History of the Trust: Continued
Formative Years
1950s: Kish Hawkins, Sam Dickie and Joe Antelope, all descendants of Chief White Antelope, organized and chartered the “Sand Creek Descendants Association Inc.” to recover the treaty promises for the Sand Creek Massacre. They were able to introduce several Bills to Congress which died, because there was little or no support or participation from Sand Creek descendants particularity those living outside the reservation boundary.
1965: The Cheyenne & Arapaho tribes settled a land claim with the United States Government in a $15,000,000. compromise settlement. The reparations in Article Six were requested by the tribes, but excluded based on findings of the Indian Claims Commission and Court of Claims, which found that claims for Article Six had to be made by individual descendants and not the tribes.
1970s: Cheyenne Chief Laird Cometsevah was commissioned by the Cheyenne Traditional Chiefs and Headsmen to establish a organization to seek the Sand Creek claims under Article Six for all descendants. Cheyenne Arrow Keeper (Edward Red Hat) sanction this commission with a traditional smoking ceremony in the Cheyenne Sacred Arrow Tipi.
1970 through 1990: Mr. Cometsevah recognized the importance of identifying the individual victims of the massacre and devoted his time to descendants family research, delaying building the organization.
February 18, 1990: Mr. Cometsevah called a meeting in Clinton, OK., and allowed the descendants to elect their own leaders for building a organization to seek the treaty promises in Article Six (6) of the 1865 Treaty, by-laws and a Secretary were established at this meeting.
March 1990: Mr. Cometsevah called another descendants meeting in Clinton, OK. to elect a President. Mr. Cometsevah was nominated, but he declined explaining that he did not want to be an officer of the organization, but would work as a consultant. Homer Flute was nominated and elected President, Mr. Cometsevah turned over the organization to the new President and stepped back. The President called for elections to fill vacant positions on the Executive Committee and Robert M. Simpson, was elected Executive Assistant and Dorothy Wood, elected as Executive Director.
April 1990: Thompson Flute, was elected to the Administrative Assistant position to complete all five positions on the Executive Committee, and the Executive Committee begin to consider how to build the infrastructure for the organization.
April 8, 1990: Laird and Colleen Cometsevah volunteered to designed an emblem to be used by the new organization and suggested that the new organizations should be called the “Sand Creek Massacre Descendants Organization”.
June 1990: Georgia Akeen created the first emblem using the design, information and directions of Laird and Colleen.
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