History of the Arkansas Valley, Colorado, Part 21

Author: O.L. Baskin & Co
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 1080

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" Meanwhile, the American flag was flying over Douglass' camp, yet all the women and tents were moved back, and the Indians were greatly excited.

" Monday noon, Mr. Eskridge, who took the Agent's message to Thornburg, returned, saying that the troops were making day and night marches, and

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it must be kept seeret, but Thornburg wanted it given out to the Indians that he would meet five Utes at Milk Creek, fifteen miles away from the Agency, on Monday night. He desired an imme- diate answer. Thornburg expected to reach the Ageney Tuesday noou with the troops. The Indians, who at first were angry, brightened up, and Doug- lass sent two Indians with one white man, Esk- ridge, to meet Thornburg. But, secretly, the Utes were preparing for the massacre, for, just before Eskridge left with the Indians, a runner was seen rushing up to Douglass with news of what I since learned was soldiers fighting.

" Half an hour later, twenty armed Indians came up to the Agency from Douglass' camp and began firing. I was in the kitehen washing dishes. It was after dinner. I looked out of the window and saw the Utes shooting at the boys working on the new building. Mrs. Price was at the door, washing elothes. She rushed in and took Johnny, the baby, to fly from them. Just then, Frank Dresser, an employe, staggered in, shot through the leg. I said, 'Here, Frank, is Mr. Price's gun.' It lay on the bed. He took it, and just as we were fleeing out the door the windows were smashed in and half a dozen shots fired into the room. Frank Dresser fired and killed Johnson's brother. We ran into the milk-room, which had only one small window, locked the door and hid under a shelf. We heard firing for several hours. At intervals there was no shouting and no noise, but frequent firing. While waiting, Dresser said he had gone to the employes' room, where all the guns were stored, but found them stolen. In the intervals of shooting, Dresser would exelaim, 'There goes one of the Government guns.' Their sound was quite different from the sound of the Indian guns.

" We stayed in the milk-room until it began to fill with smoke. The sun was half an hour high. I took May Price, three years old, and we all ran to father's room. It was not disturbed. The papers and books were just as he left them. " Pepy's Diary" lay open on the table. We knew that the building would be burned, and ran aeross

Douglas avenue for a field of sage brush, beyond the plowed ground. The Utes were so busy stealing annuity goods that they did not at first see us. About thirty of them, loaded with blankets, were carrying them toward Douglass' camp, near the river. We had gone 100 yards when the Utes saw us. They threw down the blankets and came running and firing. The bullets whizzed as thick as grasshoppers around us. I don't think it was their intention to kill us, only to frighten us, but they tried to shoot Frank Dresser, who had almost reached the sage brush. Mother was hit by a bullet, which went through her elothing and made a flesh-wound three inches long in her leg. As the Indians came nearer, they shouted, 'We no shoot ; come to us.' I had the little girl. The Indian Persune said for me to go with him. He and another Ute seized me by the arms and started toward the river. An Uncompahgre Indian took Mrs. Priee and her baby, and mother was taken to Douglass' headquarters. We came to a wide irrigating canal which father persuaded the Indians to build. I said I could not cross it. The Indi- ans answered by pushing me through the water. I had only moccasins on, and the mud and water were deep. The baby waded, too, and both of us came out wet to the skin. As we were walking on, Chief Douglass came and pushed Persune away, and, in great anger, told him to give me up. I understood some of the language. Persune re- fused to surrender me and hot words followed, and I feared the men would fight. For a moment, I thought I would ask Douglass to take me, but, as both were drunk, I kept silent, and I was after- werd glad I did not go. Douglass finally went away, and we walked on toward the river. Before reaching the stream, not more than two hundred yards away, both my conductors pulled out bottles and drank twiee. No whisky was sold at the Agency. Their bottles were not Agoney bottles. The Indian Persune took me to where his ponies were standing, by the river, and seated me on a pile of blankets, while he went for more. Indians were on all sides. I could not escape. Persune

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packed his effects, all stolen from the Agency, on a Government mule, which was taller than a tall man. He had two mules ; he stole them from the Agency. It was now sundown. The packing was finished at dark, and we started for the wilderness to the south. I rode a horse with a saddle but no bri- dle. The halter-strap was so short that it dropped continually. The child was lashed behind me. Persune and his assistant rode each side of me, driving the pack-mules ahead. About twenty other Indians were in the party.

