USA > Colorado > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 48
USA > Nevada > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 48
USA > Wyoming > History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888 > Part 48
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Relief came on the 5th of October, when Colonel Merritt arrived, after a forced march of 72 hours, with a force of 550 men. For the appearance of this
477
THORNBURG.
particular officer the besieged had waited with a con- fidence which sustained them through one of the most trying ordeals ever experienced by troops. There was a skirmish next day, but the Indians soon retired, and the dead were buried as decently as the circumstances allowed. In the affair of the 29th, 35 Indians were killed. The loss to the white forces was 14 killed and 43 wounded. Thornburg's body was but little mutilated. The Utes had disposed the limbs decently, and placed a photograph of Colorow in one hand, to signify by whom he had come to his death. The officers engaged in this affair, besides Thornburg, were captains J. Scott Payne and Joseph Lawson of the 5th cavalry; Lieutenant J. V. S. Pad- dock of the 3d cavalry ; lieutenants Wolf and Wooley of the 4th infantry, and Lieutenant S. A. Cherry of the 5th cavalry, the sole officer unhurt, and E. B. Grimes. Thornburg was a Tennessean. He en- listed as a private, September 1861, in the 6th Ten- nessee, serving until August 1863. He rose in five months to be sergeant-major, and in two months more to be lieutenant and adjutant. He subsequently entered West Point academy, graduating in 1867. He was commissioned second lieutenant of 2d artil- lery, and was stationed at San Francisco, Fortress Monroe, Alcatraz, and Sitka, and was professor of military science at San Diego, California, and subse- quently at the East Tennessee university, going thence to Fort Foote, Maryland; and from there to San Antonio, Texas ; then to Fort Brown, and to Omaha. He became major of the 4th infantry at Fort Fred. Steele. Merritt reached the agency on the 11th, finding twelve dead and mutilated bodies.
8 Others not here named were likewise killed. The twelve were N. C. Meeker, E. W, Eskridge, his clerk, a lawyer by profession, and had been a banker; W. H. Post, assistant agent and farmer; E. Price, blacksmith; Frank Dresser, Harry Dresser, Frederick Shepard, George Eaton, W. H. Thomp- son, E. L. Mansfield, Carl Goldstein, and Julius Moore. N. C. Meeker was born in Euclid, Ohio, in 1815. He was early known as a newspaper and magazine writer. He married the daughter of one Smith, a retired sea-cap- tain, joining a society known as the Trumbull Phalanx, a branch of the
478
INDIAN WARS.
While the command remained at White river, Lieu- tenant Weir and a scout named Humme were killed while hunting in the vicinity of the agency, but no demonstration was made against the Indians.
Eagle R.
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UNCOMPAHGRE AGENCY.
North American Phalanx and Brook Farm Societies. Communism not com- ing up to his expectations, he returned to Cleveland, and went into a mer- cantile business in a small way, prospering very well. Then he became war correspondent of the N. Y. Tribune, and later was on the editorial staff. In 1869, being sent to write up Mormonism, he spent a little time in Colorado, and was so charmed with the scenery and the climate that he determined to settle here with his family. In this design he was encouraged by_Greeley, who promised to aid him with the Tribune. Out of this grew the Union col- ony. How Greeley kept his word the readers of the Tribune remember, and the flourishing town of Greeley attests, named in acknowledgment of his services.
UNCOMPAHGRE
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479
PEACE SCHEDULE.
The captives were finally given up, owing to the skill of Postal-agent Charles N. Adams and the in- fluence of Ouray. The Indians guilty of the crimes committed at the agency did not present themselves, and finally Adams went on to Washington with Ouray, Jack, and other lesser personages to the num- ber of a dozen. After nearly a fortnight of negotia- tions there, during which the government insisted upon two points, the relinquishment of the criminals and the removal of the Utes to a reservation outside of Colorado, Jack and three other Utes returned with Adams to this state to attempt once more the capture of Douglas, Johnson, and others under criminal charges. About the middle of February they were so far successful that Douglas and Johnson were among the Indians who accompanied them east, Douglas being left in confinement at Fort Leaven- worth.
