USA > Colorado > History of the State of Colorado, Volume II > Part 42
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The Senate organized by the election of Hon. James P. Maxwell of Boulder, a superb parliamentarian, as its presiding officer pro tempore, while the House chose Rienzi Streeter of Longmont for its speaker. The candidates named for the office of Senator were N. P. Hill, Thomas M. Bowen of Rio Grande, John L. Routt, H. A. W. Tabor, William A. Hamill of Clear Creek, W. S. Jackson of El Paso, George M. Chilcott and Henry C. Thatcher of Pueblo. Ex-Governor John Evans also was named as one of the possibilities.
The Democrats found no difficulty in reaching a conclusion. They met in caucus and named Hon. W. A. H. Loveland, and when the day for balloting arrived, cast all their votes for him. After much prelim- inary caucusing and skirmishing, on the 9th the Republicans held a caucus and on the fourth ballot nominated Nathaniel P. Hill. This result was brought about by the constant efforts of his strong combination of powerful friends, W. A. Hamill, Henry R. and Edward O. Wolcott, Charles H. Toll, James P. Maxwell, W. D. Todd, M. Spangler, Col. L. C. Ellsworth, Clinton M. Tyler, and others, who wrought unremit- tingly in his cause.
It may be said that no man in Colorado has entered upon a public career with more or stronger friends than Mr. Hill. They comprised the greater part of the sturdy forces that had surrounded Mr. Chaffee and insured his triumphs. They were disposed to stand by and support his successor. It was expected, therefore, that a career which had been so auspiciously inaugurated would endure through as many years as it should please him to occupy the great position to which he had been elevated. But it was not long before irreconcilable antagonisms arose between the friends of Chaffee and Teller on the one side, and those of Hill on the other. Strife and contentions succeeded here and at Washington, over the control of federal patronage; jealousies and bickerings provoked and aggravated a conflict that has continued to the present time.
During his single term in the Senate, Mr. Hill gave much con- siderate attention to the financial problems of the country, and in due
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time produced a clear and profound analysis of the much debated silver question, then and now a matter of vital interest to our industrial pop- ulation. He delivered a number of well digested speeches on this question to the Senate, and in New England cities the seat of opposition to the full remonetization of the white metal ; wrote strong papers on the subject for the "North American Review," and by the force and subtlety of his arguments attracted extraordinary attention to it throughout the country, and thereby came to be recognized as the leading exponent of the cause of remonetization and free coinage. From that time to the close of 1889, though the subject has taken deep hold upon the people of the West and South, and has gained many converts in the Atlantic States, no steps of consequence have been taken by Congress looking to the restoration of silver as a standard of value in our monetary affairs. But there is no doubt that the facts he presented, embracing the history of the use of silver as money among the nations, and the peril of forcing it out of our circulation, had much to do with staying the tide of opposition to the continuance of coinage under the Bland Bill, by furnishing the advocates of silver with unanswerable reasons for their faith.
During his entire term of six years, Senator Hill devoted himself actively to needed legislation for his State, and to securing important concessions from the several departments. His residence became a conspicuous social center, the entertainments there given to Senators, Representatives, officers of the government and the diplomatic corps, being among the most brilliant of the period.
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CHAPTER XXIV.
INDIAN AFFAIRS-SOME REFLECTIONS ON
OF
THE ATTITUDE THE GOVERNMENT TOWARD ITS WARDS-VIOLATIONS OF TREATIES-FATHER MEEKER'S ATTEMPT TO CIVILIZE THE UTES, AND ITS TRAGIC ENDING-THE MASSACRE OF THORNBURG AND HIS MEN-ARRIVAL OF GEN. MERRITT-MASSACRE OF MEEKER AND HIS EMPLOYES-THE WOMEN CARRIED INTO CAPTIVITY-THEIR RESCUE BY OURAY AND GEN. ADAMS-THE INVESTIGATION-SKETCH OF THE GREAT CHIEF OURAY- HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER-CHIEF, STATESMAN AND DIPLOMAT.
