return to City of Denver, etc.

 

CHAPTER II.

AFFAIRS AT WHITE RIVER AGENCY.

THAT the Indians mean mischief seemed to be no secret to anybody except the high and mighty officials of the Indian Bureau at Washington.  During the summer, Gov. Pitkin more than once protested against the outrageous conduct of the White River Utes; but no attention was paid to his telegrams further than to acknowledge their receipt and offer some gossamer excuse for the Indians.  Agent Meeker wrote to the Governor that the Indians could not be controlled or kept on their reservation without the aid of troops, and the army would not act without orders from the Indian Bureau, which never came.  Mr. Meeker begged Gov. Pitkin to use his good offices to have troops sent to the Agency to carry out the orders and instructions of the Bureau, but the Governor was only partially successful.  Gen. Pope ordered a troop of colored cavalry from Fort Garland to scout through Middle and North Park for the protection of settlers, but of course the Indians merely avoided the troops, and went on with the burning of forests and the destruction of property.

    Finally, a new move was made by the State authorities.  Maj. J. B. Thompson, whose house had been burned by Indians, on Bear River, swore out warrants for the arrest of two ringleaders, named Bennett and Chinaman.  These warrants were issued by Judge Beck, out of the District Court for the First Judicial District, in which the crime as committed, and placed in the hands of Sheriff Bessey, of Grand County, for service.  Sheriff Bessey made an unsuccessful effort to arrest the criminals, but was informed by Chief Douglass that no Indian could be arrested by civil process in the reservation, whatever crimes he may have been guilt of outside that charmed circle.  Strange to say, this view of the case seems to be sustained by as high authority as the Indian Bureau. 

    Mr. R. D. Coxe, a very intelligent gentleman, who spent the summer in Middle Park, was a member of the posse which accompanied Sheriff Bessey to White River Agency.  His account of the trip is so interesting that no apology is necessary for transferring it to these pages.  It shows the state of affairs at the Agency more than a month previous to the massacre:

    "The Sheriff of Grand County, Mr. Marshall Bessey, with a posse of four men, left Hot Sulphur Springs at 1 o'clock P. M., August 22, and after a four-days journey, through the rugged country that comprises the northern part of Middle and Egeria Parks, and over the well-timbered Bear River bottom, the Sheriff camped at Pike's Agency (Windsor), twenty-five miles from the line of the reservation.  The party were entertained at Windsor by some accounts of Indian deviltry, as well as by the information that Colorow, with his band, was camped a mile below.  The Indians so near the Agency pay little attention to the amenities.  Mrs. Peck, wife of the Agent, a timid woman, had been scared into a sick-bed by the red devils.  It is no uncommon pastime for them, reaching a house from which the men are away, to command the women to cook them a meal.  An Indian neer lacks an apetite, and, with the knowledge of the terror his hideous visage and apparel strikes to the women, he manages to get many a square meal by turning 'Big (very big) Injun.'  One of them went to the house of a ranchman named Lithgow, close to Windsor, after a meal, but the sandy little woman declined to feed him.  He began his 'Big Injun' tactics and drew a knife on her.  She struck him a smart blow on the face with a teacup, laying the flesh open, 'and the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.'

    "Peck is, apparently, a clever, business-like man.  He has a tremendous stock of goods -- a general stock, of which the magazine and arsenal are a large part.  This stock is to sell to the Indians.  There is no law to prevent this, but the many widows and orphans whom this outbreak will make can thank Peck and such as he for putting the Indians in fighting trim.  I went into Mrs. Peck's kitchen, to heat some water, and perceiving a stack of arms, remarked that she was well prepared for the Indians. She said they were Colorow's guns, which he had left there the day before.  When she mentioned his name she shuddered, and she talked with bated breath when she poke of Indians.  Her life is a constant fear, and I could not help but estimate the profits of the business I should have to be in to keep a wife and children in such a country.  I could not hold enough ciphers in mind to name the figure.

    "Mr. Bessey had a warrant for two Indians, by supposed name 'Chinaman' and 'Bennett.'  We took some pains to inquire of the white people at Windsor about these Indians, but could learn nothing.  The dead, Sabbath calm of gossip, which is so noticeable among the Utes, extended even this far, and they were very ignorant of any crimes that might be alleged against the Indians.

