Southern_Plains_Conflict_Study_Statement_of_Work.pdf

SCOPE OF WORK

HISTORIC CONTEXT NARRATIVE

FOR

THE SOUTHERN PLAINS CONFLICTS (1864-1869)

I. BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Operating under the authority of the 1935 Historic Sites Act (16 U.S.C. 461-67) and the

National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended (54 U.S.C. § 300101 et seq.), the

National Park Service (hereafter referred to as NPS) administers the National Historic

Landmark (NHL) Program, which provides for the identification, documentation, preservation, and interpretation of the Nation's nationally significant historic buildings, sites, objects, structures, and districts. The National Park Service seeks preparation of an historical narrative that places the Southern Plains conflicts (1864-1869) into a national context. The Southern Plains conflicts are sometimes referred to as Hancock’s War or the

Republican River Campaign and occurred throughout present-day Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Wyoming. The narrative will provide a framework of the US government’s policy towards Indigenous populations, and its support of American economic development and settlement west of the Mississippi River. It shall include information about traditional cultural, societal and governing structures of the tribal nations involved, particularly the Cheyenne. Indigenous agency in response to settler colonialism shall be a critical component of the narrative. The document shall identify and describe relevant Southern Plains conflicts and assess how the events, with their broad progression of violence in the aftermath of the seminal November 29, 1864, Sand

Creek Massacre, affected US policy towards American Indians, and impacted native peoples and cultures through subsequent decades.

The completed context narrative shall be an internal document reviewed and assessed by regional NHL program offices and the Washington Support Office. The NHL program staff shall use the narrative to support identification and context development of associated properties that may meet the criteria for NHL designation. While NHLs frequently celebrate important events in our nation’s history, designation of sites representing traumatic experiences offers an opportunity to reconcile and learn from a painful past. While individual NHL nominations are not part of this scope of work, the narrative will include a section providing suggestions for sites of potential national significance.

II. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Although westward migration had begun far earlier in the midwest and northwest, discovery of gold in the Rocky Mountains in 1859 brought over 100,000 emigrants to gold fields in Colorado. Gold-seekers traveled through and illegally settled on the traditional lands of the Cheyenne and Arapaho in violation of the 1851 Treaty of Fort

Laramie. The influx of people travelling through and settling in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Nebraska increased pressure on Indigenous peoples. Angered by the broken treaty and facing new threats to their resources, some tribal groups responded by raiding for supplies and disrupting settlements and transportation routes. Impacted settlers demanded that the US government acquire tribal lands and secure “peace” for ongoing extraction.

Agitation for trade security led to the 1861 Treaty of Fort Wise. This agreement greatly reduced the tribal territories first described in the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie but failed to secure the mining districts, which remained in unceded Cheyenne and Arapaho territories. The treaty was signed by a few representatives of the Southern Cheyenne and the Arapaho, who felt that negotiation and treaty development were the most secure path to peace. Attending chiefs White Antelope and Black Kettle made clear, however, that their assent was not binding to those groups not present at the meeting. Territorial authorities ignored this and continued to assume complete enforceability of the treaty terms. Many Cheyenne and Arapaho bands refused to acknowledge the treaty terms or move to the new reservation north of the upper Arkansas River in the newly established

Colorado Territory. Among those who repudiated the treaty were the Dog Soldiers, a distinct band primarily comprising Southern Cheyenne and Lakota. Composed of relatively young men and their families, the Dog Soldiers stayed in the Smoky Hill country of western Kansas and Nebraska and eastern Colorado, raiding occasionally but primarily following bison.

Reports of the 1862 Dakota War in Minnesota created an atmosphere of fear and suspicion of American Indians among white settlers, which Territorial Governor John

Evans leveraged to pursue his vision of opening the gold fields by removing all

Indigenous peoples from the Great Plains. Evans raised a temporary force of volunteer fighters and continued to agitate for violent action against the Cheyenne and Arapaho.

This culminated in the horrific November 29, 1864, attack on the peaceful Sand Creek camp occupied by chiefs Black Kettle, White Antelope, and Left Hand alongside 750

Cheyenne and Arapaho people.

Although the violence carried out by the Colorado Volunteers at Sand Creek prompted

Congressional investigations and Evans' termination as territorial governor, the massacre motivated the Cheyenne, along with their allies the Arapaho and Lakota, to employ several self-defense strategies including retaliatory raids, treaty-making, and when necessary, armed conflict. Raids on emigration routes along the Platte River Corridor, and the Republican and Arkansas river valleys included those on the community of

Julesburg and on American Ranch. Congress agreed to provide reparations in the 1865

Little Arkansas treaties with the Comanche and Kiowa, and with the Cheyenne and

Arapaho, but the agreements immediately fell apart. As noted by historian Jerome

Greene, “… the specter of Sand Creek continued to alarm Native people, and … the tribes of the plains remained angry, frightened and uncertain in the wake of that carnage.”1

1 Jerome A. Green, “Forward” to Hancock’s War, Conflict on the Southern Plains, by William Chalfant (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010) 9.

