On September 24, 1879, the Office of Indian Affairs approved the appointments of twelve employees at the White River Agency. There was no difference between the annual wage of a laborer, a carpenter, and a blacksmith; everyone received $720.00 per year (plus room and board) regardless of skills. There were two exceptions. The Ute and English-speaking Interpreter received $300.00. Perhaps he worked only part-time. In an unusual twist for the timeperiod, the only female employee received the highest pay–$750.00. Being the Indian Agent’s daughter made no difference on the government’s fixed pay schedule. Josephine Meeker may have received $30 per year more than the male employees because she filled two jobs–Teacher and Physician.
The employees, their job titles, and their annual salaries were:
Henry James, Interpreter, $300
William H. Post, Carpenter, $720
Josephine Meeker, Teacher and Physician, $750
Henry S. Dresser, Engineer, $720
Albert Woodbury, Blacksmith, $720
Edwin L. Mansfield, Herder, $720
Shaduck Price, Farmer, $720
Wilmer Eskridge, Sawyer, $720
Arther L. Thomson, Laborer, $720
Frank G. Dresser, Laborer, $720
Fred E. Shepherd, Laborer, $720
George W. Eaton, Laborer, $720
The position of Millwright was unfilled because Meeker could not find a qualified person willing to work in a remote and dangerous place for those wages.
Five days after the official appointment letter was signed in Washington, DC, Agent Meeker and eight employees lay dead. Only Henry James, Albert Woodbury and Edwin Mansfield survived because they were not at the agency on that fatal day. Josephine Meeker also survived after enduring nearly 30 days as a Ute hostage (along with her mother and the wife and two children of Shaduck Price).
Hazardous Duty 1879
Rescued Captives
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.
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.
Colorado Was National News in 1879
The story of murders and hostage taking in Colorado was a media sensation in 1879, particularly because the hostages were women and children. Stories travelled by telegraph to Eastern newspapers. The New York Times carried daily front page reports that kept readers shivering with fear at the thought of being held hostage by savage Indians in the mountain wilderness. Smaller newspapers reprinted the stories for readers across the nation.
In Colorado, panic set in. As news of the events at White River Agency spread, the stories became more exaggerated with each retelling. Residents feared all Utes in Colorado were off their reservations and murdering any white people they could find.
Mountain communities raised volunteer militias. Citizens barricaded themselves in their homes ready for a seige. Governor Pitkin sent a special train to Lake City with 150 Springfield rifles and ten thousand rounds of ammunition. He designated the town as the distribution point for arming the Southwestern part of the state. The governor requested extra military protection from Kansas, New Mexico and Texas.
Colorado became an armed camp ready for war.
Captives
The terrified hostages were held in a remote and primitive camp. They huddled under animal hides to keep warm. Their meager rations were mostly dried meat or stew made from whatever animal was shot that day. They ate with their unwashed fingers.
Captives in Iraq or Afghanistan? No, this event took place 130 years ago in Colorado.
Nathan Meeker had received appointment as Indian Agent for the Northern Utes although he had no experience with the Indians. He thought it would be a simple matter to teach nomadic hunters to settle down and become farmers. Failing to change the Utes’ way of life, he threatened that soldiers would come to the White River Agency and take troublemakers off to prison.
On September 10, 1879, Meeker telegraphed the Indian Bureau in Washington that he had been physically assaulted by a Ute and feared for his life. The War Department ordered troops to the scene. Major Thomas T. Thornburgh left Fort Steel in Wyoming on September 21st with 200 men, 33 supply wagons, and 220 pack mules.
Ute men spotted a column of soldiers marching toward the reservation on the morning of September 29th. Some of these Utes had experience as scouts for the military and understood army ways. A small group of Utes road out twice to talk with Thornburgh. They asked him to come to the Agency and talk with the chiefs and the Indian Agent. Thornburgh refused.
The Utes set up an ambush in a narrow pass. By nightfall they had killed 12 soldiers, including Thornburgh, and wounded 43. Shooting from high ground, the Utes managed to kill all the soldiers’ horses and mules. The Army was pinned down with no escape. They remained in this position until the morning of October 5th when they were rescued by the 5th Cavalry.
When Utes at the Agency received word of the fight, they killed Agent Meeker and the eight white men employed at the Agency. They took Meeker’s wife and daughter, another white woman and her two children as hostages.
A detailed account of the Thornburg Battle is found in The Ute Campaign of 1879: A study in the Use of the Military Instrument by Major Russel D. Santala, Combined Arms Research Library, Command & General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
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.
