The women and children taken captive during the September 29, 1879 Meeker Massacre were held in a remote moutain camp.
The 5th Cavalry under Colonel Wesley Merritt arrived at the White River Agency on October 11th. They buried the bodies of Meeker and his employees. Reinforcements arrived bringing the total number of soldiers to 1,000. On October 14th, just as Merritt was ready to set out to find the camp and rescue the hostages, he received orders to halt.
Secretary of Interior Carl Schurz had arrived in Denver. Two days earlier Chief Ouray and Southern Ute Agent William M. Stanley had assured Schurz that the White River Utes “…will fight no more unless forced to do so.” Schurz wanted a peaceful resolution. He appointed Charles Adams to negotiate for release of the hostages. Adams was a former Ute Indian Agent generally trusted by the Utes.
Adams arrived at Ouray and Chipeta’s home on October 21, 1879. Ouray sent a message to the Northern Utes that Adams was coming and assigned his most trusted men to lead Adams to the camp. Adams quickly gained release of the captives. The three women and two children arrived at Ouray and Chipeta’s home on October 29th.
Adams continued to negotiate with the Utes to surrender the men responsible for the murders at White River Agency. Finally on November 10th the Utes agreed.
The Army remained in western Colorado to keep the peace for the next two years.
Rescued Captives
Chipeta’s Legend
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.
An Honest Man
Resarch often turns up stories or information that is not related to the search subject but is too good to pass up. Such is the case with this story adapted from Ralph C. Taylor’s book Colorado, South of the Border (Sage Press, 1963).
In 1868, W.T. “Tom” Sharp built an adobe trading post near the mining town of Malachite in Huerfano County, Colorado Territory. Sharp’s Post became known as Buzzard’s Roost Ranch for the large birds that frequented the cottonwood trees nearby. Ouray and Chipeta, along with their family group, often visited the area in late summer to hunt and to trade with “Sharpy.” The two men and their wives became friends. On one visit, Chipeta gave Mrs. Sharp a gift of beaded moccasins made from fawn skin with elk hide soles.
Taylor tells about a horse race that took place after a hunt near Buzzard’s Roost. Ouray sent word as far away as Pueblo that there would be a horse race at the Francisco Manzanares Ranch. The Utes would pit one of their horses against the best horse the white men could bring.
Manzanares asked Tom Sharp to serve as judge for the race. When Sharp agreed, Manzanares offered him a cow if he would decide the race in favor of the Utes. It was sure to be a popular event with heavy betting. If the Utes won, they would have money to spend in the trading post. Sharp said “no”. Manzanares offered two cows. Sharp was so offended he threatened to whip Manzanares for trying to bribe him.
On race day, people came from long distances to bet cash and property. When it was time to choose a judge, the white participants suggested a man called Baldy Scott. Ouray said, “I want my friend Sharpy.” The surprised white crowd happily accepted Ouray’s choice of one of their own. The race was run and the two horses crossed the finish line almost neck and neck. The white crowd called for a “tied” decision. But Sharp had watched carefully and called the race as he saw it. “It is the Indian’s race,” he said.
Afterward, Sharp learned that Ouray had put Manzanares up to the bribery attempt in order to test Sharp’s honesty.
It’s the Little Things That Gitcha
In my 2003 book, Chipeta: Queen of the Utes, I stated that Chipeta and Ouray attended a performance of “The Gorgeous Black Crook” at Ford’s Opera House during their trip to Washington, D.C. Their evening out was reported in the Washington Post, January 20, 1880.
Last year, when I started working on the new middle grade biography, Chipeta: Ute Peacemaker, a photo of the historic building seemed like a good illustration. I had been to Ford’s Theater and assumed “Opera House” was simply an earlir name for the place where Presdient Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. I visited the theater’s website. To my surprise, I learned that Ford’s Theater was closed shortly after Lincoln’s death and remained closed for 90 years.
How embarrassing to make such a careless mistake by “assuming”. To make matters worse, a search for information on Ford’s Opera House turned up nothing.
Who would know the answer? I recalled a visit to the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. It was a small place but I had found one unique item there – an 1880 Red Book Guide to Washington, D.C. I visited the Society’s website and used the contact link to email my question.
The reply came in a few days:
Ford’s Opera House was open in 1880 and located on the 200 block of 9th Street, south of Pennsylvania Avenue. The building would later become the Bijou Theatre and was torn down in the 1920’s as part of the Federal Triangle project. The Historical Society has photographs of the Bijou Theatre; one may also be seen in the book “Washington, D.C.: Then and Now” by Charles Kelly.
Shannon Lee
Librarian
Kiplinger Research Library
Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
801 K Street NW at Mount Vernon Square
Washington, D.C. 20001
http://www.historydc.org
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.