With the end of the Civil War, Congress authorized four new Cavalry units, and the

Department of the Army positioned several veteran commanders on the frontier. William

Tecumsah Sherman was assigned as commander of the Military Division of the

Department of the Mississippi. Following subdivision of the Department of the Missouri, Major General William Scott Hancock was assigned to lead the Department, and the subsequent series of conflicts would come to be named for Hancock. Both men pursued a policy of total war against Native Americans, continuing the model previously used against the Confederacy, with no distinction between combatants and civilians. Under their leadership, the US military attempted to control sovereign nations through violent displays of authority and power in order to secure an area in western Kansas and eastern

Colorado for white settlement and to facilitate railroad construction. The April 1867 destruction of the Cheyenne-Oglala Lakota Village on Pawnee Fork in Kansas and the opening of Hancock’s Expedition echoed and paralleled Sand Creek, exacerbating existing tensions and trauma, and, tellingly, directly impacting the same tribal nations.

Confrontations continued through 1868 with the attack on Black Kettle’s peaceful

Cheyenne winter camp on the Washita River in present-day Oklahoma and concluded with an attack on the encampment of Dog Soldiers and their families at Summit Springs in Colorado Territory on July 11, 1869.

Between the death of Dog Soldier leader Tall Bull at Summit Springs and the killing of peace advocate Black Kettle at Washita, the Cheyenne and their allies faced major destabilization. Most Cheyenne and Arapaho left their lands for the reservation in

Oklahoma. The fallout from the end of the Southern Plains conflicts reverberated in continuing late-stage confrontations, including the Northern Cheyenne Exodus (1876-

1879, also known as Dull Knife’s Raid or the Cheyenne War). European American settlement of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming took off after 1869, with railroad lines and major cities growing quickly. Oklahoma experienced a different but complimentary series of major changes as displaced nations arrived on reservation lands.

The armed conflicts of the 1860s proved pivotal in the development of the southern plains.

III. STATEMENT OF WORK

The purpose of this project is to complete a national context for the Southern Plains

Conflicts of 1864-1869 for use in National Historic Landmark documentation. The context document will include an executive summary, brief project description, historic context narrative, recommendations of potentially nationally significant sites, and an extensive bibliography. Preparation of the national context narrative requires the following:

• Draw upon on current academic research and multi-cultural perspectives on

American colonialism, westward expansion during the nineteenth century, and

Federal policy regarding Indigenous nations. Identify the evolution of the US government’s Native American policy, from accommodation to control, and from negotiating non-native access across the traditional lands of sovereign and independent nations to forcibly asserting control and removal of tribes from coveted lands, and destruction of traditional culture.

• Include Native American perspectives in order to present a more holistic and balanced understanding of the Southern Plains Conflicts. Tribal perspectives should consider Indigenous resilience in the face of, and resistance to, the impositions of settler colonialism. Context narrative should consider refusals to concede to specific treaty terms incompatible with tribal cultural practices and beliefs such as perspectives on private property and the centrality of seasonal mobility to the maintenance of culture.

• While the narrative structure is flexible, preparers should plan to address the following time periods:

a. Pre-1851 General Context

b. 1851-1859 From Horse Creek Treaty to the Pikes Peak Gold Rush

c. 1859-1864 Early negotiations and treaties

d. 1864-1865 Sand Creek & retaliatory raiding

e. 1866-1869 Momentary peace and events of “Hancock’s War”

f. 1869-1876 Aftermath and connections to later conflicts

• A preliminary site inventory matrix should be included that identifies locations associated with nationally significant events identified in the historic context narrative.

• Bibliography

IV. GENERAL PROPOSAL OUTLINE

The prospective contractor must formulate a proposal in response to this Scope of Work.

The proposal must describe in detail the investigator's research strategy; qualifications of personnel responsible for completion of the study; and an itemized cost estimate.

The merits of the proposal will be carefully evaluated in terms of the requirements of this

Scope of Work. The proposal will consist of:

1. Research Strategy

a. A description of the methods, techniques, and procedures of research, including a summary of repositories and other sources of information to be used.

b. A preliminary list of study sites in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Wyoming related to the relevant time period and associated events.

c. A schedule for submittal of an outline, 75% draft and 95% draft for NPS review, and, following approval, a final document.