    "Before we were ready to start for the Agency, which we did just at noon on the 27th of August, an Indian rode up to Peck's and dismounted.  I was sitting, with a companion, at the door of the store, when he left his horse and came toward the store.  My companion, Dr. Chamberlain, said, as he approached us:

    "Why, that's Washington.'

    "And it was; but what an opposite to his namesake -- the man who never told a lie!

    "I think that Washington is about as ugly a biped as we have at present on the continent, and what homeliness of face he lacked he had attempted to supply by dress.  I am not a good hand at description of dress, but I shall endeavor to tell you how Washington was attired.  His head was surmounted by a soft hat, turn-down rim, which as ornamented by a hand of calico.  He had a red flannel shirt, soiled and torn, and about as poor a pair of pantaloons as the law allows.  But the leggings -- the one article of the dress of equestrians which the Indians make better than the whites -- were handsome.  An old and ragged pair of boots protected his feet.  As he came up, I saw he was cross-eyed, and that the 'whites' of his eyes had become 'browns,' as well as bloodshot.  He muttered something which I did not understand, as he reached us, and picked up my gun, which was standing at my side.  He looked it over carefully, sighted at a hillside 500 yards off, and then coming to a parade rest, said, 'Good gun!'  Considering this a challenge to converse, I replied, and got the benefit of what I should term the 'aphorisms of Washington' (who never told a lie).  I could not repeat his full conversation, because I lost much of it by not understanding Indian-English.  I had come to look upon the Indian as one that seldom talks and never smiles.  But this old Indian overturned that belief.  He talked like a machine and chuckled constantly.  He was especially merry over a 'tear' that he and six comrades had been on in Denver.  His descriptions were unique, thus:  'We come to man.  Man have whisky.  Utes drink um.  Come to man -- two -- two man.  Man have whisky.  Utes drink um.'  And so on, till Utes had plenty of whisky, and the police took them in.  He said the Utes were 'heap scared.'  His 'heap scared' was a favorite expression.  They were locked up during the night, 'heap scared.'  They came before the Judge next morning, 'heap scared.'  But they came out all right.  The Judge saw that they were Utes, and, according to this veracious historian, he said as much, and remanded them to the reservation.  Then he drew a map in the sand, explaining as he drove.  He first made a very large dot, to indicate Denver City; two inches off the drew another, for Georgetown; two inches more, and Hot Sulphur Springs (the name of which he did not seem to know well, and preferred to say 'heap water -- drink water'); two inches more, and the Agency -- 'Utes heap glad.'  He then explained about how dreadfully he had hurt his arm, a long time ago, and this was interesting talk to us, for we remembered that just one year before, a band of ten intrepid men, under command of William N. Byers, of Denver, had gone to the Agency to capture the murderer of Mr. Elliott, of Middle Park, and to get some stolen stock.  The stock they got, and they sent a surgeon who was with them to see whether a wounded Indian had stowed away a ball, or had really been hurt by the fall.  This Indian was Washington -- the surgeon was my companion; and nothing would have saved Washington from their vengeance if he had had a gun-shot woud.

    "He soon passed on to politics, and as politics go (or should go) in the Ute Nation, I should class him as an independent liberal kicker.  He did not like Meeker.  "Meeker heap fool.  Me no like'm work.  Make Washington heap tired.  But me shoot'm blacktail,' etc.  Then he told us about Ouray, whom, he assured us, was no Ute, but an Apache papoose.  He told us how Ouray had sold Uncompahgre Park and pocketed the $10,000 received for it.  After blackguarding Ouray for some time, he came to Douglass, whom he seemed to have no faith in.  I think, if he had understood the beautiful slang of the street, he would have pronounced Douglass a fraud.  He claimed that if Douglass 'went on' (at what I know not), the Utes would soon have no ground, no agency, no agent, no nothing.  But this Ute, who had no good word for any in authority, soon came to speak of one whom he seemed to like.  It was no less a personage than Washington.  He was a good Ute -- liked the white man, never troubled the whites, wouldn't lie or steal, and so on.  After an eulogy on his virtues, he took carefully from his vest pocket a soiled envelope, from which he took a piece of legal-cap paper, which he handed to us with much satisfaction of manner.  We read it.  It was  'character,' and read bout as follows:  'The bearer, George Washington, is a good Ute.  He will not steal the white man's horses, nor anything else from the white man.'  The signature was a scrawl, which meant nothing.  When we returned the paper to him, he put it away as carefully as if it had been his last dollarbill, and he a thousand miles from home.  We soon left him, and saw him no more.  The unanimous opinion among those who know the Indian is that he is the meanest Indian in the mountains -- meaner than that monument of meanness, Colorow, his friend and co-chief.  We camped, on the 27th, some fifteen miles toward the Agency from Windsor, and early the next morning started on. 

