Little Raven

(b. Colorado 18??-d. Oklahoma 1889).

Little Raven, the name of a Denver street opened in 1994 between 15th and 20th Sts.(near the South Platte River in Lower Downtown), belatedly commemorates the Southern Arapaho chief who welcomed palefaces to Denver. Little Raven was stout and congenial, with the light skin and big nose that characterized his tribe. He entertained palefaced newcomers in his own handsomely decorated Denver tipi and visited with the whites in their strange, square houses. Friendly relations, however, deteriorated when many Arapaho refused to sign the Fort Wise Treaty of 1861, which expelled them from their homeland in the Cherry Creek and South Platte valleys. Three years later, the Colorado Volunteers slaughtered many Arapaho at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. Chief Little Raven complained in vain: "It will be a very hard thing to leave the country that God gave us. Our friends are buried there, and we hate to leave these grounds. There at Sand Creek—White Antelope, and many other chiefs lie there; our women and children lie there. Our lodges were destroyed there, and our horses were taken from us."

Little Raven and his peaceful band of Arapaho survived Sand Creek because he was clever enough to camp away from the army-designated site. He traveled to Washington, D. C. to receive a peace medal from President U. S. Grant, but said he had no peace to make, as he had never been at war with the whites. He signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, consigning the Southern Arapaho to Oklahoma, where he helped his people adjust to reservation life.

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