REFLECTIONS ON THE PILGRIMAGE TO AMACHE and SAND CREEK

The Spirit of Truth

John 14:15-21 and Listening to the Wisdom of a Statue: An Ode to Chief Niwot by Amy Marschak

Sunday May 10, 2026

What does it mean to keep faithful to what we said we cared about even when many people seem to be doing something else? What is the Spirit of Truth when there is so much noise? I am pondering these and so many questions from our meaningful pilgrimage over two days to the Amache Historical Site and the Sand Creek Massacre Historical Site in a really different part of the state. We left bright and early on Friday morning and arrived home last night. We had to reschedule the trip numerous times but I think we were meant to go now. My sense is that we have found ourselves in another Civil Rights Movement and for those of us able and willing the future we know is possible calls to us, not just whispers any longer. And so we need to have the truth put before us from the path so we can see it with clarity right here now. If we learn our history and do not use it to evolve our way of being, we are stuck in patterns that haven’t been broken, hooked by amygdala responses of fearing the other- racism, homophobia, xenophobia, on it goes, unless we grow beyond it.

At the first site, Amache we were immersed in the history through stories, pictures, artifacts, we touched the dry soil, we saw the foundations remnants that still remain from a place that held 7,000 Japanese Americans. Anti-Asian sentiment had been building for a while and then December 7, 1941. When Pearl Harbor was bombed things moved quickly and by February of 1942 declarations were written, statements were made and by May Japanese Americans were told they had two weeks to leave and board trains and sent all over the country. Many in California were sent to places first like the Santa Anita Race Track where they were put in stalls with horse urine to wait for their train in the dark to a destination unknown. They were sent to 10 different places and 7,000 people ended up in Amache and I saw one place that said 10,000. It was the smallest of them. And there were 120,000 people who spent part of the war in these places. But let me stop right there to say what do we call them? What do we name places like this? And who gets to decide? Some called it a relocation situation for safety, but what the survivors called them were internment camps, incarceration camps, prisons. The guards had machine guns. There were search lights from towers. There was barbed wire. There is power in what we call things, as it allows us to define whether it’s our concern. Because just like the label of the place, instead of continuing to be called what they were, Americans, Japanese Americans, were quickly called aliens, made out to be unworthy of being treated as other neighbors.

They were there for 3 years and it was terrible and we saw the size of a space where they were and it was tiny, but they were imaginative and called upon a Japanese concept called Gaman- and it’s about situations where there is no idea how long it will go on, but how we persevere and make the best of it how humans survive and somehow roses come from nothing. And another Japanese word Shakata Ganai It is what is and we go forward, we find ways to go forward. 

But because of culture and a commitment to finding a way to somehow live, with joy and hope and all of life’s happenings, the people who were there at Amache grew floral gardens and planted trees and they were skilled for sure because I can tell you that ground is a dust bowl. But because of their resourcefulness and a refusal to not have some level of normalcy, they grew celery and cantaloupe, they had chickens, and so much produce that they fed not just the others prison camps, but the United States military, the Air Force got their melons!

The place was hard and hot, and the bathrooms had absolutely no privacy. It’s windy there and hot and so dusty I cannot imagine what it’s like some days. I bet it gets swamped with snow.

When the war ended, many had lost their business and much of their possessions, but they went back into American life and many found their ways to thrive as they could, even serving in the US military later. 

There wasn’t much attention to the site. It wasn’t until a teacher named John Hopper asked his students to take this on as a project. It’s come a long way as of 2022 it’s a National Historic Site.

I think it matters that we tend to learn from and visit this history. As we live this now today. As I was getting ready to head out the next morning to our second stop, I listened to Morning Edition sharing a story about Aligator Alcatraz in Florida. One of the things to stood out in what the Ranger said about Amache is how fast it was constructed, all of those barracks and buildings were built in just two months- the roof didn’t match the walls, uneven floor, it was shoddy. The prison in Florida went up in 8 days. And what is also parallel is the people in there aren’t guilty of crimes. At Alligator Alcatraz of the 1400 men imprisoned there, 900 have absolutely no criminal record. But they too are called aliens.