    "We soon crossed the east line of the reservation, but traveled fully ten miles into the reservation before meeting an Indian.  As we reached the top of a divide the trail led through a natural gateway of rocks, and from this point we saw in the distance Indians coming toward us.  As they came nearer, we saw that there were but three, and soon that they were a brave, a squaw and a girl.  As we met, the brave extended his hand, with the customary salute, 'How?'  I had learned enough Injun to answer him in his own language, and found no hesitancy in telling him how!  The brave was a jolly-looking fellow, easy to smile.  He wore a straw hat (quite the thing among the Utes), and his locks were oiled and plaited.  He was, evidently, dressed for a holiday, and so, indeed, it was for him, for he was taking his 'outfit' (his home, his family and all his possessions, I judge) to the store, where the hides packed on his ponies were to be disposed of, and he was to get ammunition, possibly a gun for himself, and gewgaws for the squaw and children, for there was a papoose at the mother's knee, swinging to the saddle in one of those contrivances which take, with the Indians, the place of cradles.

    'We saw quite a number of Indians after passing this family, one of whom realized, to some extent, the ideal Lo.  He was standing on the mountain-side, with only a shirt on, his long hair flowing-down his back, and his brown limbs exposed.  He appeared to have struck wash-day, and he was at it with might and main.  We passed commands its soldiers not to shoot the first shot.  The Government should be instructed that soldiers mean war, and its grim old General has said, 'War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.'

    'For the argument, it matters not whether Meeker and his family have been butchered.  He has told his situation to every one in authority for more than a month.  Had Gov. Pitkin had jurisdiction, he would have had a host of frontiersmen at the Agency three weeks ago.  He must first have the consent of the General Government.  But the General Government has a gang of negro minstrels in Middle Park, 200 miles from the Agency.  They are ordered to march to the Agency very cautiously, and before they get a good start, the other Government soldiers are cleaned out.

    "Our business at the Agency was complete.  We saddled up for a return, bade farewell to the Meekers and started through the villages of tepees homeward bound.  We found great commotion in every band.  At every camp, we were interviewed.  Antelope's band was camped nearest the Agency, and his brother Powitz and his squaw Jane hailed us with the customary 'How?'  Our reply of 'How?' led them to ask 'What yer come fer?'  We told them we came to see Meeker.  Douglass told them we had come for two Utes, Chinaman and another (whom they did not seem to recognize by the name of Bennett).  We did not affirm or deny, but passed on.  This conversation was repeated eight or ten times in the three miles our road borderd the river.  It was late when we struck the trail, and we sa no more Indians till we reached "Peck's.  There we met Capt. Jack and a companion on their reutrn from their visit to Denver -- the visit they made to have Meeker removed.

    "Jack is an extraordinary Indian.  He was very friendly, and spoke English well.  He reiterated the statement that the Meekers had made, that the Utes would be glad to have white men take up ranches on the reservation.  He said the whites and Utes ought to be friends now.  The whites had killed a Ute, the Utes had killed a white man.  Good.  Heap friends.

    "The fires and burned forests extended from the Springs to the Agency.  At nightfall, on the day we left the Agency, we saw a large fire started not ten miles from the Agency.  We constantly saw the smoke of fires, and many times they were quite close to our road.  A large fire was sweeping the forests on Gore Range.  The atmosphere was blue with smoke, and on every hand we heard complaints of the fires started by the Utes."

    As will be seen, this interesting statement was indited while doubt still remained as to the fate of Mr. Meeker and his associates, and before the colored cavalry made that splendid dash to the rescue of Payne's command which so effectually redeemed the 'negro minstrels' from the charge of cowardice implied in the foregoing.

