PERRY: Mt. McKinley? Colorado has names for real ugly — Evans and Stapleton

Ain’t no mountain high enough to hide the past.

I hate to be the bearer of more bad news to our immigrant Ohio neighbors who now call Colorado home, but it’s clear we should be moving another mountain off the list of peaks named after proud sons of the Buckeye State.

Like or hate President Barack Obama, you gotta hand it to him that his move this week to change the name of Mt. McKinley, named after a U.S. president who hailed from Ohio, was brilliant. Obama sandbagged a whole lot of folks by announcing he changed the name of American’s biggest mountain to the Native Alaskan name of Denali, which everybody pretty much called it anyway. Most of the world outside of Alaska really doesn’t care what they call Denali. We remember only that McKinley was responsible for the gold standard and other obscurities. Well, what with Miley Cyrus working her twerk across the headlines this week and football season starting, it’s small wonder the story was destined to grow mold and not legs. Really, the only people who cared are the ones who hate that Obama lives to see another day.

But what Obama did is rip the lid off a question no one asks. Do we have to live with monikers handed down from the past without question? Hell, no.

McKinley really didn’t do anything wrong other than get a mountain named after him for no good reason, but it looks to me like it’s time to start cleaning up our own backyard from wrongful nomenclature — which does celebrate depravity. First up: Stapleton and Mt. Evans.

Lots of the people who live in Denver’s airport-turned-stodgy neighborhood already want to ditch the name because they don’t like the idea of pushing high-end strollers around a neighborhood named after a mayor who wore a white hood as part of being in the Ku Klux Klan. Ben Stapleton’s past was hardly secret, but given the resurgence of racism across the country, wise folks there now realize we should be motivated to revoke namesakes for those who did monstrous things, even if they did good things, too. And the argument that the KKK wasn’t all that bad back in the 1920s is a load of crap. Stapleton and everyone else knew the KKK was a racist, anti-semitic, anti-Catholic monstrosity. It’s just that a lot of white people out here didn’t object to this brand of racism at the time. Stapleton shouldn’t be honored for being an apologetic, complicit racist.

Get Evans’ name off the mountain. Stapleton was nothing more than a weak-willed creep. While poor McKinley didn’t do anything more hurtful than sign tariffs and get assassinated, Evans at the very least allowed and possibly promoted one of the country’s worst crimes

Much, much worse is former Colorado Gov. John Evans. This very remarkable son of Ohio helped create Northwestern University in Illinois and was so well politically connected that he was appointed governor of what was then Colorado Territory in the 1860s. He was a colorful character and governor at the time of one of the country’s darkest hours: The Sand Creek Massacre. Outside of the state, few know about Nov. 29, 1864 in southeast Colorado. That day a massive militia of about 700 men stormed a small, peaceful Cheyenne Indian camp and literally slaughtered as many as 163 men, women and children. It was a repugnant act, along the lines of the sinister terror used by German Nazis. The brainchild of the genocide was John M. Chivington, a retired U.S. Army colonel and Methodist preacher. The West was in the death throes of practically exterminating all Native Americans and their culture, and sporadic fighting against white intruders were highly inflammatory. This camp of Cheyenne tribal members had thrown in the towel and were looking for a peaceful place to just get along. Chivington wanted to make an example of them, and he slaughtered them in one of history’s most-egregious acts of terror and cowardice. His pal, Gov. Evans, was implicated during a congressional investigation and eventually forced to resign.

In what is so reminiscent of the contemporary politics that led to the latest Iraq war, those who appreciated Evans’ questionable victories wanted the world to overlook his lies, deceits and complicity.

We can’t. The slaughter was just too vile, and Evans’ part in it too repulsive. Even namesake colleges such as the University of Denver and Northwestern University have admitted to Evans’ sick part in the massacre.

Get Evans’ name off the mountain. Stapleton was nothing more than a weak-willed creep. While poor McKinley didn’t do anything more hurtful than sign tariffs and get assassinated, Evans at the very least allowed and possibly promoted one of the country’s worst crimes.

Thanks to Obama, now we know there’s no good reason to continue to allow one on of the state’s icons to bear the name of complicit mass murderer. We don’t have to move mountains, just the name.

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