Boulder, Colorado’s Chief Niwot: The Face We Do Not Have
Do we know what iconic Chief Niwot, known as “Left Hand,” really looked like? We’ve all seen sculptures and representations of the great chief, but do we know what he looked like? The answer is easy. NO! There is no existing picture of the Chief. There are several representations which purport to be pictures of Left Hand. The fact is that there is no existing picture or sculpture of the Chief. The closest we’ve come, and the closest that exists so far, is a picture taken by superstar photographer Dona Bollard of Eldred Poisal. We know a lot from a letter written by Eldred Poisal. We know that Eldred died at the Sand Creek Massacre. We know that Chief Niwot died several days after the massacre from wounds suffered at the hands of the invading US Calvary at Sand Creek. We can surmise that Poisal might have been a blood relative of Left Hand. That’s as close as reliable history can take us. There is at least a reasonable chance that there is a resemblance between Chief Niwot and Eldred Poisal. There may have been a blood relationship tying the two. There is something unusually powerful about an empty space in history. It is so powerful because of the importance of great chief in the history of Boulder Valley, of Colorado and of the West.
For the Boulder Valley, that empty space is the face of Chief Niwot, also known as Left Hand. No photograph. No painting. No sketch drawn from life. Despite his central role in the history of this valley, there is no verified image of what he actually looked like…