Stories still circulate that Chipeta rescued the hostages after the 1879 Meeker Massacre. In these tales, she jumped on her horse, rode through the night, and demanded that the Northern Utes release the captive women and children. Part of this legend comes from a poem titled “Chipeta.” The author, Eugene Field, read it at the 1882 Colorado Press Convention. The key verse about the Meeker captives reads:
She rode where old Ouray dare not ride,
A path through the winderness rough and wild;
She road to plead for woman and child;
She road in the valleys, dark and chill.
Chipeta did play a vital role in the hostages’ release but she did her work “behind the scenes.” A Northern Ute runner brought the news. Chipeta sent another runner to bring Ouray home from hunting. She assembled the Uncompahgre chiefs ready for a council as soon as Ouray returned. Later, she talked Ouray out of going to war.
The Northern Utes asked the other Ute bands to join them. They proposed an all-out war against the white miners and settlers who had invaded traditional Ute territory. Ouray was ill with Bright’s Disease. He knew his body was failing. Dying as a warrior in battle, rather than as a sick man confined to bed, appealed to him. Chipeta talked all night to convince him that war with the citizens of Colorado would doom the Ute people. In the end he ordered the talk of war to cease.
Chipeta’s Legend
Lincoln Bicentennial
This year the nation celebrates the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Did you know Colorado’s Ute Chief Ouray met Lincoln in person?
In the spring of 1863, Ouray and a group of Ute chiefs or headmen traveled to Washington City with their Indian Agent, Lafayette Head. They wanted a treaty that would define Ute land and protect it from the gold seekers and settlers who began invading Ute land in large numbers in 1859.
During that trip the delegation met President Lincoln at the White House. Ouray was identified as the leader of the group and Lincoln presented him a silver-tipped cane, his typical gift to Indian chiefs. Ouray insisted that all the chiefs of the various Ute bands must be involved in a treaty decision. Lincoln agreed to send government representatives to Colorado Territory the following October for a great treaty conference.
Chipeta is a WILLA Finalist!
Chipeta: Ute Peacemaker was named the Finalist in the WILLA Literary Awards competition for the Children’s/Young Adult Fiction and Nonfiction category. The announcement was made late yesterday by Women Writing the West.
Rush To The Rockies
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Colorado Gold Rush. Thousands of men, and a few women, came west in wagons, on horseback, and on foot expecting to find gold lying about like fallen leaves waiting to be collected. Some gold seekers were daunted by the hard work of panning or digging for gold and returned home. Of those who remained, a few made fortunes. Others started businesses to supply the communities that built up around the mining areas. Within two years Colorado Territory was established and settlement continued to grow.
If the gold rush had not occurred, we probably would not know Chipeta’s name today. Without the conflicts resulting from this invasion of Ute territory, Ouray might have become a chief, but one known only among the Ute people. Chipeta would have lived her life as a traditional Ute wife and died in the mountainous land her people had called home for many generations. I think she would have preferred it that way.
Most Influential Coloradoans
In 1999 the Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society jointly sponsored a project to identify the 50 most influential people in Colorado History. The Rocky’s Research Librarian, Carol Kasel, compiled the names in consultation with a panel of specialists assembled by the historical society. The list was published December 19, 1999.
Here is the entry (although Ouray gets the attention):
Ouray (1833-1880) — Ute chief, man of peace. He and wife Chipeta personified destruction of Indian way of life in Colorado. They sought good relations between Indians and whites but were spurned by both groups. Ouray died same year Utes concluded agreement with U.S. government that resulted in their forced relocation to reservations.
An April Fool Believed
On April 1, 1883, The Denver Republican newspaper offered a tongue-in-cheek report that, after Ouray’s death and the Ute relocation to Utah, Chipeta married a White River Ute with the image-laden name “Toomuchagut”. The humorous piece was taken as fact by some, but it carried a shred of truth. Chipeta did have a second mate after Ouray’s death. She was counted with her husband, Accumooquats, in the 1885 Indian census taken at the Ouray Agency, Utah.
Oddly enough, the 1885 Indian census also records a Ute man named Occuptoomuchakut living on the Ouray Agency with his wife, Tahveeah, and three small children.
