It may have taken over 150 years, but Colorado has finally voided one of the most racist and damning laws in the state’s books: an 1864 order telling residents of the state to kill any Native Americans they encountered.
Patty Nieberg of the Associated Press reported that “Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday, Aug. 17, rescinded a 19th-century proclamation that called for citizens to kill Native Americans and take their property, in what he hopes can begin to make amends for ‘sins of the past.’”
According to Nieberg, “the 1864 order by Colorado’s second territorial governor, John Evans, would eventually lead to the Sand Creek Massacre, one of Colorado’s darkest and most fraught moments in history. The brutal assault left more than 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne people — mostly women, children and elderly — dead.”
