History of the Arkansas Valley, Colorado, Part 22

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

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Miss Meeker was not supplied with writing mate- rials, and the suspicious Indians refused to let her

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have such as they happened to possess, which were, in fact, rather infinitesimal. Finally, Susan, wife of Chief Johnson and sister of Ouray, afterward to become famous under her new sobriquet of "God bless Susan," whose kindness to the captives was a bright oasis in the desert of their misery, managed to secure the stub of an old lead pencil for Miss Meeker, and the latter found a scrap of paper, upon which she wrote the following message:

GRAND RIVER (forty to fifty miles from Agency), October 10, 1879. To the Uintah Agent :

I send this by one of your Indians. If you get it, do all in your power to liberate us as soon as possible. I do not think they will let us go of their own accord. You will do me a great service to inform Mary Meeker, at Greeley, Colorado, that we are well, and may get home some time. Yours, etc.

JOSEPHINE MEEKER, U. S. Indian Agent' s daughter.

The gentle Douglass proved to be an angel of very variable temper. When drunk, he was vapor- ous and insulting; but after a debauch, he was a whining and insipid savage. At such times, he

would bemoan his unhappy fate, and blame Father Meeker for bringing on the Agency troubles. The loss of his Agency supplies seemed to weigh upon him heavily, and frequently he would repeat : " Douglass heap poor Indian now."

Brady, the white messenger sent by Ouray with orders to the White River Utes to stop fighting, was not permitted to see the captives at all, or to communicate with them. Miss Meeker heard of his arrival, and asked to see him, but was told that he was "heap too much hurry" to make any calls of state or ceremony.

Taken altogether, the captivity of the Meekers and Mrs. Price has no redeeming feature, save the fact that they were ultimately released, and their release, as already shown, was not the willing act of their captors, but a sort of military necessity, whereby it was hoped not only to check the ad- vance of the troops, but also to pave the way for a peaceable solution of the pending difficulty. The horrors of their captivity were dreadful enough, even without the crowning horror which they so narrowly escaped.

CHAPTER VIII.

UTE ATROCITIES IN COLORADO.

TN the early days of Colorado's history, the Utes were not particularly troublesome. It is re- lated that a small force of United States soldiers, under command of Maj. Ormsby, once had an engagement previous to 1860, with a band of Utes near Pike's Peak, and that the soldiers were victo- rious. Fort Garland, in Costilla County, was built for the purpose of protecting the country against any outbreak of the Utes. Quite a num- ber of them went to war early in the sixties, but old Kit Carson, being in command there, succeeded in pacifying them without bloodshed. Since then, the Utes have been moderately peaceable as a whole, though they have always been more or less troublesome, especially in small bands and as

individuals. In fact, there scarcely has been a time since the first settlement of Colorado when they have not been an annoyance. The greater share of trouble has, however, been due to the southern bands of the tribe, while the White River Utes have been, upon the whole, peaceably inclined. Colorow and Piah and their bands have proven exceptions, but they did not for years cause serious trouble until in 1878.

The Utes cannot make complaint against the whites with the force usually brought to bear on the subject by the aborigines. They have not been persecuted by settlers. In fact, the white settlers have been an actual protection to the Utes. When the white people came into this country,

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the Utes and the Plains Indians, the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes, were deadly enemies, and the Plains Indians were generally considered the supe- riors of the Utes as Indian fighters. The whites were compelled, for their own protection, to rid the country of the Arapahoes and Cheyennes, and in doing so they also relieved the Utes. Hence the latter tribe owe the whites a real debt of gratitude.

The Utes have never made any attack upon large parties of whites except once. It was in 1872 that a party of eleven white men, under the leadership of John Le Fevre, ventured into North Park prospecting. One day, a majority of the party went out to kill game enough to eat, and, while out, very unexpectedly ran upon a band of fifty Utes, under the leadership of the infamous old renegade Colorow. The party were met face to face by the Indians, who seemed to have planned the meeting.

"Here! dam! you shoot my antelope."

"Oh, no! Only one to eat."

" Yes, you do; you heap dam lie."