" Mother came later, riding barehack behind Douglass, both on one horse. She was sixty-four years old, feeble in health, not having recovered from a broken thigh caused by a fall two years ago. Chief Douglass gave her neither horse, sad- dle nor blankets. We forded the river, and, on the other side, Persune brought me his hat full of water to drink. We trotted along until 9 o'clock, when we halted half an hour. All the Indians dismounted, and blankets were spread on the ground, and I lay down to rest, with mother lying not far from me. Chief Douglass was considera- bly excited, and made a speech to me with many gestures and great emphasis. He recited his grievances and explained why the massacre began. He said Thornburg told the Indians that he was going to arrest the head chiefs, take them to Fort Steele and put them in the calaboose, and perhaps haug them. He said my father had written all the letters to the Denver papers, and circulated wild reports about what the Indians would do, as set forth by the Western press, and that he was responsible for all the hostility against the Indians among the whites in the West. He said that the pictures of the Agent and all his family, women and children, had been found on Thornburg's body just before the attack on the Agency, and the pictures were covered with blood and showed marks of knives on different parts of the bodies. The throats were cut, and the Agent had bullet- holes in his head. I was represented by the pict- ure as shot through the breast, and Douglass said father had made these pictures, representing the

prospective fate of his family, and sent them to Washington to be used to influence the soldiers and hurry troops forward to fight the Indians.

" This remarkable statement, strange as it may seem, was afterward told me by a dozen other dif- ferent Indians, and the particulars were always the same. While Douglass was telling me this, he stood in front of me with his gun, and his anger was dreadful. Then he shouldered his gun and walked up and down before me in the moonlight, and said that the employes had kept guard at the Agency for three nights before the massacre, and he mocked them and sneered and laughed at them, and said he was 'a heap big soldier.' He sang English songs, which he had heard the boys sing in their rooms at the Agency. He sang the negro melody, 'Swing low, sweet chariot,' and asked me if I understood it. I told him I did, for he had the words and tune perfectly committed.

" He said father had always been writing to Washington. He always saw him writing when he came to the Agency. He said it was 'write, write, write,' all day. Then he swore a fearful oath in English. He said if the soldiers had not come and threatened the Indians with Fort Steele and the calaboose and threatened to kill all the other Indians at White River, the Agent would not have been massacred. Then brave Chief Douglass, who had eaten at our table that very day, walked off a few feet and turned and placed his loaded gun to my forehead three times, and asked me if I was scared. He asked if I was going to run away. I told him that I was not afraid of him and should not run away.

" When he found his repeated threats could not, frighten me, all the other Indians turned on him and laughed at him, and made so much fun of him that he sneaked off and went over to frighten my mother. I heard her cry 'Oh !' and I sup- pose she thought some terrible fate had befallen me. I shouted to her that I was not hurt, that she need not be afraid, that they were only trying to scare her. The night was still, but I heard no response. The Indians looked at each other. All

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hands took a drink around my bed, then they sad- dled their horses, and Persune led my horse to me and knelt down on his hands and knees for me to mount my horse from his back. He always did this, and when he was absent his wife did it. I saw Per- sune do the same gallant act once for his squaw, but it was only once, and none of the other Indians did it at all.

" We urged our horses forward and journeyed in the moonlight through the grand mountains, with the dusky Indians talking in low, weird tones among themselves. The little three-year-old, May Price, who was fastened behind me, cried a few times, for she was cold and had had no supper, and her mother was away in Jack's camp; but the child was generally quiet. It was after midnight when we made the second halt, in a deep and sombre cañon, with tremendous mountains tower- ering on every side. Mother was not allowed to come. Douglass kept her with him half a mile further down the canon. Persune had plenty of blankets, which were stolen from the Agency. He spread some for my bed and rolled up one for my pillow, and told me to retire. Then the squaws came and laughed and grinned and gibbered in their grim way. We had reached Douglass' camp of the women who had been sent to the cañon pre- vious to the massacre. Jack's camp, where Mrs. Price was kept, was five or six miles away in an- other canon. When I had laid down on my newly made bed, two squaws, oue old and one young, came to the bed and sang and danced fantastically and joyfully at my feet. The other Indians stood around, and when the women reached a certain point of their recital, they all broke into laughter. Toward the end of their song, my captor Persune, gave each of them a newly stolen Government . blanket, which they took, and then went away. The strangeness and wild novelty of my position kept me awake until morning, when I fell into a doze and did not open my eyes until the sun was shining over the mountains. The next day, Per- sune went to fight the soldiers, and placed me in charge of his wife, with her three children. That

