A group in Colorado is seeking to revert the name of Mount Blue Sky to Mount Evans, arguing the decision to scrap the name of the former territorial governor from the iconic peak was ideologically driven.  

Advance Colorado on Wednesday submitted a petition to the Trump administration to restore the iconic mountain’s previous name. 

“Back in 2023, a 128-year-old Colorado mountain was renamed based on a false record and fraudulent process,” said Michael Fields, president of Advance Colorado. “We have requested that President Trump correct this wrong by restoring the name Mount Evans.”

Fields clarified his group is not opposed to naming another mountain to honor the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes — just not the peak previously known as Mount Evans.  

“We suggest a suitable alternative based on historical facts,” he said.

Giving the mountain its previous name is proper, given that the former governor was one of the most consequential figures in Colorado and U.S. western history, said the group, which describes itself in its petition to the Trump administration as an organization working to “reverse the radical progressive policies destroying Colorado.”

The group said Evans, as governor, put into place the legal system, educational institutions and infrastructure that led to Colorado gaining statehood. He also established a railway system tying the state to the transcontinental line, cementing Colorado as a “western economic hub,” the group said.

Advance Colorado said “progressive special interest groups” pushed renaming the mountain in 2023 based on a “false claim” that the territorial governor was responsible for the Sand Creek Massacre.

In its petition, Advance Colorado insisted that historical records have demonstrated that Evans played no role in the massacre, citing a report from Northwestern University that the group described as exonerating the former governor.

“No known evidence indicates that John Evans helped plan the Sand Creek Massacre or had any knowledge of it in advance,” said the report from the university, whose founders included Evans. “The extant evidence suggests that he did not consider the Indians at Sand Creek to be a threat and that he would have opposed the attack that took place.”

The report also said Evans was among several people, who, “in serving a flawed and poorly implemented federal Indian policy, helped create a situation that made the Sand Creek Massacre possible.”

Evans had denied any role in the massacre, in which hundreds of Colorado militia troops, led by Col. John Chivington, attacked a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho women, children and elders on the banks of Sand Creek in Kiowa County on Nov. 29, 1864. More than 230 tribal members were slaughtered. 

An investigation resulted in President Andrew Johnson demanding Evans’ resignation. Evans was forced to resign his governorship following the massacre, while Chivington could not be dishonorably discharged as his enlistment had already expired that September. 

Fred Mosqueda, a Southern Arapaho who sought to erase the Evans name from the mountain, said the fact that the territorial governor has been heralded as a hero since the 1860s confounded the Southern Arapaho and Cheyenne.

“Evans was in a place where he could have, as the Territorial Governor and the Indian Agent for the Cheyenne Arapaho tribes, given us a reservation here in Colorado,” Mosqueda said last year. “The renaming was a long hard battle. But this is going to be a healing process for everybody. This is not just for one tribe or one people or the Cheyenne or Arapaho, it is for every living thing.”

In an editorial, Mosqueda and Chester Whiteman of the Southern Cheyenne said “blue sky” signifies “our indigenous connections — the Arapaho, who are known as the Blue Sky People, and the Cheyenne, who have an annual ceremony of renewal of life called Blue Sky. ”

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names officially renamed the peak to Mount Blue Sky in September 2023, acting on the recommendation of Colorado’s Geographic Naming Advisory Board. Various government entities, as well as tribal groups — though not all agreed on Mount Blue Sky — supported the name change. 

The state body’s recommendation went to Gov. Jared Polis, who forwarded it to the federal naming board.

Colorado’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, also backed the name change.

“We must better face the dark history of the Sand Creek atrocities by honoring the lives that were lost,” Hickenlooper then said. “Renaming one of Colorado’s tallest peaks to honor the Arapaho and Cheyenne people is an important step forward.”

The renaming vote was held for six months because of objections from the Northern Cheyenne of Lame Deer, Montana, the original Colorado tribe that vehemently opposed the name of Mount Blue Sky. The phrase “blue sky” is part of the sacred Tribal Arrow Ceremony and, thus, the Northern Cheyenne believe it would be “sacrilegious” for it to be spoken in common language, the tribe had argued.

Northern Cheyenne tribal leaders instead advocated to rename Colorado’s most famous peak to “Mount Cheyenne-Arapaho.”

At the federal board’s 2023 meeting, Chris Hammon of the U.S. Geological Survey said there was “overwhelming agreement” that the name had to change. He added he would have preferred consensus from the tribal parties but noted that wasn’t going to happen.

Reporters Marianne Goodland and Luige del Puerto contributed to this article.