Governor Pitkin had scarcely been installed in the executive office before he was confronted by the most extensive outbreak among the Ute Indians that has ever marked our connection with that tribe. Like most difficulties with this and other Indian nations, it was directly ascribable to the neglect and indifference of the Indian Bureau at Washington. The government may have faithfully observed its part of the conditions of some treaties negotiated with its savage wards, but it has violated more than it has kept. Nearly all treaties provide certain appropriations to be expended for annuities, as stipulated in the nego- tiations. The savage, ignorant of the forms of business, and especially of the intricate and mysterious forms employed by the government, is easily cheated, but he never forgets the promise of annuities. The Indian Bureau has been for nearly a century the center of transactions that will not bear rigid scrutiny. Governor McCook was right in declaring it to be stronger than the government itself, and some of its ways are past finding out. John Lothrop Motley wrote, that the history of Europe can never be written until the secrets of the Vatican are exposed. It may be said also that the history of the dealings of our government with its copper-colored wards, will never be known until the secrets of the Indian Bureau are brought to light.
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While the march of civilization has driven the Indian back, rolled over and crushed him; while conflicts between the races have been bloody and cruel as all wars must be, for as General Sherman puts it, war is cruelty and you cannot refine it, it is none the less true that the attitude of the government itself toward the peoples with whom it has mistakenly treated as distinct nations, has resulted in the spoliation of their lands and scandalous negligence of treaty obligations. To neglect and pillage may be traced nearly all the uprisings, and most of the more destructive wars.
The horrible massacre at White River, in 1879, sprang out of the causes just mentioned. When Ouray's band was located on the Uncompahgre and that of Chief Douglass on White River by the treaty of 1868, and when by subsequent negotiations in 1874 the San Juan mining region was surrendered, it was provided that each band should receive certain annuities of money and goods. A large warehouse for the storage of Indian supplies was established at Rawlins, Wyoming, and the consignments sent there. If there is any one season of the year to which the savage to whom the government is indebted by treaty looks forward with more eagerness than another, it is that in which he is to be presented with blankets, provisions, trinkets and gewgaws, and there is no one thing in which he has been more frequently disap- pointed. On the occasion under consideration, the time for the dis- tribution of the annuities to the White River Utes had passed, and though frequently urged to haste, the Bureau at Washington calmly ignored the whole business. The Indians complained to the agent, and he to the Governor, and he in turn to the department, but in vain. Meanwhile, the Indians went hungry and naked. As time passed they grew morose and ugly. Then they began to wander off the reservation and make reprisals upon the settlers.
Early in 1878 Mr. N. C. Meeker, a venerable philanthropist from the Atlantic humanitarian school, bred under the teachings of Horace Greeley, was at his own urgent request, appointed agent for the White River Utes. Thoroughly imbued with the idea of educating, refining
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and christianizing these wild red rovers of the mountains, and longing for an opportunity to put his well matured theories into effect ; con- fident of his ability to bring about a complete transformation in the lives and natures of those who had been placed under his direction, by educating and teaching them to cultivate the soil, to live in houses and adopt the ways of the Caucasian, he entered upon the work with deeper enthusiasm perhaps, than upon any other undertaking of his life. His ideals were splendid, eminently worthy of the man and the cause, but he had to do with men and natures of which he knew very little, whose instincts were savage and brutal ; whose only desire was to be left wholly free to do as they pleased; if they wanted anything, to take it, and if it must be by force, so much the better, and who despised every form of manual labor as intolerable degradation. Their highest ambition was to hunt, kill and destroy, and their chiefest pleasure to drink whisky and scalp isolated settlers. When Father Meeker under- took to eradicate these natural instincts inherited from numberless gen- erations, and implant civilization instead, he attempted an impossibility. While it is true that some of the national schools for the education of the children of the aborigines have made some progress, and are very beneficent institutions, the instances are rare in which the savage instinct to roam, fight, steal and plunder has been repressed, and when those children are permitted to return to their tribes and grow up with them, that they do not fall back into the primitive state of savagery. The only way to civilize the offspring of the wild Indian is to separate them from the tribes at once and forever, and by amalgamation with the Caucasian the savage instinct will be in time, extirpated.