same day, mother came up to see us, in company with a little Indian. On Wednesday, the next day, Johnson went over to Jack's camp and brought back Mrs. Price and baby to live in his camp. He said he had made it all right with the other Utes. We did not do anything but lie around the various camps and listen to the talk of the squaws whose husbands were away fighting the soldiers. On Wednesday, and on other days, one of Sufansesixits' three squaws put her hand on my shoulder and said : 'Poor little girl, I feel so sorry, for you have not your father, and you are away off with the Utes so far from home.' She cried all the time, and said her own little child had just died, and her heart was sore. When Mrs. Price came into camp, another squaw took her baby, Johnny, into her arms, and said, in Ute, that she felt very sorry for the captives. Next day, the squaws and the few Indians who were there packed up aud moved the camp ten or twelve miles into an exceedingly beautiful valley, with high mountains all around it. The grass was two feet high, and a stream of pure, soft water ran through the valley. The water was so cold I could hardly drink it. Every night, the Indians, some of whom had come back from the soldiers, held councils. Mr. Brady had just come up from the Uncompahgre Agency with a message from Chief Ouray for the Indians to stop fighting the soldiers. He had delivered the message, and this was why so many had come back. On Sunday, most of them were in camp, They said they had the soldiers hemmed in in a cañon, and were merely guarding them. Persune came back wearing a pair of blue soldier pantaloons, with yellow stripes on the legs. He took them off and gave them to me for a pillow. His legs were well protected with leggings, and he did not need them. I asked the Indians, before Brady came, where the soldiers were. They replied that they were still in 'that cellar,' meaning the canon, and the Indians were killing their ponies when they went for water in the night. They said: 'Indians stay on the mountains and see white soldiers. White soldiers

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no see Indians. White soldiers not know how to fight.' One of their favorite amusements was to put on a negro soldier's cap, a short coat and blue pants, and imitate the negroes in speech and walk. I could not help laughing, because they were so accurate in their personations.

"On Sunday, they made a pile of sage brush as large as a washstand, and put soldier's clothes and a hat on the pile. Then they danced a war danee aud sang as they waltzed around it. They were in their best clothes, with plumes and fur dancing- caps made of skunk-skins and grizzly-bear skins, with ornaments of eagle-feathers. Two or three began the dance; others joined until a ring as large as a house was formed. There were some squaws, and all had knives. They charged upon the pile of coats with their knives, and pretended that they would burn the brush. They became almost insane with frenzy and excitement. The dance lasted from 2 o'clock until sundown. Then they took the coats and all went home. On Sunday night, Jack came and made a big speech ; also Johnson. They said more troops were com- ing, and they recited what Brady had brought from Chief Ouray. They were in great commo- tion, and did not know what to do. They talked all night, and next morning they struck half their tents and then put them up again. Part were for going away, part for staying. Jack's men were all day coming into camp. They left on Tuesday for Grand River, and we had a long ride. The caval- eade was fully two miles long. The wind blew a hurricane, and the dust was so thiek we could not see ten feet baek in the line, and I could write my name on my face in the dust. Most of the Indians had no breakfast, and we traveled all day without dinner or water. Mother had neither sad- dle nor stirrups-merely a few thicknesses of can- vas strapped on the horse's back, while the young chiefs pranced around on good saddles. She did not reach Grand River until after dark, and the ride, for an invalid and aged woman, was long and distressing. The camp that night was in the sage brush.