The whites insisted that they were not unneces- sarily butchering the antelope. But Colorow said that if the whites were not out of the park the next day he would scalp all of them. There was one sick man with them. Colorow said he could have twenty sleeps and then he must go. Le Fevre and one man took the hint and left. None of the others were seen again. But eight skele_ tons were found in the locality in which they had been left, a few years afterward; and some time after this discovery another pile of bones accounted for the ninth. A note pinned on the door of the cabin in which the sick man had been confined, completed the story. He stated that Colorow had been about a great deal; that he had threatened to kill all hands, and that he, the writer, never ex- pected to see the land of the white man. There is no doubt in the minds of any of the old inhabi- tants of North or Middle Park but what Colorow killed the nine men who were following the legitimate pursuit of prospecting in a country near the Ute country, but to which they had no earthly

claim. Many other small parties have been threatened just as this was, and doubtless would have met with the same horrible fate had they not concluded that prudence was the better part of valor, and left at his command. There is no use in disguising the fact, the Indians are a drawback to the State, and people who venture out upon our frontier, whether they cross the line or not, are in danger. It has been but a little over two years since, in La Plata County, the southern half of the tribe were making demonstrations which, if the culprits had been white men, would have entitled them to a term in the penitentiary, or to have their bodies swinging in the air. It was nothing for a lone white man to be stopped and threatened. In 1875, a man was killed in cold blood in South Park.

There are few Colorado people that do not remember the fate of poor Joe McLane. Joe was decoyed off and murdered by a band of Utes, near Cheyenne Wells, over a hundred miles east of Denver, and three or four hundred miles from the Ute reservation, showing that people are not safe in any part of the State when those Indians are about. This same band, under the leadership of Shevenau, Washington, Piah and Colorow, fled to Middle Park, where they continued their devilish work by robbing and threatening, which was only cut short when one of the Indians had a bullet put through his body. In their flight, they deliber- erately stopped on the road and shot an inoffensive, quiet old man named Elliott, who had for years lived a next-door neighbor to them, and who had never done a single act to provoke them. The whole State was alarmed, and the military was called out. The result was great fear among the frontier settlers, a fortnight's campaign in the mountains, and heavy expenses. This occurred in August, 1878-one year ago.

The following meager outline of crimes recently published, will bear repetition here:

Killing of three miners in North Park in 1860. Murder of G. P. Marksberry near Florissant, El Paso Co., Colo., 1874.

Jos.6. Grammes

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Murder of " Old Man " Elliott on Grand River, near Hot Sulphur Springs, 1878.

Burning of house and blacksmith-shop belong- ing to W. N. Byers, at Hot Sulphur Springs, Grand Co., Colo., 1875.

Burning of Frank Marshal's house, corral and fence at " Marston Tourrs," Egeria Park, 1875.

Burning of Richard Weber's house at foot of Gore Range, 1875.

Burning of houses, corral and fence belonging to John Jay and Asa L. Fly, on Bear River, Colorado, 1875.

Burning of John Tow's house on Bear River, 1875.

Burning of W. Springer's house, corral and fences on Bear River, 1875.

Burning of D. G. Whiting's house, stable, eor- ral, fences and hay, on Bear River, 1876.

Burning of T. H. Iles' hay, on Bear River, 1876.

Burning of G. C. Smart's cabin on Bear River, 1879.

Burning of houses and hay belonging to A. H. Smart and J. B. Thompson, on Bear River, 1879.

Destruction of pine timber in and about North, Middle and Egeria Parks, 1879. Estimated value, $10,000,000.

Destruction of 100,000 acres of grass in the parks and on Bear and Snake Rivers.

Indiscriminate slaughter of elk, deer and ante- lope out of season, and merely for the hides.

But the Meeker massacre was the crowning in- famy, and the most earnest desire of the people of Colorado is that the assassins should be punished, and that right speedily. So many crimes of the Indians have been condoned, or only winked at by the Government, which assumes the prerogative of dealing with the Indians directly, instead of leav- ing them in the hands of the courts, that Colorado has had enough, and more than enough, of such business. If any foreign power, however high and mighty, had massacred Meeker alone, to say noth- ing of his associates, the United States would have

demanded and exacted instant reparation, instead of appointing peace commissioners to " investigate" the affair, and, if possible, to " arrest" the mur- derers. Father Meeker was dear to the people of Colorado, and his untimely and awful taking-off was a terrible shock even to those long accustomed to Indian duplicity, treachery and barbarity.