No man has entered upon a like mission with purer or loftier pur- poses than Mr. Meeker. In attestation of his faith in the outcome, he took with him his wife and youngest daughter, with a number of employes from the Union colony, to aid the great work of regeneration and redemption. Though kind and just, he was eminently methodical in all his ways, withal obstinate and unyielding. The system employed for the government of the agency and of the Indians, though well
Charles Af Foll
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intentioned, and all right and proper for the regulation of a colony of white men, was not calculated to impress the natives with any extrav- agant desire to place their necks under the yoke he held out to them. He expected them to submit to a discipline which, could they have been brought to it, would have been good for them, but without which his theories and plans must assuredly fail. The Indians refused to submit, and when urged, got mad, broke over the bounds, and, filled with disgust, went out and harassed the settlers, stole their property and fired the forests for miles around.
These proceedings aroused the country, and soon a stream of petitions and letters went to the agent and the Governor, loudly demanding that the Indians be kept on their reservation. The rebellious Utes in turn demanded the delivery of their annuity goods, and the removal of Meeker, because they could not get along with him. All this time and in this ugly temper they were plotting deeper mischief, and those who had knowledge of their feelings and move- ments, predicted serious consequences.
About two months before the final outbreak," in which many lives were sacrificed and much property was destroyed, four chiefs, headed by Capt. Jack, came to Denver for a conference with the Gov- ernor, before whom they urged the removal of their agent, for reasons already stated. He wanted them to work, they said, and they wouldn't work. It was beneath the dignity of an Indian warrior to harden his hands with toil. He wanted to educate them, and they didn't want to be educated. He wanted them to build houses and live in them, but they preferred the tepee and the open air. After a thorough exam- ination the Governor comprehended what was coming, and immediately advised the authorities at Washington that, unless measures were soon taken to prevent an uprising, these Indians and their followers would take the war path. The receipt of this communication was acknowledged, action promised, and there the department rested, in the
* Material facts condensed from the account prepared by W. B. Vickers, private secretary to Governor Pitkin,-History of Colorado, O. L. Baskin & Co., Chicago, 1880.
32 II
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sublime consciousness of having performed its duty. Mr Meeker wrote Pitkin that the Indians could not be kept on the reservation without the aid of the regular army, and implored him to place the true condition of affairs before the proper authorities. At length Gen. John Pope sent a single company of colored cavalry to scout in Middle Park. Now if there is anything on the face of the earth that an Indian hates above another it is a negro, and especially a "nigger soldier." Therefore, this movement, instead of quieting their hostility, merely inflamed it. They kept out of the way of the troops, but watched them from the neighboring hills, itching all the time for a good opportunity to swoop down upon and massacre the entire body.
Matters were brought to a crisis shortly afterward. Major James B. Thompson, who had been commissioned agent for the Utes during McCook's administration, knew all the chiefs and most of their fol- lowers by name, and had been just and good to them, at the expiration of his term took up a ranch on Bear River in Middle Park, and built a cabin thereon. During his temporary absence from home, two Utes named Bennett and Chinaman, went there and burned the house. Thompson appeared before Judge W. E. Beck of the First Judicial district, and procured warrants for the arrest of these two Indians. The writs were placed in the hands of Marshall Bessey, sheriff of Grand County, who, with a small posse attempted to execute them, but after a long and fruitless chase it had to be abandoned. The entire band knew of the pursuit, had obstructed it as far as they could, and kept Bennett and Chinaman advised of every movement. The posse visited Mr. Meeker at the agency. He endeavored to aid them in discovering the guilty parties, but unavailingly. This action added another cause of complaint against him, and, moreover, he had had some trouble with Johnson, a "medicine man," when the latter assaulted and seriously injured him. The white men working in the fields were fired upon. The very devil seemed to possess them, and it was evident they were spoiling for a fight. They accused Meeker of writing lies about them to the Denver papers, and of sending to the military posts for troops to
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come and protect him against them. Jack was the actual leader of the insubordinates. Having been raised by a Mormon family, he spoke English with tolerable fluency, and while Douglass was the head chief, he had no considerable following.