" On the morning of Wednesday, we moved five miles down the river. A part of the Agency herd was driven along with the procession, and a beef was killed this day. As I was requested to cook most of the time, and make the bread, I did not suffer from the filth of ordinary Indian fare. While at this camp, Persune absented himself three or four days, and brought in three fine horses and a lot of lead, which he made into bul- lets. Johnson also had a sack of powder. The chief amusement of the Indians was running bul- lets. No whites are admitted to the tents while the Utes sing their medicine songs over the sick, but I, being considered one of the family, was allowed to remain. When their child was sick they asked me to sing, which I did. The medi- cine-man kneels close to the sufferer, with his baek to the spectators, while he sings in a series of high-keyed grunts, gradually reaching a lower and more solemn tone. The family join, and at inter- vals he howls so loudly that one can hear him a mile; then his voice dies away and only a gur- gling sound is heard, as if his throat were full of water. The child lies nearly stripped. The doc- tor presses his lips against the breast of the sufferer and repeats the gurgling sound. He sings a few minutes more and then all turn around and smoke and laugh and talk. Sometimes the ceremony is repeated all night. I assisted at two of these medieine festivals. Mrs. Price's children became expert at singing Ute songs, and sang to each other on the journey home. The siek-bed cere- monies were strange and weird, and more interest- ing than anything I saw in all my captivity of twenty-three days.

" We stayed on Grand River until Saturday. The mountains were very high, and the Indians were on the peaks with glasses watching the sol- diers. They said they could look down upon the site of the Agency. Saturday morning, the pro- gramme was for twenty Utes to go back to White River, scout around in the mountains and watch the soldiers; but just as they were about to depart, there was a terrible commotion, for some of the

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scouts on the mountains had discovered the troops ten or fifteen miles south of the Agency, advancing toward our camp. The Indians ran in every direc- tion. The horses became excited, and, for a time, hardly a pony could be approached. Johnson flies into a passion when there is danger. This time, his horses kicked and confusion was supreme. Mr. Johnson siezed a whip and laid it over the shoul- ders of his youngest squaw, named Coose. He pulled her hair and renewed the lash. Then he returned to assist his other wife pack, and the colts ran and kicked. While Mrs. Price and my- self were watching the scene, a young buck came up with a gun and threatened to shoot us. We told him to shoot away. Mrs. Price requested him to shoot her in the forehead. He said we were no good squaws, because we would not scare. We did not move until noon. We traveled till nightfall, and camped on the Grand River in a nice, grassy place, under the trees by the water. The next day was Sunday, and we moved twenty- five miles south, but mother and Mrs. Price did not come up for three or four days again. We camped on the Grand River, under trees. Rain set in and continued two days and three nights. I did not suffer, for I was in camp ; but mother and Mrs. Price, who were kept on the road, got soaked each day. Johnson, who had Mrs. Price, went beyond us, and all the other Indians behind camped with Johnson.

"Friday, Johnson talked with Douglass. He took mother to his tent. Johnson's oldest wife is a sister of Chief Ouray, and he was kinder than the others, while his wife cried over the captives and made the children shoes. Cohae beat his wife with a club and pulled her hair. I departed, leav- ing her to pack up. He was an Uncompahgre Ute, and Ouray will not let him return to hisband. The Indians said they would stay at this camp, and, if the soldiers advanced, they would get them in a cañon and kill them all. They said that neither the soldiers nor the horses understood the country.

"The Utes were now nearly to the Uncom- pahgre district, and could not retreat much further.

Colorow made a big speech, and advised the Indi- ans to go no further south. We were then removed one day's ride to Plateau Creek, a cattle stream running south out of Grand River. Eight miles more travel on two other days brought us to the camping-ground where Gen. Adams found us. It was near to Plateau Creek, but high up and not far from the snowy range.

" On Monday night, an Uncompahgre Ute came and said that the next day Gen. Adams, whom they called Washington, was coming after the cap- tives. I felt very glad and told the Indian that I was ready to go. Next day, about 11 o'clock, while I was sewing in Persune's tent, his boy, about twelve, came in, picked up a buffalo robe and wanted me to go to bed. I told him I was not sleepy. Then a squaw came and hung a blan- ket before the door, and spread both hands to keep the blanket down so I could not push it away; but I looked over the top and saw Gen. Adams and party outside, on horses. The squaw's movements attracted their attention and they came up close. I pushed the squaw aside and walked out to meet them. They asked my name and dis- mounted, and said they had come to take us back. I showed them the tent where mother and Mrs. Price were stopping, and the General went down, but they were not in, for, meanwhile, Johnson had gone to where they were washing, on Plateau Creek, and told them that a council was to be held and that they must not come up till it was over. Dinner was sent to the ladies and they were or- dered to stay there. About 4 o'clock, when the council ended, Gen. Adams ordered them to be brought to him, which was done, and once more we were together in the hands of friends.

