Robert Simpson of Anadarko said the plaintiffs won’t forget what happened.
A lawsuit was filed in the US District Court in Denver on Thursday, on behalf of four Oklahoma-based members of the Sand Creek Massacre Descendants Trust. The suit, which seeks class action status, asserts that the federal government failed to pay reparations in full for the “slaughter of their Cheyenne and Arapaho ancestors in 1864.”
The US government promised to pay reparations in 1865, after the early-morning massacre in 1864, which is believed to have resulted in the deaths of “more than 160 people – including many women and children – when federal soldiers attacked Indians camping at Sand Creek,” the area that is now southeastern Colorado.
The Department of Interior isn’t commenting on the pending litigation.