In talking with some of the white men who visited him that summer, Mr. Meeker said: " I came to this agency in the full belief that I could civilize the Utes, teach them to work and become self-sup- porting ; that I could establish schools and interest both the Indians and their children in learning. I have given my best efforts to that end, always treating them kindly but firmly. They have eaten at my table, and received continuous kindness from my wife and daughter, and all the employes about the agency. Their complaints have been patiently heard, and all reasonable requests granted, and now the man (Johnson) for whom I have built the only Indian house on the reservation, and who has frequently eaten at my table, has turned upon me without the slightest provocation, and would have killed me, but for the white laborers who got me away."
He was even then warned of an impending outbreak and implored to leave the agency at once, as it was plain the Indians were plotting his murder; but he resisted on the ground that his duty kept him there ; and he would send for troops and thus prevent further evils. In the meantime, the representations made by Governor Pitkin reached Gen. Sheridan, who, according to his custom in dealing with public enemies, acted promptly. It was evident to all observers that Jack and his fol- lowers meant to have Meeker removed and the annuity goods dis- tributed, or go to war. They were armed with fine Winchester rifles, and well supplied with ammunition. In pursuit of their aims they had induced a large number of young bucks from the Uncompahgre agency to join them.
By Sheridan's order, Major Thomas T. Thornburg, commanding Fort Steele, Wyoming, took three companies of cavalry and one of infantry and marched with all speed from Rawlins on the Union Pacific railroad, across the country toward the reservation. While no Indians
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were seen, they were on his trail, and watching every movement. When arrived at Bear River, sixty-five miles from the agency, Jack, accompanied by a few of his braves, appeared to him while in camp, and after stating that they were out on a hunt (which was a lie), asked Thornburg the destination and purpose of his expedition, and was told that it was bound to White River. It is not known what transpired at this interview, but at a later time Jack said Thornburg was insolent and defiant, and he made up his mind to teach him a lesson. Nevertheless, he proposed to escort Thornburg and five soldiers direct to the agency, and there have a hearing of his grievances before agent Meeker. The commander apprehending treachery, declined, and went on to his fate.
Jack measured up the full strength of the command, and laid his plans accordingly. There was but one practicable route to White River, and that lay through a narrow detile with high bluffs on either side. There he posted his warriors and awaited the soldiers. When the command reached Milk Creek, a tributary of the Bear, twenty-five miles from the agency, and within the reservation, a large body of Indians confronted it in line of battle, and evidently prepared to dispute the passage. Thornburg seeing the death trap into which he had been drawn, instantly made his preparations, but his orders not to attack the Indians being positive, he formed a line of battle and awaited attack. The Indians promptly flanked him, and with the customary war-whoop, opened fire. His wagon train had been corraled about three-fourths of a mile to the rear. The Indians by a quick movement threw themselves between the troops and the train. Thornburg took twenty-five mounted men and at their head made a furious charge. The savages killed him and thirteen of his men, but the remainder succeeded in reaching the wagons, whither their comrades had retreated. The Indians surrounded and poured a galling fire upon them. Every officer except one,-Lieut. Cherry of the Fifth Cavalry,-had been shot, and more than one hundred and fifty mules killed.
After Thornburg's death, the command devolved upon Capt. Payne of the Fifth Cavalry, who, though wounded, made the best disposition
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possible under the circumstances, by digging entrenchments and using the wagons and their contents for breastworks. To increase the horror of their situation, the Indians set fire to the grass and sage brush, to windward, which rolled dense clouds of smoke upon them. There being no water at hand, the soldiers managed to keep the flames out of their works by smothering them. The enemy, posted on the bluffs above, picked off every man and animal to be seen. . The troops could neither advance nor retreat. Toward the close of this awful day, Jack ordered a charge, in the hope of killing all the survivors in the pit, but was gallantly repulsed, when he returned to the hills and resumed the old tactics of picking them off in detail.
That night a heroic scout named Rankin, made his way on horse- back out of the camp, and rode hard and fast toward Rawlins, one hundred and sixty miles distant, to alarm the country and procure succor for the beleaguered troops. That he lost no time is assured by the fact that he covered the distance in twenty-eight hours. Other couriers were dispatched in search of Capt. Dodge's troop of colored cavalry, then supposed to be approaching from Middle Park. Luckily Dodge was intercepted without much delay, and though hampered by a wagon train, he abandoned it and galloped with all speed to the relief of his comrades in their deadly peril. Fortunately his route was so wisely chosen as to bring him to the entrenchments without detection by the savages. On being informed of the state of affairs, he bravely vol- unteered to storm the bluffs with his colored troops and drive out the Indians, but Payne, knowing it would be certain death to him and all his men, refused permission.