" Gen. Adams started at once for White River, and we went to Chief Johnson's and stayed all night.

"The next morning we left for Uncompahgre, in charge of Capt. Cline and Mr. Sherman. The Captain had served as a scout on the Potomac, and Mr. Sherman is chief clerk at Los Pinos Agency. To these gentlemen we were indebted for a safe

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and rapid journey to Chief Ouray's house, on Uncompahgre River, near Los Pinos. We rode on ponies, forty miles the first day, and reached Capt. Cline's wagon, on a small tributary of the Grand. Here we took the buckboard wagon. Traveled next day to the Gunnison River, and the next and last day of fear we traveled forty miles, and reached the house of good Chief Ouray about sundown. Here Inspector Pollock and my brother Ralph met me, and I was happy enough. Chief Ouray and his noble wife did everything possible to make us comfortable. We found carpets on the floor and curtains on the windows, lamps on the tables and stoves in the rooms, with fires burning. We were given a whole house, and after supper we went to bed and slept without much fear, though mother was still haunted by the terrors she had passed through. Mrs. Ouray shed tears over us as she bade us good-bye. Then we took the mail wagons and stages for home. Three days and one night of constant travel over two ranges of snowy mountains, where the road was 11,000 feet above the sea, brought us to the beau- tiful park of San Luis. We crossed the Rio Grande River at daylight, for the last time, and, a moment later, the stage and its four horses dashed up a street and we stopped before a hotel with green blinds, and the driver shouted ' Alamosa.'

"The moon was shining brightly, and Mt. Blanca, the highest peak in Colorado, stood out grandly from the four great ranges that sur- rounded the park. Mother could hardly stand. She had to be lifted from the coach; but when she caught sight of the cars of the Rio Grande Railroad, and when she saw the telegraph poles, her eyes brightened, and she exclaimed, 'Now I feel safe.'"

Mrs. Meeker and Mrs. Price also published state- ments of their individual experiences, but, in the main, they corresponded with the foregoing, except that both bore testimony tothe coolness and unflinch- ing courage of Miss Meeker in the presence of every danger, even in the awful ordeal through which they passed at the Agency on the day of the

massacre, and subsequently when the "brave" Chief Douglass pointed his gun at her head and flourished his scalping-knife in her face. Douglass had sent a magniloquent message to Chief Ouray that the women and children were " safe" under his protection, also that the papers and money of Mr. Meeker had been turned over to Mrs. Meeker. When the truth became known, it appeared that Douglass was not only guilty of persecuting the prisoners but actually had stolen Mrs. Meeker's little store of money ! Wily old Ouray knew that such petty meanness would be quoted against his tribe, and demanded that the money be returned, but it was not handed over until some time after- ward. It is generally believed that Ouray, failing to recover the money from Douglass, paid it out of his own pocket and represented that it came from Douglass.

When Miss Meeker told the story of her cap- tivity to the people of Denver, she introduced some facts and incidents not noted in her New York Herald narrative. She was particularly happy in her description of Indian habits and cus- toms, upon which topic she enlarged considerably. She also gave an interesting account of a visit paid to her in secret by a Uintah Ute, whom she de- scribed as being a remarkably bright and intelligent savage, and almost gentlemanly in his demeanor- quite a romantic savage, indeed. He did not, how- ever, make any effort or promise to secure her release, further than that he volunteered to carry, and did carry, a message from her to the Agent of the Uintahs. He asked her many questions about the outbreak, the massacre, her captivity, her treat- ment by the Indians, and, with the skill of a first- class criminal lawyer, elicited all the information she had upon these various subjects. He was law- yer-like, too, in his own reticence and non-commit- talism. He simply listened. After hearing her story, he went off, agreeing to return in the morn- ing for the letter which he was to carry to the Agency.

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History of the Arkansas Valley, Colorado, Part 21

Author: O.L. Baskin & Co Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co. Number of Pages: 1080

Author: O.L. Baskin & Co
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 1080