The following sketch of Mr. Meeker's life will serve to show that he was no ordinary man, and it will be found interesting. It was written before the news of his death was received:

" Nathan C. Meeker, the Agent at White River, is about sixty-four years of age. He was born in Euclid, Ohio, near Cleveland. The place is now known as Callamer. At an early age, he began to write poems and stories for the magazines. When he was still in his boyhood, he traveled on foot most of the way to New Orleans, where he arrived without money or letters of recommendation. He succeeded in getting work on the local staff of one of the city papers, which barely gave him a living .. In a year or two, he returned to Cleveland, and taught school until he could earn enough to pay his way to New York, whither he went with the friendship of George D. Prentice, whom he had met during his Southern travels. In New York, he was encouraged by N. P. Willis, and he con- tributed poems and sketches regularly to the New York Mirror, a literary journal edited by Willis, and which attracted considerable attention from good writers of that day. The young man's style was quaint and somewhat melancholy, and his poems were copied, but he could scarcely earn bread to eat, and his sufferings were so great that he abandoned poetry for the rest of his life. He man- aged to raise money enough to enable him to pro- ceed on foot to Pennsylvania, where he taught school and continued his literary studies. After- ward, he returned to Ohio, and, in 1844, when about thirty years old, married the daughter of Mr. Smith, a retired sea captain, at Claridon, and took his bride to what was known as the Trumbull Pha- laux, which was just being organized at Braceville, near Warren, Ohio. The society was a branch of

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the Brook Farm and the North American Phalanx, of which Hawthorne, Curtis and Greeley were leading members. The Ohio Phalanx was com- posed of young and ardent admirers of Fourier, the socialist. There was no free love, but the members lived in a village, dined at common tables, dwelt in separate cottages, and worked in the community fields together and allowed the procceds of all their earnings to go into a common fund. Manufactor- ies were established, the soil was fertile, and pros- perity would have followed had all the members been honest and the climate healthful. Fever and ague ran riot with the weeds, and the most ignor- ant and avaricious of the Arcadian band began to absorb what really belonged to the weaker ones, who did most of the hard labor. Mr. Meeker, who was one of the chief workers, was glad to get away alive with his wife and two boys, the youngest of whom was born shaking with the ague. Mr. Meeker was the librarian and chief literary authority of the community, but he lost most of his books, and when he reached his Cleveland home he had but a few dollars. In company with his brothers, he opened a small store and began business on a 'worldly' basis ; and he prospered so that he was invited to join another community, the disciples and followers of Alexander Campbell, a Scotch- Irishman, the founder of the religious sect the members of which are sometimes called 'Camp- bollites.' Gen. Garfield is a follower of this faith, and he became a fellow-townsman of Mr. Meeker. The ' disciples' were building a large college at Hiram, Ohio, and Mr. Meeker moved his store thither and received the patronage of the school and church. While there, he wrote a book called 'The Adventures of Captain Armstrong.' " In 1856, when the great panie came, he lost nearly everything. Then he moved to Southern Illinois, and, with the remnant of his goods, opened a small store near Dongola, in Union County. For several years his boys 'ran' the store, while he worked a small farm and devoted his spare hours to literature. His correspondence with the Cleve- land Plaindealer attracted the attention of Arte-

mas Ward, and the result was a warm personal friendship. When the war broke out, he wrote a letter to the Tribune on the Southwestern political leaders and the resources of the Mississippi Val- ley. Horace Greeley telegraphed to A. D. Rich- ardson, who was in charge of the Tribune at Cairo, this dispatch :

"' Meeker is the man we want.' Sidney How- ard Gay engaged him, and, after serving as a war correspondent at Fort Donelson and other places, at the elose of the war, Mr. Meeker was called to New York to take charge of the agricultural de- partment and do general editorial work on the Tribune. He wrote a book entitled " Life in the West," and his articles on the Oneida Community were copied into leading German, French and other European journals. In 1869, he was sent to write up the Mormons; but finding the roads be- yond Cheyenne blockaded with snow, he turned southward and followed the Rocky Mountains down to the foot of Pike's Peak, where he was so charmed with the Garden of the Gods and the un- surpassed scenery of that lovely region, where birds were singing and grasses growing in the mountains, that he said, if he could persuade a dozen fatuilies to go thither, he would take his wife and girls to live and die there. Mr. Greeley was dining at the Delmonico when he heard of it.

" ' Tell Meeker," exclaimed he, 'to go ahead. I will back him with the Tribune.'

