them as they struggled through the sandy ground. At a point several hundred yards above the village, the fleeing people frantically dug pits and trenches along either side of the streambed in a desperate attempt to escape the soldiers’ bullets. Some tried to fight back with whatever weapons they had managed to retrieve from camp. At several places along Sand Creek, the soldiers shot from opposite banks in a cross-fire. Finally, the howitzers were brought forward to drive the Indians from their makeshift defenses.
Among the dead were 13 Cheyenne peace chiefs and one Arapaho chief, whose deaths severely disrupted the tribes’ traditional forms of governance for generations. During that afternoon and the following day, soldiers committed atrocities on the dead, including taking human body parts as trophies. They departed the massacre site on December 1, 1864, taking 600 captured horses with them