We wondered about their religious life? Altars and shrines. We wondered about the kids playing somehow. We wondered about any kind of intimacy. We wondered about the fact that the place started with over 300 guards but then reduced them to just a handful. The people didn’t want to be there, but they were no threat to anyone.

As we began to transition to the next stop, we pondered all kinds of things about the racism that is fueling the denial of rights to immigrants, to transgender people, to women, to African Americans. We wondered about being more bold in being allies with the word woke. Some are using it as a slur, but it has a long tradition in the African American Community, used by activists like Marcus Garvey and the mine workers in 1940’s who in their statement said, "We were asleep. But we will stay woke from now on," in advocating against discriminatory pay.

We want to be woke at Community UCC. We want to be among those who are trying to understand, to undo systemic racism, to see our place in the past and the present as participants or not in something that is just for all.

When we arrived at the Site Creek National Historic Site there was not a soul around, but the sounds of a whole variety of birds. Chirps and coos. We saw two different kinds of lizards and myriad holes that we were told are homes to snakes. 

In the area leading to the trail we waited for our guide and on large metal signs there are two letters. Letters that will break your heart right along with everything there. This place is heavy. You can feel it. We noted it. The energy shifts. The tribes believe that even speaking of what happened here is sacred because the blood and spirits of the victims are a part of the earth here. Again the name of a place has power. For a long time this site was called a Battleground, but now we know that is not at all accurate. It was a massacre. And what do we call the people involved? White immigrants? Settlers? Trespassers? Colonizers? It depends who is telling the story.

One letter is from Joseph Cramer who was a Lt. and in 1863 received a promotion to Second Lieutenant which landed him in what was called the Indian War of 1864. He witnessed the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Chiefs in Camp Weld so he protested when he heard that Colonel Chivington was planning an attack. And he chose not to participate when it happened and he watched and then horrified he sent a letter and without these accounts, the true horrors might have been forever whitewashed. As the peace chiefs waited thinking the group could be trusted, the armed 3^rd Regiment Calvary murdered 750 people in cold blood and at least 33 peace chiefs. According to Joseph Cramer’s letter, Chief Left Hand stood with his hand folded across his breast, until he was shot saying, “Soldiers no hurt me, soldiers my friends.” The people who survived buried themselves in the sand pits… The shooting lasted 6-8 hours…

When our guide Tim told us the history with devotion to the truth, speaking of the mountains of broken promises and the piles of violated treaties, tried to explained how it had come to such a terrible outcome. Resources were becoming scarce on the plains, the colonizers cattle as killing the native plants, destroying the land. And on the other side, the Cheyenne, the Kiowa and the Comanche all looked the same to the whites. The Civil War had taken most of the troops away, so it was a bit chaotic on the western frontier.

The whites were ready to believe they were going to be annihilated. They were afraid. He told us that the combination of racism and hatred, fear and cultural differences was lethal the combination. Our guide Tim made sure we understood that all of this happened not because of demons but good people- miners and ranchers, artisans and shopkeepers who were fueled by minformation, racism and fear. This too feels familiar. As we reflected together, we wondered what is hidden in each of us? When we humans are hooked by the wrong things…

In the museum in Amache, we saw a quote from Milton Eisenhower, the brother of Dwight and the first Director of the War Relocation Authority. In reflecting on it all years later, he wrote, “I have brooded about this whole episode on and off the past three decades for it is illustrative of how an entire society can somehow plunge off course.”

Beloved of God, we have found ourselves in another Civil Rights Movement and for those of us able and willing the future we know is possible calls to us, the Spirit of Truth is with us lighting the way. May it be so. Amen.

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

― Mark Twain