On the 6th of March a new convention was en- tered into between the Ute representative in Wash- ington and the agents of the United States. By this arrangement the chiefs agreed to endeavor to effect the surrender of the Indians implicated in the massa- cre of Meeker and his employés, or, if not able to take them, they promised not to obstruct the government officers in the same effort. They agreed to cede the Ute reservation, except that the southern Utes, or Ignacio's band, were to be settled in severalty on agri- cultural lands on the La Plata river, and in New Mexico. The Uncompahgres were to settle upon lands on Grand river, near the mouth of the Gunni- son, in Colorado and Utah. The White River Utes agreed to settle on lands in severalty on the Uintah reservation in Utah. The severalty bill passed by congress allowed 160 acres of pasture and the same amount of farming land to each head of a family, and 80 acres to each child. The consent, first of congress, and secondly of a majority of the three bands, was to be obtained to this arrangement, when $60,000, or as
480
INDIAN WARS.
much more as congress might appropriate, should be distributed among them. An annuity of $50,000 was also to be paid them, and a support furnished them and their children until they became self-supporting.' This schedule was so altered as to require the sur- render of the murderers before the White River Utes should receive all their share of the money, and an annuity of $500 each was to be taken out of the Ute annuity to be paid to the widows of the men slain at
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109
UINTAH RESERVATION.
the agency. On the other hand, Schurz insisted on an appropriation of $350,000 for different objects beneficial to the Utes, to be expended in surveying
9 Denver Tribune, Mar. 7, 1880. The history of the progress of the Ute commissions was reported in the Tribune from day to day, and from its col- umns I have drawn most of my statements and some of my conclusions. The account of the massacre, etc., contained in Baskin's Denver Hist., is ap- parently derived from a similar source. There is a pamphlet by Thomas Sturgis, The Ute War of 1879, Cheyenne, 1879, pp. 26, showing why the Ind- ian bureau should be transferred from the interior department to the mili- tary, which also contains a history of the outbreak. I find partial accounts in Byers' Centennial State, MS., 46-52; U. S. H. Doc., 1879-80; Helena ( Mont. ) Herald, Oct., Nov., and Dec., 1879; Helena Independent, Oct. 16 and 30, 1879; Sen. Jour. Colo, 1881, 42-3; U. S. Sen. Doc., i. 29, 46th cong. 2d sess .; U. S. H. Doc., ix., pt 5, pp. 109-11, 121-5, 46th cong. 2d sess .; Stockton Independent, Mar. 17. 1880.
Act of May 5, 186
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481
PEACE SCHEDULE.
their lots, building houses and mills, buying wagons, harness, cattle, and other property. Back annuities, which by the terms of the treaty of 1868 might be paid in cattle, the Utes insisted should now be paid in cash, and enough added to it to make it $75,000 annually. The bill finally passed with these provis- ions. Douglas was kept in confinement at Fort Leavenworth for more than a year. His tribe were removed to Utah. Ouray returned to Colorado, where he died in August. Colorow lived to cause further trouble.
HIST. NEV. 31
CHAPTER VIII.
MATERIAL PROGRESS.
1859-1875.
PLACER AND QUARTZ MINING-REFRACTORY ORES-PROCESSES-SMELTING- SWINDLING CORPORATIONS-THE FLOOD-INDIAN HOSTILITIES-AGRI- CULTURE-PRODUCTS AND PRICES-DISCOVERY OF SILVER-LOCALITIES AND LODES-THE SAN JUAN COUNTRY-ADVENTURES OF JOHN BAKER'S PARTY-GREAT SUFFERINGS-ARCHITECTURAL REMAINS OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES-PILE'S EXPEDITION-TREATY VIOLATIONS-OPENING OF ROADS -- SILVER LODES -- SAN MIGUEL GOLD DISTRICT-OURAY.
IT is time now that I should turn to the considera- tion of the material development of the country. After the first three or four years of immigration and gold mining, during which $30,000,000 of gold was produced, it began to be realized that the placer dig- gings were soon to be exhausted, and that quartz min- ing only could be made remunerative in the future. A more discouraging discovery was that the ores in quartz were refractory, and the proper methods of working them unknown. It was then that many Colorado miners, hearing of Salmon river in what was then Washington territory, migrated in that direction with the same impetuousness with which they had first flown to the rumored El Dorado of the Rocky mountains. Failing to reach there for want of a wagon-road, they, with others from the western states, began prospecting on the headwaters of the Missouri river, and discovered gold. Forthwith the town of Bannack sprang up, then Virginia City, and simultaneously other towns in what was soon Idaho, followed by the rapid population of the still later
(482)
483
PLACER AND QUARTZ MINING.
