Between two worlds

"This is the first time I've been down here in years,” said Archie Hoffman, 71, while he canvassed the terrain two miles north of town. "I have a sad feeling coming back. Everything has changed. Nothing is as I remember.”

Hoffman struggled to find his bearings at the old site, sifting through his memory to reconstruct the camp he knew as a child. Descriptions turned into recollections about life — the spiritual ways of his ancestors, the cadence of the Cheyenne language and the communal camaraderie of his people.

"Those were really good times,” said Edwin Pewo, 73, of Hammon and a Cheyenne peace chief. "My people never had a hard time putting food on the table back then. We lived off the land.”

"For food, we'd hunt for turtles or we'd fish. We'd use a string and hook, or we'd just pull the fish out of the water with our hands.”

Prayers were spoken solely in Cheyenne.

Camp elders, in turn, taught the spiritual and traditional ways of the Cheyenne in their native tongue. Pewo's education came from his grandparents, Chief Henry Elk River and his wife, Lillie.

"I consider it a real blessing to have been raised in the Whiteshield Camp with all those elders,” Pewo said. "We were just like one big, happy family.”

Black Kettle, chief of the Southern Cheyenne's Wotapio band, even flew a U.S. flag outside his lodge with the assurance Old Glory would protect his people from military aggression. Yet on the morning of Nov. 29, 1869, with most Cheyenne warriors on a hunt, some 800 troops of Colorado territorial militiamen attacked the Cheyenne and Arapaho villages.

Between 150 and 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho were killed during the attack, most of whom were reportedly women, children and elderly men. Black Kettle's band suffered the greatest loss of life.

The nightmares wouldn't stop. Almost exactly four years later — on Nov. 24, 1868 — Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry plunged into Black Kettle's camp on the icy banks of the Washita River in a pre-dawn attack. Death would again revisit the same family bands who suffered so greatly at Sand Creek. More than 100 Cheyenne people were estimated to have been killed in the attack, including Black Kettle and his wife.

Black Kettle was shot in the back.

"Our people were devastated,” Pewo said. "My grandfather told me Black Kettle's body was secretly taken away somewhere and buried. He said, ‘No one knows where that old man is buried ...'

"We still have people who cry whenever they talk about what happened at Washita.”