Trust but Verify
The Internet is a wonderful research tool that offers an amazing amount of information. However, not all of that information is accurate, even when found on websites of reputable organizations. Here are a couple of examples from my research. They remind me to check facts in multiple sources before using them in print.
A Google search for “Chipeta” turned up a Colorado State University webpage about potatoes. The university’s agricultural research program develops new potato cultivars and a 1993 russet potato was named for “Chipeta.” That was a fun bit of trivia. However, the page noted, “Chipeta is featured on a stained-glass window in the state capitol building (in Denver).” A visit to the Colorado State Capitol Virtual Tour and the link to the Hall of Fame Stained Glass (Rotunda) reveals that Chipeta’s husband, Ouray, is honored there. Further search locates Chipeta on the 1976 “Women’s Gold Tapestry” created for Colorado Centennial celebration.
The webpage of the Meeker [Colorado] Chamber of Commerce reproduces “This Is What I Remember” from the Rio Blanco County Historical Society. The last ten paragraphs of the article recall the 1879 rescue of three white women and two children after the Meeker Massacre. It reads in part, “When news of the massacre reached Los Pinos…Chipeta…rode alone on the long trip north to intercede for the white captives. This exploit brought her the plaudits of all America.” It was a popular tale that did not happen. She sent runners to find her husband and other chiefs and prepare for a council meeting. After 23 day in captivity the rescued women and children were brought to Chipeta’s home to recover. The facts in this case are more difficult to find but they exist in eye witness newspaper accounts and Congressional testimony.
Good Job, Henry!
Finding one interesting research tidbit can make my day. In a recent Google search I spotted an 1880 Ute delegation photo advertised by Cowan’s Auctions, Cincinnati, Ohio. The item was part of a collection of Indian artifacts once owned by Henry W. Andrews. I discovered the auction had been completed in 2007. The Andrews’ collection brought $101,200.20.
The description of lot #322 noted, “The photograph of the Ute Treaty Delegation taken in 1880, and inscribed to Andrews from Ouray and his wife Chipeta, suggests Andrews must have been good at his job…”
Henry Andrews was a clerk in the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs when the Ute delegation arrived in Washington, DC on January 11, 1880. Andrews met them at the train station. He was assigned to supervise every detail of the Utes’ stay in the city so he took a room in the Tremont House with the delegation. The Utes had been national news since October 1879, when a small group of Utes killed their Indian Agent and the agency employees, then took three white women and two children hostage. Colorado’s GOVERNOR PITKIN arrived in Washington in late January to lobby for removal of all Utes from the state. Andrews had his hands full protecting the Ute delegation from eager newspaper reporters, curious locals, and angry citizens.
Delays in negotiations extended the Utes’ stay to almost three months, a long time for people used to wide open spaces to be cooped up inside a hotel. Andrews ate his meals with the Utes, arranged for entertainment and accompanied them on trips around the city. He learned to enjoy the Utes’ company and became a trusted friend. It was Henry Andrews who escorted Chipeta on a Pennsylvania Avenue shopping trip to buy fabric for “city clothes.”
Henry Andrews was indeed good at his job. By 1885 he had been promoted to Deputy Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Northwest Territory.
Let’s Ride!
At age eight, I decided to become a cowgirl like Dale Evans. I watched her on television every Saturday morning. Riding a pale horse named Buttermilk, my heroine joined her famous husband, Roy Rogers, in new adventures every week. In my official Dale Evans outfit (a fake cowhide skirt and vest with hat and gunbelt), I rode my imaginary horse to adventure in my Southern Indiana backyard.
Of course, I grew up to realize those shows were only stories and the West was no longer the wild, untamed place of Saturday morning serials. Still, I packed up and moved to Colorado the day after college graduation. I found a job in Denver and began to read Colorado history. That is where I first heard of Chipeta, a Ute Indian woman born in 1844 when the American Southwest was still Mexican Territory.
One morning in the summer of 1995, I sat up in bed and said, “I’m going to write a biography of Chipeta.” Like Dale Evans, Chipeta was known because of a famous husband, Chief Ouray of the Utes. I wanted to discover the woman herself, the woman who was so special that streets, parks, schools, and natural landmarks in Colorado and surrounding states bear her name. My search took eight years and many hundreds of miles. The result was Chipeta: Queen of the Utes (Western Reflections Publishing, 2003; P. David Smith co-author). In the fall of 2008, Filter Press released Chipeta: Ute Peacemaker, a biography for children in the Now You Know Bio series.
In this blog I plan to share research experiences and tidbits from my Chipeta files (which continue to grow). I hope to host other writers for discussions of research and writing. So, come on along for the ride – and leave your trail of comments.