territory of Montana, Colorado furnishing a large proportion of the first settlers of that region.1
Placer, gulch, and bar mining had about come to an end in 1859 in Arapahoe county ; in Clear creek and Boulder counties in 1860; in the parks by 1861; and in Gilpin county by 1863. It revived somewhat afterward in the parks .? The richest of the gulch claims had proved to be the croppings of quartz ledges, which were easily worked, the gold near the surface being freed from its matrix by elemental forces operating for ages. Little water at first accumulated in these mines ; simple machinery answered for hoist- ing the ore, and fuel was cheap. Arastras and stamp- mills were introduced as early as 1859, as I have before mentioned, and were quite numerous in 1860. But to the surprise of their owners the mills were often found not to save gold enough to pay expenses. D. D. White is said to have thrown a quantity of gold-dust into the battery of his mill in Boulder county that he might be able to declare that he had cleaned up some gold, and not a trace of the gold thus devoted could be found. The first successful mill was the property of Robert and Cary Culver and John Mahoney, and was set up in July 1860 at Gold hill, ten miles from the town of Boulder, to work the ore of the Horsfal mine, discovered 3 in June 1859, and which had already yielded $10,000 by sluicing. Two months later a six-stamp Gates mill belonging to Wemott & Merrill arrived from Chicago, and was set
1 The following persons were in both Colorado and Montana: W. McKim- ons, J. Daniothy, E. Nottingham, A. W. Pillsbury, J. Brady, F. Temple, W. Rogers, John Call, John Willhard, Christopher Richter, Nicholas Kess- ler, W. J. English, G. W. Krattcar, Sargeant Hall, O. W. Jay, Joseph Eveans, Wilson Butt, James M. Cavanaugh, William Arthur Davis, O. Bryam, James Williams, Thomas Foster, John M. Shelton, Charles L. Williams, Benjamin R. Dittes, John Fenn, Thomas Garlick, William Fern, David Alderdice, C. B. Reed, A. E. Grater, Alexander Metzel, Edward D. Alston, J. W. Marshall, Isaac Hall, William Stodden, George L. Shoup.
2 Hollister Mines of Colo, 122-3.
3 By David Horsfal, M. L. McCaslin, and William Blore. Blore was a native of Otsego co., N. Y., though of German descent. and was born in 1833. He resided in Pa when a child, going to Neb. in 1856, and being one of the Colorado pioneers of 1858. He purchased land and went to farming and stock-raising.
484
MATERIAL PROGRESS.
to work upon this lode, the proprietors of the former mill discarding their own and purchasing an interest in this. By this means $600 to $700 per cord -- ore being measured, not weighed, at this time-was saved, and the Horsfal yielded over $300,000 in the succeed- ing two years. Some other mills made good returns for a time; but, as I have said, at no great depth the ores generally proved refractory to the treatment to which, following the methods familiar in California, they were subjected. The milling processes practised on the Comstock enabled the mill men to extract the metal from a ton of ore at a cost of from five to ten dollars; consequently low-grade ores could be profita- bly worked ; but it was found that quicksilver, which in California and Nevada saved the free gold and car- bonates by amalgamation, was wholly indifferent to the sulphurets and pyrites of Colorado, and that the ores would have to be treated by some then unknown method, and at probably a greatly increased cost. Much money was expended in unprofitable experi- ment for the whole period between 1864 and 1867, and many claims were abandoned which have since been profitably worked.6 From $7,500,000 annual
4 Archibald J. Van Deren of Ky came to Colorado in 1859, and operated successfully one of the first stamp-mills brought to Colorado at Nevada gulch. He was commissioner of Gilpin co. in 1861. In 1863 he was a mem- ber of the legislature. The John Jay mine was discovered by him. Ensign B. Smith, born in N. Y., came to Colorado in 1859 with his family, building the second house in Golden, which he kept as a hotel. In 1860 he removed to Black Hawk and erected a quartz-mill of 6 stamps, which he sold, and erected another at Buckskin Joe, which ran for half a year, when he aban- doned it and returned to hotel-keeping. He was appointed probate judge in 1862. In 1863 he built, in connection with his brother and W. A. H. Love- land, the Clear creek wagon-road from Golden to the Golden Gate road- Perry A. Kline, born in Pa, came in 1859, and mined in the Gregory and Russell diggings, and in 1860 at California gulch, French gulch, and Buck- skin Joe. In 1861 he was employed in a mill on the Gunnell lode, near Cen- tral City, and became superintendent. He was subsequently superintend- ent of several different mills, among others the Kansas Consolidated, run- ning 52 stamps.
5. Pyrites are sulphurets of iron, whereas combinations of sulphur and other metals are called sulphurets. Pyrites may have, besides iron, the sul- phurets of other metals.