    Mr. Coxe's visit to the Agency was in August.  A month later, Col. John W. Steele, a mail contractor, of Wallace, Kan., also paid a visit to White River, and found the state of affairs at the Agency alarming indeed.  Col. Steele has also written an account of his viit, which throws additional light upon the direct causes of the outbreak, and is given below as furnishing a faithful and very lucid account of Mr. meeker's manifold difficulties in dealing with the Indians.  No apology is made for including, also, Col. Steele's strictures on Indian mismanagement, and his powerful argument in favor of transferring the Indians from the Interior to the War Department -- a change that is favored by 200m000 citizens of Colorado:

    "Early in July last, I was called to Rawlins, Colo., to look after the mail route from that point to White River Agency.  I remained at Dixon, on Snake River, several days.  While there, Indians belonging to the Ute chief Colorow's outfit, frequently came to Dixon to trade buckskin and furs for Winchester rifles ammunition and other supplies.  I learned that they were camped on Snake River, Fortification Creek and Bear River, from fifty to one hundred miles from their reservation.

    "The Indians seemed to be quiet, but the settlers complained that the Indians were burning the grass and timber, and occasionally kiling their cattle and doing much damage to the country.  I also heard much complaint from the mining district near Hahn's Peak and Middle Park; that the Indians were burning the timber, and had burned the houses of several settlers and killed one man.  Smoke was at that time plainly visible from large fires on the head-waters of the Snake and Bear Rivers.  On completing my business on the mail route, I returned to Washington.  The first week in September, I was called (by disturbances on this mail route) to visit it again.  Arriving at Rawlins, Mr. Bennett, the sub-contractor for the route, told me that he had attempted to establish his line of mail-carriers on the route; that he had gone as far south as Fortification Creek, where he was met by Utes belonging to Colorow and Ute Jack's band' that three Indians stopped him and told him that he must go back; that he parleyed with them, and finally went on as far as Bear River, where he was met by more Indians of the same tribe, and, though he fully explained his business to them, he was so violently threatened that he returned to Rawlins without establishing the mail route.  Bennett has freighted Indian supplies to the Ute reservation for several years, and knows many of the Indians.  He was accompanied by a man who has lived among the Utes for years, and with whom they have heretofore been friendly.  Both advised that it would be dangerous to attempt to go to the Agency. 

    "On the night of September 4, I arrived at Snake River, and on the 5th, went to Bear River, meeting no Indians on the way, but finding the grass and timber destroyed by fire all the way along the route.  I remained at Bear River several days, endeavoring to find parties to carry the mail to the Agency.  Many of the settlers were alarmed by the hostile action of the Utes.  Others anticipated no trouble, but all complained of the burning of the grass and the timber.  On the morning of September 10, I started, with two mail-carriers, for the Agency.  We rode over the route followed by Maj. Thornbugh's command, and at noon rested at the mouth of the cañon where the battle has since taken place.  Here, at a tent occupied by an Indian trader, and two miles from the reservation, we met a number of Utes, one of whom asked where I as going.  I told him to the Agency.  After a short talk with other Indians, he told me we must go back.  I made no reply, but, leaving one of the carriers at the tent, I proceeded up the canñon in which the Indians laid the ambuscade for Maj. Thornburgh's command, toward the Agency.  The Indians followed us to the Agency.  The Indians followed us to the Agency.  I afterward learned that they belonged to Ute Jack's party.

    "We arrived at White River Agency about 6 o'clock P. M., and found a number of Indians there, some of whom seemed greatly excited.  I soon learned that the Agent, Mr. Meeker, had, a short time before my arrival, been violently assaulted by a Ute chief named Johnson, and severely, if not dangerously, injured.  the white laborers told me that they had been fired upon while plowing in the field, and driven to the Agency buildings, but that they were not much scared, as they thought the Indians only wanted to prevent the work, and fired to frighten them.  Finding Mr. W. H. Post, the Agent's chief clerk and Postmaster at White River, in his office, I proceeded to transact my business ith him.  While engaged at this, the Indians began to congregate in the building.  Mr. Post introduced me to chiefs Ute Jack, Washington, Antelope and others.

