The legacy of Chief Nowoo3 - building relationships

Fred Mosqueda, the Arapaho Language and Culture Program Outreach Specialist Coordinator for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, returned to Niwot Hall Monday, March 17, and brought his friend, Chester Whiteman of the Cheyenne Tribe who holds a similar role, to address a standing room only crowd of mostly Niwot residents. Mosqueda was the featured speaker in 2024 for the Niwot Historical Society, and was warmly received again.

Phillip Yates of the Niwot Cultural Arts Association, which sponsored the event, introduced Mosqueda and Whiteman, while Tom Myer, a Native American resident of Gunbarrel, helped moderate the presentation.

Mosqueda and Whiteman, who traveled with family members to Colorado from Oklahoma, arrived late Sunday and spent the night at the Niwot Inn before beginning a tour of Niwot at the Garden Gate Restaurant Monday morning. After breakfast, the duo joined Boulder County Parks staff for a visit to Haystack Mountain, a sacred place for the Arapaho and Cheyenne people, who wintered in the area until they were forcibly removed to an Oklahoma reservation as white settlers established homesteads in Colorado.

Mosqueda and Whiteman returned to Cottonwood Square where Myer, an artist who created the poster advertising the event, guided them through an interpretive exploration of the four murals created by Native artists in 2022.

Jeff and Cindy Wolcott then invited Mosqueda and Whiteman to their farm east of Niwot where they were able to inspect Eddie Running Wolf's Native American tree carvings, which are undergoing restoration.

After a day of preparation, Mosqueda opened the evening event with an Arapaho prayer in the Arapaho language, and together he and Whiteman gave a history of the Arapaho and Cheyenne people. They spoke of Chief Nowoo3, known also as Niwot, or Chief Left Hand, and his brother Neva. "They were extraordinary humans," Mosqueda said, "who were picked to be chiefs."

He explained that their sister, Snake Woman, married a French-Canadian trapper named John Poisel, who taught them to speak English. As a result, they became interpreters for Little Raven at the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, and in other interactions with white settlers.

Mosqueda said Chief Niwot was left-handed, which was unusual in the Arapaho tribe. Both Niwot and Neva died as a result of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, but their sister Snake Woman survived. "She always hid her children," Mosqueda said. "She is buried in Oklahoma in a white man's cemetery. When they built the interstate, they didn't know where she was buried, so they moved the road around her."

Yates, who has worked with both Mosqueda and Whiteman and gotten to know them over the past six years, described the presentation as a step toward building a relationship between the people who now live in the Niwot area, and the Arapaho and Cheyenne people, who now primarily reside in Oklahoma. "You can't build a relationship until we have an understanding of the history," he said.

Whiteman said, "Fred and I took these positions knowing that we have to work together, to move forward in this day and age." Mosqueda said, "We didn't want to come up and glare at you and say, 'You did this to me.' We want to tell our side of the history, and begin to share each other's history."

Yates, a lifelong resident of Boulder County and a Niwot High School graduate, responded, "It's hard to move forward if we don't understand where we came from. It's hard to find in history books, but there are a lot of resources. It's just that they are hard to find."

He noted that the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 established that parts of Colorado and Wyoming, including "the land under our feet," belonged to the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, but the Boulder Town Company was soon founded, in violation of the treaty.

Yates said at first, the Rocky Mountain News printed articles describing how Chief Niwot was seeking mutual understanding and respect, but after the Fort Wise Treaty of 1861, the newspaper spread false reports of violence by Native Americans, which escalated and led to the establishment of Fort Chambers, just east of Boulder near 63rd Street, where militia under Col. John Chivington's Company trained. Porter M. Hinman, one of the men who platted Niwot in 1875, was among the soldiers.

"On October 10, 1864, Company D killed 10 Cheyenne people in a surprise attack," Yates said. Still, Chief Niwot urged peace.

Then came the Sand Creek Massacre on Nov. 29, 1864, where Chivington's men attacked a peaceful camp flying an American flag and a white flag, killing many Arapaho and Cheyenne people, the majority of whom were women and children. "They attacked that village, and took out over half of our leadership," Whiteman said.

He noted that following the attack, whistleblowers, including soldier Silas Soule, testified about the atrocities in a Congressional investigation, but Soule was soon "assassinated on the streets," and his attacker was never prosecuted. "They wanted the railroad to come through, and we were in the way."

With the Little Arkansas Treaty in 1865, reparations were made by the U.S. government to the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes for the atrocities at Sand Creek. Yates noted. "It's important that the government acknowledged Sand Creek, but people still called it a 'battle' until the 1970s."

Whiteman said, "The treaty moved us to Oklahoma. We never came back to this area after 1864."

Mosqueda said, "This disturbs me so much. The Cheyenne and Arapaho went out their way to show that they were true to their word." He spoke of Major Edward Wynkoop, who was at first hostile to the Arapaho and Cheyenne, but later changed his views. "They figured out, these guys are humans," Mosqueda said.

Mosqueda and Whiteman took questions from the audience, including a question as to whether Margaret Coel's book, "Chief Left Hand," was accurate. Mosqueda responded, "It's accurate because she did spend time with us."

Whiteman spoke of current conditions on the Oklahoma reservation. "We're doing a lot of things in Oklahoma," he said. "We passed a resolution that we want to be back in Colorado. We want to bring buffalo back to Boulder County. What can we do here? We're looking at education."

Another question referred to climate change, and Whiteman responded that an $8M program had been recently cut. "This new government we have today?" he said. "It got stopped. It was already in place before they started this. We watch the plants, we watch the animals. Buffalo are now calving out of season. The world changes and we adjust."

Mosqueda spoke of the process of renaming Mount Evans in Colorado, which was originally named after former Colorado governor John Evans, who was responsible for much of the hostilities against Native Americans. "We had lots of arguments, and pretty soon we stopped talking. Then after a while, Mount Blue Sky came out. We got it done - two nobodies from a little bitty town (Geary, Oklahoma)."

Myer spoke of the need to look at things from a perspective of seven generations. "What can we do beyond land acknowledgements?" he asked. Whiteman responded, "We need to sit down at the table and talk. Some of these treaties in the 1860s, you were supposed to be taking care of us. We want to get away from that."

Mosqueda chimed in, "Funding would give us opportunities to do things. I know governments take a long time. The world is in a bad place right now for tribes." Whiteman said, "We hope to be back in Colorado as the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Colorado."