6 Warren R. Fowler, author of Around Colorado, MS., was born in N. Y., and in 1849 came to Cal., and to Central City in 1860, which he helped to build up. He has remained, mining and farming in different parts of the state, finally making his residence at Cañon City,
485
NATHANIEL P. HILL.
production the mining output diminished until in 1867 it was but $1,800,000,' when men ceased to exhaust their means in worthless "new processes," and returned to their stamp-mills, which wasted from one half to two thirds of the precious metals, and all of the lead and copper contained in the ores, but still afforded a profit. During this period many miners parted with their properties to eastern men, who had advanced money on them, and they were lying idle, which accounted in part for the decrease of gold pro- duction in Colorado. Time was required to establish titles and start up the mines under a new régime. Also a large per cent of the unsold mining property was bonded to be sold, in which condition it could not be worked. Gradually the new owners, having com- mand of capital, secured the services of mining experts from Europe, who introduced processes of dressing and smelting ores, which being improved upon by native ingenuity, resulted in a solution of the problem. The yield of the Colorado mines in 1870 rose to $5,000,000, and in 1871 to $6,000,000.
In the meantime the discovery had been made that some of the supposed gold mines were really not gold, but silver; as, for instance, the Seaton mine in Idaho district, which became almost valueless from the small amount of gold contained in the bullion produced by it, the name of Seaton gold being synonymous with a nearly white metal. Comparison of the ore with some from the Comstock mines revealed a resemblance, but the owners were still doubting, because they knew nothing of silver in Colorado, and no competent assayer was at hand to decide the question. In the summer of 1864, however, there was discovered a lode, which, on being tested by experts, was pro- nounced to be undoubted silver ore. This important revelation changed at once the reputation of such
7 Tice's Over the Plains, 226; Helena Republican, Sept. 15, 1866. The Montana Post of Apr. 30, 1869, says that Montana produced in 1868, $15,000,- 000 in precious metals, against $2, 107,235 in Colorado, and that Montana's agricultural product was $5,913,000, against $2,683,840 in Colorado.
486
MATERIAL PROGRESS.
mines as the Seaton, which, from being regarded as almost worthless, assumed a great if unknown value. It also stimulated prospecting afresh, and prompted the holders of mines which were lying idle to attend to their development.
It was in 1864 that a company of capitalists of Boston and Providence requested Nathaniel P. Hill, at that time professor of chemistry at Brown univer- sity, to visit Colorado, in order to examine a land grant in which they were interested. This examina- tion led to a second visit in 1865, when the mines of Gilpin county were subjected to thorough research, and the attention of the man of science was drawn to the imperfect methods in use for treating ores. After acquainting himself with his subject, Hill paid two visits to Swansea in Wales, taking with him enough of the Colorado ores to make practical tests at the Swansea works, and studying ore-reduction in other parts of Europe. Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1866, he organized the Boston and Colorado Smelting company, with a cash capital of $275,000, and proceeded to erect a furnace at Black Hawk, near Central City. This furnace solved the knotty problem of how to reduce refractory ores, and make abandoned mines of value. For ten years its fires were never out, but other furnaces were added by the company until there were eight, which were always fully employed. In 1878 the company removed its works to Argo, a suburb of Denver, where seven acres were covered by them, and where ore was brought by the railroads, not only from different parts of Colorado, but from New Mexico, Arizona. Utah, and Montana. The company had increased its capi- tal before removal to $800,000, and its products from $300,000 in 1868 to $2,250,000 in 1878. Until he was chosen to the United States senate, Professor Hill devoted his entire energies to the mining devel- opment of the country, whose savior, in this direc- tion he became. Not that smelters before 1865-7
487
REDUCTION WORKS.
had been overlooked, though there might be smelters and no gold or silver. The first furnace erected was in September 1861, by Lewis Tappan, who had dis- covered a lead mine in Quartz valley. Governor Gil- pin was in need of bullets for his Ist Colorado cav- alry, and did, I am bound to believe, draw his drafts on the treasury to erect this smelter in order to sup- ply them. These bullets had the reputation of being poisoned, so few of the wounded recovered, though it was not the governor who was at fault, but the smelter, which did not extract the poisonous metals mixed with the silver in the lead thus obtained.8 The second furnace erected was for smelting gold, and was built at Black Hawk in 1864 by James E. Lyon, but failed of its purpose, as I have already intimated.
