"The first I heard of any trouble with the Indians at my father's Agency was the firing at Mr. Price while he was plowing.  The Indians said that as soon as the land was plowed it would cease to be Ute's land.  Two or three councils were held.  The Indian woman Jane, wife of Pauvitts, caused the whole trouble.  It was finally settled by the Agent's moving her corral, building her a house, putting up a stove and digging her a well.  But Johnson, who was not at the council, got angry with the Agent and the Indians when he found the plowing resumed.  He assaulted father and forced him from his house.

    "Father wrote the Government that if its policy was to be carried out, he must have protection.  The response was that the Agent would be sustained.  Gov. Pitkin wrote that troops had been sent, and we heard no more until the runners name, and all the Indians were greatly excited.  They said there were soldiers on Bear River, sixty miles north of the Agency.  The next day, the Indians held a council, and asked father to write to Thornburg to send five officer to come and compromise and keep the soldiers off the reservation.  The Agent sent a statement of the situation of the Indians, and said Thornburg should do as he thought best.  The Indians who accompanied the courier returned Sunday to breakfast.  A council was held at Douglass' camp, and also at the Agency.

    "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 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 bridle.  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 bareback 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, saddle 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 considerably 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 hang 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 picture 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 different 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, whih 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 hm 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 supposed 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 hands took a drink around my bed, then they saddled 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 Persune 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 half, in a deep and sombre cañon, with tremendous mountains towering on every side.  Mother was not allowed to come.  Douglass kept her with him half a mile further down the cañon.  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 ent to the cañon previous to the massacre.  Jack's camp, where Mrs. Price was kept, was five or six miles away in another cañon.  When I had laid down on my newly made bed, two squaws, one 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 omen 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, Persune 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 and moved the camp ten or twelve miles into an exceedingly beautiful valley, with hih 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, [sic]  They said they had the soldiers hemmed in in [sic] 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 cañon, and the Indians ere killing their ponies when they went for water in the night.  They said:  'Indians stay on the mountains and see white soldiers.  White soldiers no see Indians.  White soldiers not now 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 talk.  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 hate on the pile.  Then they danced a war dance and 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 coming, and they recited what Brady had brought from Chief Ouray.  They were in great commotion, and did not know what to do.  They talked all night, and next morning they struck half their tens 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 cavalcade was fully two miles long.  The wind blew a hurricane, and the dust was so thick we could not see ten feet back 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 saddle nor stirrups -- merely a few thicknesses of canvas 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 bullets.  Johnson also had a sack of powder.  The chief amusement of the Indians was running bullets.  No whites are admitted to the tents while the Utes sing their medicine songs over the sick, but I, being conidered one of the family, was allowed to remain.  When their child was sick, they asked me to sing, which I did.  The medicine-man kneels close to the sufferer, with his back 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 intervals he howls so loudly that one can hear him a mile; then his voice dies way and only a gurgling sound is heard, as if his throat were full of water.  The child lies nearly stripped.  The doctor 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 medicine festivals.  Mrs. Price's children became expert at singing Ute songs, and sang to each other on the journey home.  The sick-bed ceremonies were strange and weird, and more interesting 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 soldiers.  They said they could look down upon the site of the Agency.  Saturday morning, the programme 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 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 direction.  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 [sic] a whip and laid it over the shoulders 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 sa 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 puller her hair.  I departed, leaving her to pack up.  He was an Uncompahgre Ute, and Ouray will not let him return to hisband [sic].  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 Uncompahgre district, and could not retreat much further.  Colorow made a big speech, and advised the Indians 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 captives.  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 as not sleepy.  Then a squaw came and hung a blanket 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 atracted their attention and they came up close.  I pushed the squaw aside and walked out to meet them.  They asked my name and dismounted, 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 as to be held and that they must not come up till it was over.  Dinner was sent to the ladies and they were ordered 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 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 he had pased through.  Mrs. Ouray shed tears over us as she bad 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, brough us to the beautiful 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 surrounded 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 sa the telegraph poles, her eyes brightened, and she exclaimed, 'Now I feel safe.'"

    Mrs. Meeker and Mrs. Price also published statements of their individual experiences, but, in the main, they corresponded with the foregoing, except that both bore testimony to the coolness and unflinching 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 metty meannes would be quoted against his tribe, and demanded that the money be returned, but it was not handed over until some time afterward. It is generally believed that Ouray, failing to recover the money from Douglass, pid it out of his own pocket and represented that it came from Douglass.

    When Miss Meeker told the story of her captivity 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 customs, upon which topic she enlarged considerably.  She also gave an interesting account of a visit paid to her in secret by a Uintah Ute, who she described as being a remarkably bright and intelligent savage, and almost gentlemanly in his demeanor -- quite a romantic savage, indeed.  He did not, however, 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 treatment 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 lawyer-like, too, in his own reticence and non-committalism.  He simply listened.  After hearing her story, he went off, agreeing to return in the morning for the letter which he was to carry to the Agency.

    Miss Meeker was not supplied with writing materials, and the suspicious Indians refused to let her have such as they happened to posses, which were, in fact, rather infinitesimal.  Finally, SUsan, wife of Chief Johnson and sister of Ouray, afterward to become famous under her new sobriguet 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:


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.


    The gentle Douglass proved to be an angel of very variable temper.  When drunk, he was vaporous 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."