Chipeta Testifies
Chipeta by Mathew Brady, Washington, D.C., 1880
Clips of Congressional hearings receive repeat play on TV news these days. Did you know Chipeta once testified before a Congressional inquiry panel?
On March 19, 1880 Chipeta entered the Capitol building and took the witness stand facing a group of Congressmen seated behind a long table. Not yet 40 years old, she had lived her entire life in the Rocky Mountains. She was the wife of Chief Ouray and his most trusted advisor and confidant. She travelled to Washington, D.C. with a group of Ute chiefs. Secretary of Interior Carl Schurz welcomed her as a member of the delegation rather than as a tag-along wife.
Her upcoming testimony was announced by The Washington Post, describing her as “a fat, good-humored looking squaw.” The reason for her appearance in the capitol city was an event that had captured national attention the previous year. A group of Northern Utes attacked a column of soldiers, murdered their Indian agent, Nathan Meeker, and all male employees of the agency. They spirited three white women and two children into the high mountains as hostages. Newspapers across the nation followed the unfolding events for the next 30 days until the hostages were safely released.
In the Congressional hearing, Chipeta responded (through an interpreter) to ten questions about where she was when the massacre took place and what caused the events. Most of her answers amounted to “I don’t know” because she had not been present at the massacre. She told the committee some of the Indians said Agent Meeker “was a bad man, that he talked bad…Some of them claimed that he was always writing to Washington and giving his side of the case, and all the troubles at the agency…I do not know whether that is what they killed him for, or what they did it for.”
Source: Testimony in Relation to Ute Outbreak, 46th Congress, 2nd Session, House Miscellaneous Documents no. 38, 1880, 91.
Chipeta National Park?
Many places, things, and organizations have been named for Chipeta. In 1909, while she was still living, her name was proposed for a National Forest.
President Theodore Roosevelt had authorized the 1905 expansion of Wyoming’s Medicine Bow Forest Reserve into the area of northern Colorado near Estes Park. Three years later conservationist and nature writer Enos Mills proposed creating a national park of more than a thousand square miles to include Colorado’s Medicine Bow Forest Reserve.
The Fort Collins Weekly Courier reported on November 3, 1909, “Suggestions for names for the Medicine Bow forest are beginning to reach the…Courier, as well as Forest Supervisor Wheeler. Mrs. J.W. Skinner suggests ‘Chipeta’…Enos Mills…suggest[s] ‘Long’s Peak’ and ‘Rocky Mountain’.” The Courier noted other submissions included “Ute” and “Roosevelt Bear.”
The following July that section of Colorado’s Medicine Bow Forest Reserve became the Colorado National Forest. The U.S. Geological Survey evaluated the area in September 1912 and proposed a national park of about 700 square miles. The first bill proposing the park was introduced in Congress February 6, 1913. Almost two years later on January 26, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation creating the 358.5 square mile Rocky Mountain National Park. The park has since been expanded to 417 square miles.
Sources: www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org and www.esteshistory.com/chronology.html
March Women’s History Month
Did you know Chipeta is a Hall of Famer? She was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 1985 for the “courage and valor she demonstrated in her efforts to mediate between Native Americans and whites.” Click here to visit Chipeta’s page.
It is a lovely honor but some of the information posted about her is questionable. Margaret Adams, wife of Ute Indian Agent Charles Adams, seems to be the source of ”White Singing Bird” as the meaning of Chipeta’s name. Other sources say her name meant “Charitable One,” “The Jewel,” or ”Spring of Clear Water.” One source says it came from the Spanish name Guadalupita. Yet another says it was a pet name used by Kit Carson for his own wife, Maria Josefa Jaramillo Carson. A cursory review of Ute language resources reveals no words for white, sing or bird that are at all similar to any parts of Chipeta.
Chipeta did accompany Ouray to the treaty negotiations at Conejos in 1863. However, her name does not appear in Indian Agent expense records for any of Ouray’s trips to Washington, DC until his final trip in 1880. Margaret Adams traveled with the 1872 Ute delegation to visit friends and relatives back East while the men conducted business.