After reduction works were successfully introduced at Black Hawk, they multiplied in the gold and silver districts. The mills resumed crushing, those few mines which produced ore free from sulphur being generally furnished with apparatus for turning out bullion, and the majority sending their concentrated ore to the reduction works.1º of Colorado, or quite
8 I find these facts in a manuscript on Mining and Smelting in Colorado, by John Bennett, of Littleton, who was born in Stafford co., Eng., in 1820, and migrated to America in 1849, landing at N. O., and drifting to Wis., where he remained working in the lead mines until 1860, when he came to Colorado. He made the plan of the furnace which furnished lead for Gilpin's regiment. It was 'built of rock, with a channel chiseled out to receive the lead as it was melted in the fire, a blacksmith's bellows, a water-wheel, and a small stream of water to give blast to the furnace.' Bennett assisted Hill in select- ing ores to be taken to Europe. See, also, Gilpin's Pioneer of 1842, MS.
9 One run only was made. A 'button,' 2} feet in diameter and six inches in thickness was the result, which was placed on exhibition at the national bank, and the works closed, the process proving too costly. Meagher, Obser- vitions, MS., 2. Meline, Two Thousand Miles on Horseback, 66-8, tells all that I have told here, but in the light of a huge joke, or at least, with little sympathy for the disappointed smelter-owner.
10 Cash and Rockwell of Central City, between 1867 and 1870, erected works near Central City for the reduction of gold ores, which saved 95 to 98 per cent of the precious metal. Wallingham's Colo Gazetteer, 230. Besides Hill's smelter at Black Hawk, there were reductions-works for the treatment of silver ores at Georgetown in Clear creek co., erected by Garrott and Buchanan, but sold to Palmer and Nichols: and Stewart's silver-reducing works, also at Georgetown; Brown Co.'s reduction works at Brownville, 4 miles from Georgetown; Baker's works 8 miles above Georgetown, the International Co.'s works in east Argentine district; and the Swansea reduc- tion works, 4 miles above Georgetown. At the latter, both gold and silver
488
MATERIAL PROGRESS.
often to Omaha or Chicago, where large smelters had been erected for the purpose of reducing and refining the ores from Colorado, Montana, and other mining regions to which railroad transportation was being extended. The expense of the treatment and hand- ling made a low grade of ores comparatively worth- less. In the first place, the mills charged from $20 to $35 per cord 11 for crushing the rock, to which was added the cost of concentration, reduction, and trans- portation, in all from $45 to $50. Still, the average assay of all the silver ores treated was $118, of which 80 per cent was guaranteed to the miner. Some ores yielded from $350 to $650 per ton, these being sent to Newark, England, or elsewhere for reduction. 12
While the territory was passing through this exper- imental period of its mining history, it had yet other brawbacks in the operations of swindling companies, which brought discredit upon the country by cheating their stockholders, and then unblushingly pricking the bubble. One fraud of this kind gained moro notoriety than many excellent investments. In other cases there were really good mines in the hands of operators, who mercilessly, by a system of assessments and practices known among miners as freezing out, excluded all but a favored few from participation in the benefits of mining property in which they had in the first instance embarked their small capital. If a prison is the proper thing for men brave and bold enough to rob contrary to law, a rope would be about right for the vile creatures that cheat and steal within pale of the law. Besides those intentional wrongs, there were many failures which were the result of
ore were reduced. In Summit co. there were the Sukey Silver Mining Co.'s reduction works, and the works of the Boston association, which were all the smelters in operation in 1870. Ruins of experiments were to be seen in all the mining districts.
11 A cord measured 128 cubic feet, and weighed from 6 to 10 tons, accord- ing to density.
12 It would be out of place for me to go into details concerning the meth- ods of reducing ores in Colorado. No two smelters used the same processes, and every process was varied to adapt it to the requirements of the miner- als to be separated.
489
BAD MANAGEMENT.
folly in the management of funds, in the erection of expensive but unnecessary buildings, or attempts at the hitherto unheard of processes to which I have alluded. From the depression of this period I shall show by and by that the mining interest completely emerged, if not all at once, yet before the admission of Colorado into the union. In nine years, ending 1880, the small county of Gilpin produced $18,126,- 564 in gold and silver.1
Going back to the beginning of this chapter, it was not altogether the failure of placer mining, the ignor- ance of and subsequent blunders made in quartz min- ing, with their concomitant ills, of which Colorado had to complain in the years of her infancy In common with, but to a greater comparative extent, the new cominnnity suffered like the older ones the burdens and the losses by civil war, which had diverted men and capital, raised prices, depreciated currency, and even swallowed up the means of trans- portation across the plains. The summer of 1863 was a season of drought, when boats could not ascend the Missouri with freight for points above the mouth of the Kansas river, and goods became scarce. The grass on the plains was burnt up by the sun, so that stock did not thrive; the city of Denver was visited by a fire which destroyed property worth a quarter of a million, and all things conspired to make desolate the hearts of the pilgrims from home and plenty.
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