While the arrival of this reinforcement strengthened and encouraged Payne and his little band, it was powerless to rescue them. The pass could not be charged, and to fire at an unseen foe was a sheer waste of ammunition. Meanwhile, Rankin had sent the startling intelligence of Thornburg's defeat and death, and the terrible condition of the camp, far and wide. Gen. Wesley Merritt, one of Sheridan's most successful commanders, quickly collected a large force from different posts on the
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railroad, and hastened to the scene, marching night and day. His com- mand reached the encampment early Sunday morning, October 5th. The troops he found there had been hemmed in and shot at almost continually for six days. The stench from the decaying bodies of animals was almost intolerable. The sufferings of the men can never be described. It was a pitiful sight that met the eyes of this brave soldier as he entered the entrenchments that bright Sunday morning.
After burying the dead, caring for the wounded and collecting what could be saved from the wreck and ruin, he pushed on toward the agency, the Indians having abandoned the fight and disappeared as soon as his force came into view. Deeper horrors met them at White River, where all the white men had been killed, the houses burned and the women carried into captivity. Simultaneously with the attack on Major Thornburg, Douglass, Persune and a few others who remained at the agency to execute their part of the plot at that point, began their devilish work. The body of Mr. Meeker was found about two hundred yards from his house, with a log chain about his neck, one side of his head mashed, and part of a barrel stave driven through his body. The vengeance of the red fiends had taken its most diabolical form in his case, the others being killed in the ordinary way. In addition to the massacre they had stolen everything movable, packed the plunder upon ponies, and fled the country. The bodies of all the other employes, nine. in number, were found at various places in the neighborhood, all stripped, and some of them mutilated.
The particulars of the attack upon the agency, the murder of the men, the capture of the women and of their flight to Grand River, were related by Miss Josephine Meeker, to her brother Ralph who met them at Ouray's house on the Uncompahgre, took down the tragic story and published it in the New York "Herald," from which it appears that immediately after intelligence of the fighting at Milk Creek was received, Douglass and twenty of his men came to the agency and began firing upon the employes, which continued until all were killed. The women, Miss Josephine, her mother, Mrs. Price, wife of the
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agency blacksmith, and her little girl three years old, ran to the milk- house and shut themselves in. They heard the firing, but saw none of the horrors of the general butchery. To force them out, the building was fired. As the room filled with smoke they ran out into the fields, but were soon captured.
The brutes having completed their bloody work, packed the goods taken from the houses, upon ponies, and with their captives started for one of their old haunts on Grand River. The Indians had plenty of whisky, some of them were intoxicated, and all greatly excited. In their drunken bravado they undertook to frighten the women by threat- ening to shoot them, but as they preferred death to captivity and evinced no sign of fear at these demonstrations, the red devils began to admire and respect them for their courage. Meanwhile, the battle with Thornburg's men raged in the cañon. Their captors were apprised of its progress from time to time by runners from the field. In the course of their journey they were overtaken by a courier from Chief Ouray, bearing an order to cease fighting. The news had been conveyed to him by telegraph from Denver. The same order must have reached Jack about the time of Gen. Merritt's arrival, for he immediately abandoned the contest and fled to join Douglass.
While encamped on Grand River, a messenger arrived from the Uncompahgre to inform them that next day Gen. Adams with some others would come after the captives. Adams had some years previous been appointed agent for the Utes at the recommendation of Gov- ernor McCook. He and Ouray were warm personal friends, and he was much respected by all the tribes. When the facts of the massacre reached Washington by wire, Adams was instructed to confer with Ouray, and with him devise some plan for the rescue of the captive women, and a final settlement of the difficulty. He was to co-operate with Ouray, first in releasing the prisoners, and afterward in hunting down the leaders of the outbreak. By a subsequent order, Adams, Ouray and Gen. Hatch were constituted a commission to investigate the entire tragedy. He left Denver on the 15th of October, and
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