On Nov. 29, 1864, several hundred soldiers, under the command of Col. John Chivington, killed an estimated 163 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in their village along Sand Creek in eastern Colorado. Most of the dead were women, children and the elderly.
In addition to being a colonel the Colorado territory militia, Chivington was also a Methodist pastor, and he hated native Americans.
Bishop Elaine Stanovsky of the United Methodist Church shares her thoughts on the Sand Creek Massacre in today's Denver Post:
Elaine Stanovsky didn't know much about the Sand Creek Massacre when she moved to Colorado in 2009. She learned, slowly, about the connection between the Methodists and the massacre. Now she wants to tell the truth.
This Friday, Stanovsky will be part of a spiritual pilgrimage to the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic site. Dozens of United Methodists will join her to stand with descendants of those murdered at Sand Creek.
Tink Tinker, a professor at Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary in Denver, said, "Methodists, like all other white folks in North America, have a lot to atone for. How (Christians) are going to do that, I don't know, but they have to begin where the Methodists are beginning, by paying attention to their history of violence." (Tinker is a member of the Osage nation, and a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.)
Bishop Stanovsky shares her experience of learning about Sand Creek here.
Image by Howling Wolf, 1875, an eyewitness to the massacre.
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