" A letter was printed, a meeting held, subscrip- tions invited, and $96,000 were forwarded to the Treasurer immediately. Mr. Meeker was elected President of the colony, and Horace Greeley made Treasurer. So many applications were sent in that it was thought a larger tract of land would be needed than seemed to be free from incumbrance at Pike's Peak. Several miles square of land were bought on the Cache-la-Poudre River, where the town of Greeley now stands, and several hundred families were established in what had been styled ' The Great American Desert.' Horace Greeley's one exhortation was :

"' Tell Meeker to have no fences nor rum.'

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" On this basis the colony was founded. To-day, Greeley las 3,000 population, 100 miles of irrigat- ing canals, a fine graded school, and is the capital of a county 160 miles long.

" Mr. Meeker went to the White River Agency with his wife and youngest daughter, Josephinc, who taught the young Indians, and was a general favorite. Mr. William H. Post, of Yonkers, was his 'boss farmer' and general assistant. Mr. Post had been a competent and very popular Secretary of the Greeley Colony. He was at the Agency at the time of the outbreak.

" Mr. Meeker's plan was to have the Indians raise crops and support themselves in an improved way. Hc encouraged them to live in log houses and have some of the miscellaneous conveniences of civilization. Mr. Meeker's family consists of three daughters and one son. Two of the daughters, Mary and Rose, are at the homestead in Greeley, while Josephine, aged twenty-two, is supposed to have shared the fate of the father and mother, both of whom are of venerable years."

All that could be said against Father Meeker was, that his rugged honesty and almost Puritanic devotion to principle, instead of " policy," unfitted him for Indian management on the most successful plan. He was inflexibly just, rather than preter- naturally kind. He would not compromise with wrong, or what he thought to be wrong. Perhaps his idle, dissolute and vicious wards did find his words bitter at times, but his heart was softer than his tongue. He might rebuke them for their mis- deeds, but he would have shared his last crust with them with equal pleasure.

It is a singular fact that the foregoing history of Ute depredations in Colorado includes but one sol- itary instance in which the Indians suffered at the hands of the whites. One Ute was shot in Middle Park, in the summer of 1878, by a party of ranchmen, who had banded together for protection from the inso- lence of marauding Indians. The rest of the gang suddenly departed from the Park, but as they rode past Mr. Elliott's ranch they saw the old gentleman standing peaceably in his doorway, and shot him down as they would a deer or a dog.

CHAPTER IX.

THE "PEACE COMMISSION" FARCE.

THIS record closes in the last half of Decem- ber. Nearly three months have elapsed since the Thornburg fight and the Meeker mas- sacre. The captives were released two months ago. Merritt's magnificent army still waits at the ruins of the White River Agency, and Gen. Hatch's soldiers are still spoiling for a fight down south. The hostile Indians are quiescent, but are still resting on their arms and the laurels of their late victories. Nothing is being done toward wip- ing out the miserable murderers, but a " Peace Commission " has been taking Indian testimony at the Los Pinos Agency.

Of all the dreary, disgusting farces ever played in Colorado, this has been the worst, and the white

members of the Commission have been nearly if not quite as much disgusted with their work as have the people of the State. Acting not only under instructions but by daily direction of the Interior Department, the Commissioners have had neither choice nor discretion as to what they should do or leave undone.

The Commission, as constituted by appointment of Mr. Secretary Schurz, consisted of Gen. Hatch, who was elected President of the Board; Gen. Adams, nominal Secretary, and Chief Ouray, who represented the Indians. Besides the Commis- sioners, there was a sort of Judge Advocate Gen- eral, in the person of Lieut. Valois, of Gen. Hatch's staff, and an official stenographer.

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The Commission was created at the instance, of Chief Ouray, who assured Gen. Adams that, if permitted an opportunity, he would ferret out every Indian concerned in the uprising, and turn them all over to the Government for such punish- ment as it saw fit to inflict upon them. This apparently generous offer was well calculated to satisfy the heads of the Indian Bureau, and was accepted with a flourish of Schurz trumpets, as an evidence that the Utes were "good Indians " at heart, and deeply regretted the unfortunate occur- rences at the Agency and Milk River.

