Kicks.

Otto Braided Hair greets the runners.

The runners line up for paint and blessings.

Prayers.

The elders lead the runners to the road.

Frozen fog along the way.

On the road to Sand Creek.

Moo.

Eads, home of the Eagles and gateway to the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

Chivington, dead ahead.

Welcome to Chivington!

Chivington Friends Church.

SCMNHS.

SCMNHS.

Day’s end.

If you’re going to be in Denver this Wednesday, you should come out to the capitol building and welcome the runners when they arrive.

Kevin Durkin, Managing Editor of Verso, The Huntington‘s lovely blog, just put up this post about a lecture I gave there a few weeks back.

Ned Blackhawk on Sand Creek in The Times.

Konnie Lemay writes about Sand Creek for Indian Country Today.

With the sesquicentennial anniversary of Sand Creek just a couple of days away, here’s a partial list of recent resources about the massacre:

The University of Denver’s John Evans Study Report.

A Colorado Public Radio story about the above.

Northwestern University’s John Evans Study Committee’s Report.

Michael Allen’s long-form essay about his great-great-grandfather’s role at Sand Creek.

Tony Horwitz’s piece in Smithsonian about Sand Creek.

Patricia Calhoun’s post about John Evans’s descendants grappling with their ancestor’s involvement with the massacre.

The National Museum of the American Indian’s “Sand Creek Massacre: 150 Year Remembrance.”

The State of Colorado’s Sand Creek Massacre Commemoration Committee site.

If you’ve got anything to add, please leave a comment. Thanks!

With the sesquicentennial anniversary of Sand Creek looming, some descendants of the massacre’s perpetrators are grappling with their ancestor’s actions on November 29, 1864. See, for example, this short piece by Patricia Calhoun, who discusses the family of John Evans, and this much longer and more personal account, by the great-great-grandson of William Allen.

I have nothing interesting to say about Ferguson. But this image

calls to mind these lines:

It was the fourth day after Christmas in the Year of our Lord 1890. When the first torn and bleeding bodies were carried into the candlelit church, those who were conscious could see Christmas greenery hanging from the open rafters. Across the chancel front above the pulpit was strung a crudely lettered banner: PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN.

Some of you will recognize that as a passage from Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I’m reminded this morning that the American past and present are shot through with painful and often unrecognized ironies — not that this is even a little bit revelatory.

Ed Linenthal was kind enough to invite me to be part of the Journal of American History‘s podcast. If you want to hear the sound of me being cast into a pod, click here.

Tony Horwitz has a new piece in Smithsonian Magazine about Sand Creek.