Boulder County and Niwot's Sand Creek History
This seven-chapter history pathway provides a broad overview of the events connecting the town of Niwot with the Arapaho and Cheyenne people, tracing the dispossession of their homelands that culminated in the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864. During that unprovoked attack, nearly 700 Colorado soldiers—including a Boulder County volunteer who later co-founded Niwot—murdered over 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people and mortally wounded Arapaho Chief Nowoo3 (“Niwot,” Left Hand). The pathway also documents the critical treaties that forced the Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne out of Colorado in the 1860s and Niwot’s founding in 1875.
About This Pathway
Each chapter draws on the work historians and ethnographers who have documented this period. This timeline will be updated as additional primary research is added. It was developed by Phillip Yates, a Niwot community member, and does not represent the perspectives of any Arapaho or Cheyenne Tribal Nation, Native community or other Niwot community members. It aims to honor Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne Tribal representatives' request to tell this local story truthfully as part of ongoing Niwot work to build and sustain relationships with Arapaho and Cheyenne Tribal Nations.
Don't Want To Go The Full Way Through The Pathway? Read This Brief History.
The seven-chapter pathway above is the in-depth, source-based walk-through. The overview below summarizes the same arc — Arapaho and Cheyenne homelands, treaties, federal expansion and the year of hunger, Fort Chambers and Company D, the Sand Creek Massacre, broken promises, and the founding of Niwot — in a single read.