2. Personnel Qualifications

a. Principal Investigator. The Principal Investigator (PI) is responsible for all aspects of the proposed amendment. The PI must meet the Secretary of the

Interior Professional Qualifications standards for history

(https://www.nps.gov/articles/sec-standards-prof-quals.htm). The PI shall have a publication record demonstrating a professional level of research, analysis, and report preparation. It is expected that the publication record will reflect education and experience beyond that of a project historian, and an understanding of research methodology. The PI must demonstrate the ability to successfully complete and submit the national context narrative. In addition, the PI must be knowledgeable and experienced in current scholarship regarding nineteenth-century US western expansion, US Federal Indian policies, and decolonization theory.

b. Project Historian(s). Although the overall research design, guidance, and responsibility for the completed study lies with the PI, the PI may utilize the assistance of project historians (PH) to accomplish the research. The minimum requirements for a PH are a bachelor's degree in United States history from an accredited college or university.

c. Standards for Consultants: Personnel hired or subcontracted for their special knowledge and expertise must carry academic and experiential qualifications in their particular area of expertise. Such qualifications are to be documented by means of vitae attachments to the proposals.

d. Cultural Sensitivity: It is expected that the selected contractor can demonstrate the ability to respectfully and appropriately collaborate with

Tribal Historic Preservation Offices and American Indians in the course of preparing a research document, in order to address balanced cultural perspectives on contexts, historic events, and outcomes of historic events.

V. GENERAL PROVISIONS

1. Prospective contractors should note that the research design submitted by the contractor becomes a binding element of the contract. The research performed and reported must meet the minimal requirements as outlined in the suggested outline in III. Statement of Work, but prospective contractors are encouraged to identify additional sites beyond the suggested outline. A successful proposal will demonstrate understanding of the topic and its associated historic sites.

2. Within 90 days of awarding the contract, the contractor shall attend a virtual post-award meeting to discuss technical aspects of the contract and confirm the schedule for the submission of deliverables.

3. Contact with relevant repositories and logistics for completing necessary research shall be the responsibility of the contractor.

4. Disposition of Data

a. All material submitted by the narrative preparer (preparers) pursuant to this project enters into the public domain; the preparer does not retain copyright over any material submitted in conjunction with the context narrative, and any and all copyrights and ownership associated with materials produced pursuant to this project are to be held by the NPS.

b. At the conclusion of research and within 60 days of written acceptance of the final draft of the context narrative, all notes records, tapes, summaries, and other data acquired during the course of this study will be submitted to the NPS.

c. Any digital graphics generated for or used in this project shall be submitted digitally, with their formats specified.

5. Progress updates documenting the performance of the research and writing phases of this contract are required. The Principal Investigator (PI) or Project

Historian (PH) shall submit progress reports at three stages in the course of the project, to coordinate with the submittal of drafts of the national context narrative

(outline, 75%, 95% and 100% stages). These percentages reflect the degree of completeness of the project and shall be submitted according to a schedule agreed upon by both the NPS and PI. The initial due date for submittal of drafts will be specified in the contract. Failure to meet the agreed upon work schedule without satisfactory reasons may result in termination of the contract. All progress reports will be submitted to the NPS Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR).

VI. REPORT STANDARDS/FORMAT AND SUBMISSION SCHEDULE

1. The completed context narrative shall adhere to professional guidelines such as the Secretary of the Interior's Standards and Guidelines for Archeology and

Historic Preservation, in particular the guidance on Historical Documentation.

(Available online at: https://home.nps.gov/articles/secretary-s-stds-historical-documentation-guidelines.htm)

2. All drafts and final document will be in the latest version of Microsoft Word. The final deliverable will be compliant with Section 508 of the United States

Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

3. All pages must be numbered. The format must comply with the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style as well as the Harper’s Ferry Center

Editorial Style Guide (available online at https://www.nps.gov/subjects/hfc/hfc-editorial-style-guide.htm). The use of footnotes is preferred to endnotes.

4. Draft submissions shall include line numbering for editing purposes. Line numbers shall be removed from the final draft prior to submission.

5. During the period of revision of each draft, the PI shall consult with the NPS COR to ensure the satisfactory resolution of review comments and submission of a final draft in a timely manner.

6. The NPS reserves the right to require additional, technical reviews, as necessary.

All drafts will be submitted in the latest version of Microsoft Word unless specified otherwise.

VII. PERSONNEL

The point of contact for the National Park Service is:

Poppie Gullett

Heritage Partnerships Program

National Park Service, Intermountain Region

P.O. Box 25287

Denver, CO 80225-0287

(720) 930-2865

Express delivery:

National Park Service

Heritage Partnerships Program

1 Denver Federal Center

Bldg. 50

Denver, CO 80225

VIII. TERMS OF PAYMENT

While the specific terms of payment will be included in a contract with the selected preparer, suggested terms of payment appear below:

Fifteen percent (15 %) of Total Payment upon submission of research methodology, outline, bibliography

Thirty-five percent (35%) of Total Payment upon submission of 75% draft document

Thirty-five percent (35%) upon submission of 95% draft document revised to reflect comments by NPS staff

Fifteen percent (15%) upon submission of 100% draft and acceptance of all deliverables by NPS staff