Responding to pressure from a student alliance, Northwestern University has established a committee to investigate the history of John Evans, a university founder connected to one of the worst massacres of Native Americans in the country's history.

The committee will consist of four Northwestern faculty members and three additional professors hailing from Yale University, the University of Illinois and the University of Arkansas.

John Evans — the namesake of the city of Evanston — was territorial governor of Colorado in 1864 when a militia of about 700 men attacked a temporary village of Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people at Sand Creek. According to the National Park Service, the soldiers killed 165 to 200 Native Americans, about two-thirds of them women, children and elderly....