    "Ute Jack seemed to be the leader, and asked me my name and business.  I told him.  He inquired if I came from Fort Steele, and if the soldiers were coming.  I replied that I knew nothing of the soldiers.  Jack said, 'No 'fraid of soldiers.  Fort Steele soldiers no fight.  Utes heap fight.'  He again asked my name and when I was going away.  I replied, 'In the morning.'  Jack said, 'Better go pretty quick.'  I offered instead of needing provocation to massacre, require constant and powerful overnight to prevent it.

    "Finally, our army has all the blame cast on it.  Called to rescue the Agency from danger brought upon it by an idiotic Indian policy, the command of Maj. Thorburg went to White River seeking a peaceful solution of the difficulties there.  I had the pleasure of meeting Maj. Thornburg soon after he had receied his orders, and gve him full particulars of the situation at the Agency, advising that, if he went with a small force, he might expect to be wiped out.  I thought his force sufficient, but am free to confess that I was mistaken.

    "I knew that these Indians meant war.  Early in the summer, they occupied the territory over which troops must pass to reach them.  Slowly they retreated toward the Agency, burning the grass to render it difficult for cavalry to operate against them.  They purchased arms and ammunition of the most approved pattern and in large quantities.  Within six weeks of the outbreak, one trader sold them three caes of Winchesters and a large amount of ammunition, and, the last Utes I met inquired of me for more.  They gathered disaffected bucks from the Uncompaghre and Uinta Agencies, and got mad because the Agent at White River would not feed them.  When everything was ready, they assaulted Agent Meeker and shot at his employes to provke an attack by the troops, and when the troops approached, with peaceful intent, to adjust the difficulty and right the wrongs of all parties, they laid an ambuscade and prepared to annihilate the whole command.

    "The attack on Maj. Thornburg was not war; it was unprovoked murder, and to the last Indian, the Utes engaged in it should answer for it with their lives.

    "During the past week, I have been in the valley of the Sappa, in Decatur County, Kan.  To this country our Government had invited settlers, offering them homesteads and protection.  Driven by the stress of times in the Eastern States, some twenty-five families had located in these valleys and erected for themselves homes.  They had just finished at the forks of the Sappa, at the little village of Oberlin, their first schoolhouse.  They were not boors, but the peers of any like number of citizens of the country.  One short year ago, on September 30, 1878, the savage cheyennes, after receiving from the Government their annuities, unannounced and unprovoked, entered these valles and massacred seventeen of the fathers and brothers of this settlement, and perpetrated on their corpses the most barbarous indignities.  They inflicted on the mothers and sisters outrages worse than death.  On the evening of the 30th of September, the bodies of thirteen of the victims of this bloody massacre were brought to the little schoolhouse, and there, in that building, erected by the highest inspiration of civilization, lay in death and barbarous mutilation the fruits of unprovoked and unrestrained savagery.

    "Some time next month, some of these murderers will be tried, if their case is not continued.  Had that crime been promptly and properly punished, the people would not now be mourning for the dead at White River.

    "Our denominational humanitarians have had their day.  Their Congregational Cheyennes, Methodist Modocs and Unitarian Utes have each baptized their newly-acquired sectarian virtues in the blood of a cruel massacre.

    "The Indian policy of the Department of the Interior has been a humiliating failure.  Let the Indian be turned over to the War Department, and let the Government, hereafter, use its iron hand to prevent outrage rather than to punish it.

    Thus it will be seen that for three months prior to the massace, Mr. Meeker hd been powerless to control his Indians; that they had been roaming at will off their reservation, devastating the country and imposing upon the settlers, and that the combined appeals of Agent Meeker and Gov. Pitkin were virtually disregarded by the Indian Bureau.  Aid was promised, indeed, but it did not reach the agency in time to prevent the massacre.

    Finally, however, affairs became so bad that an order was issued for the advances of troops, under Maj. Thornburg, from Fort Fred Steele, to the Agency -- not to punish any Indian, but to inquire into the causes of trouble there and to restrain the Indians from further insubordination. 

    Maj. Thornburg advanced as far as Milk River, near the north line of the reservation, where he wa attacked by a force of several hundred Indian warriors, while, at the same time, another force attacked and murdered Father Meeker and all the male employes at the Agency.

pp. 125-137.