Americans Need to Know the Hard Truth About Union Monuments in the West

Three weeks ago, a sculpture of a Union soldier who had fought in the Civil War stood on a pedestal before the state Capitol building in Denver, gazing out toward the Rocky Mountains. Across the street, Christopher “Kit” Carson—a frontiersman and scout—kept his balance on a rearing horse, the centerpiece of a fountain dedicated to Colorado’s pioneers. Four hundred miles to the south, another Carson monument stood in front of the Santiago E. Campos United States Courthouse in Santa Fe: a sandstone obelisk that lauded his career with an inscription reading “Pioneer, Pathfinder, Soldier.” One block away, another large obelisk towered over Santa Fe Plaza. A granite and marble monument to Union soldiers who fought in New Mexico, the obelisk’s four sides commemorated these soldiers’ battles with Confederates and Native peoples, who were originally described on the monument as “savage Indians” (an Indigenous protester chiseled off the word savage in the 1970s).

Today, these sites look strikingly different. The Union soldier in Denver is gone, demonstrating against police brutality and racial inequality. Carson had a , carted to cover up tags labeling them as racist memorials of genocide and the theft of Indigenous lands.