The Commissioners received notice of their ap- pointment immediately after the return of Gen. Adams from his pilgrimage in search of the pris- ers, and Ouray agreed to have the hostile Indians in his camp within ten days. The ten days would expire Saturday, November 8, and the first meet- ing of the Commission was fixed for that day at the Los Pinos Agency. Gen. Adams came north in the interim, and took the written and sworn testi- mony of Mrs. and Miss Meeker and Mrs. Price, at Greeley, soon after they had reached home from their captivity.

Returning immediately south, Gen. Adams reached Los Pinos about the time for the first session of the peacemakers, but Gen. Hatch was detained until the Wednesday following, and the work of the Commission dates from November 12.

The first sessions of the Commission were not marked by any wonderful revelations of fact by the Indian witnesses, but, on the contrary, their dense ignorance of what had happened up north was something fearful to be contemplated. Before testifying to anything, they required the dismissal of Mr. McLane, who had accompanied Gen. Hatch to the Agency. Their antipathy to McLane resulted very Indianaturally from the fact that, last summer, they had murdered his brother on the plains, east of Denver, and suspected that his visit to the Agency boded no good to his brother's murderers. It should be borne in mind, too, that they did not know, except inferentially, what McLane was there for, but they didn't want him

there on general principles. Gen. Hatch held that McLane was there as a witness, and had as much right to remain as the Indian witnesses, but Adams and Ouray said that Mr. McLane should go, to please the Indians. He went. First blood for the Utes.

After the solitary white witness had been bounced, the Indians began testifying, the Com- mission sitting with closed doors and most of the witnesses with closed mouths. They were the " squaw Indians," as those engaged in the Agency massacre were designated to distinguish them from the fighting men who, under Chief Jack, defeated Thornburg. These squaw Indians were the fol- lowers of Douglass and Johnson, principally. The testimony of the late captives had directly impli- cated most of them in the massacre, but when they took the witness' stand and the Ute oath (the latter with great solemnity, to all outside appear- ances), most of them swore, with equal solemnity, that they had never heard of the massacre and didn't know Mr. Meeker was dead. The following burlesque report of Johnson's examination is but a trifling exaggeration of the actual facts :

THE PEACE COMMISSION.

Grapevine Telegram to Laramie Times :

Los PINOS, Colo., November 17, 1879. Chief Johnson was again called to the stand this morning, and administered the following oath to himself, in a solemn and awe-inspiring manner :

" By the Great Horn Spoons of the Paleface and the Great Round-faced Moon, round as the shield of my fathers; by the Great High Muck-a-Muck of the Ute Nation; by the Beard of the Prophet; by the Continental Congress and the Sword of Bunker Hill, I dassent tell a lie !".

When Johnson had repeated this solemn oath, at the same time making the grand hailing sign of the secret order known as the Thousand and One, there was not a dry eye or seat in the house. Even Gen. Adams, who is accustomed to the most ghastly, bloody forms of horrible death on the gory battle-field, sobbed like a little half-fare child.

THE LITTLE PITTSBURG MINE, LEADVILLE, COLO.

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Question by Gen. Adams-What is your name, and where do you reside ?

Answer-My name is Johnson-just plain Johnson. The rest has been torn off. I am by occupation a farmer. I am a horny-handed son of toil, and don't you forget it. I reside in Greeley, Colo.

Q .- Did you or did you not hear of a massacre at the White River Agency during the fall, and if so, how much ?

Objected to by defendants' counsel, because it is irrelevant, immaterial, unconstitutional and incon- gruous. Most of the forenoon was spent in arguing the point before the court; but it was allowed to go in, whereupon defendants' counsel asked to have the exception noted on the court moments.

A .- I did not hear of the massacre until last evening, when I happened to pick up an old paper and read about it. It was a very sad affair, I should think, from what the paper said.

Q .- Were you or were not present at the massacre ?

Objected to by defendants' counsel, on the ground that the witness is not bound to answer a question which would criminate himself. Objection sustained, and question withdrawn by prosecution.

Q .- Where were you on the night that this massacre is said to have occurred ?

A .- What massacre ?

Q .- The one at White River Agency.

A .- I was attending a series of protracted meetings at Greeley, in this State.

Q .- Were Douglass, Colorow and other Ute chiefs with you at Greeley ?

A .- They were.

Court adjourned for dinner. Gen. Adams re- marked to a reporter that he was getting down to business now, and that he had no doubt that, in the course of a few months, he would vindicate Schurz's policy and convict all those Utes of false- hood in the first degree.

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History of the Arkansas Valley, Colorado, Part 22

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