I’ve been reading the “Looking Back” history columns for five decades, exchanging newspapers with The Weekly-Register Call, the oldest historic newspaper in Colorado started in 1862. We purchased this Gilpin County newspaper on Sept. 1, 2021, with offices in Central City. This newspaper joins the Villager Media Group.
To this day, I don’t think the news has been better than what current “Looking Back” scribe Gary King has been compiling. The history contained in the WR-C binderies is one of the best and one of the only sources of early factual gold mining history.
Many books about early-day gold mining have information taken from newspaper records. The newspaper roots began three years after gold was discovered in Gregory Gulch in what became Central City which was part of the Kansas Territory in 1859. Colorado didn’t become a state until 1876. I’m told that portions of the Colorado Constitution were written in the newspaper front office. Indians burned a wagon train carrying newsprint, so publishers printed on wallpaper until a new supply of paper could arrive. WR-C occupies the original office space on the second floor of the Masonic Lodge in Central City, the building constructed by the newspaper pioneer owner.
I’ve also been a longtime reader of the Meeker Herald-Times. My grandparents were married in Meeker in 1885, and their marriage is recorded on the pages of the Herald. They then homesteaded in the Axial Basin west of Craig in Moffat County, where I was raised.
Last week’s Weekly -Register-Call carried two stories about Indian encounters that made the editions of July 16, 1873, and Aug.1, 1873. I reprint these here:
“Mr. Otis Standish, late clerk of the Black Hawk post office, made a quick ride during the week from Middle Park to this city, coming by way of Hot Sulphur Springs. He had swapped his horse for a fine animal with a band of Ute Indians, who afterward chased him for 14 miles to try and catch him and take the animal away from him, but they didn’t succeed as his horse outdistanced them.”
(I could ride very fast, too, if I had a band of Indians chasing me!)
The second story appeared in the WR-C edition of Aug 1, 1873, in a concise but meaningful paragraph reprinted here:
“ Jack,” the Chief of the Ute Indians, and a party of his fellow countrymen, passed through Central on Monday on their way to the White River agency.”
I guess that the Indians didn’t want trouble with the miners, who were heavily armed. We might wonder where Chief Jack and his braves had been a long way from the Meeker reservation.
But, over the past few weeks, The Meeker Herald-Times has printed fascinating historical letters from the White River Museum written by the White River Indian agency. The first was written by Hon. H.M. Teller, who described the agency’s location as poor and requested a move to Powell Valley, 15 miles away along the White River. He writes that the move was granted to the 3,500 acres of excellent land:
“At first, the Indians were decidedly opposed to the occupancy of Powell Valley for the agency because they had always used it for their winter encampment, particularly for pasturing their horses, since snow seldom lies there more than a few days, while here it lies for five months, and they were perfectly willing to come up to this location once a week to draw rations when they would immediately return. Their only idea of an agency is that it shall be a place where they get supplies since no crops had ever been grown here and only a sprinkle of vegetables, watered from pails, and they had only a vague idea of what it is to engage in farming, in short, they protested against any change.”
Followed by another Herald account is a letter written by Indian Agent Nathan C. Meeker, whom Indians killed in the massacre on Sept. 29, 1879. Here in Meeker’s letter to Hon E.A. Hayt, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington, D.C., written Dec. 9, 1878, he outlines the need to have a store at the Agency and writes about the Indians purchasing ammunition. Meeker was named an Indian agent in the summer of 1878. I believe that Hon. Teller was of Gilpin County repute and then. a U.S. Senator.
The Teller House is located next to the Central City Opera House in Central City.
Meeker explained that the Indians could leave the reservation and travel to Bear River 45 miles and 90 miles to Snake River stores, where they could trade goods and purchase ammunition.
Nathan continued: “This seems to be a vexatious question because to suppress the sale of ammunition is to forbid the Indians from pursuing the only industry that they can now engage in, and even this would be the case if these outside stores were shut up and a store open here not selling ammunition. This letter is to explain why so many Indians are off the reservation.”
We know that Chief Jack was in Gilpin County in 1873, and later he was involved in the Meeker Massacre negotiations and the Milk Creek Indian Battle on Sept. 23, 1879. Indian Agent Meeker, on that same day, along with eight of his male employees, were killed.
Meeker’s wife, Arvilla, and daughter Josephina were taken hostage by the Utes, along with Flora Price, the wife of one of the employees killed. The hostages were held for 23 days before being released unharmed near present-day Grand Junction. (Another story)
The Milk Creek Battle raged for days, with 11 U.S. soldiers receiving the Medal of Honor, including Sgt. James Harris an African-American “Buffalo Soldier.”
Major Thornburgh, who led the first detachment of troops from Ft. Steele, was killed in action along with 12 soldiers and 19 Utes.
This action followed the infamous Sand Creek Massacre on Nov. 29, 1864, when Col. John Chivington led 675 troops to attack an Indian encampment mainly of women and children at Sand Creek.
The Meeker Massacre led directly to the expulsion of thousands of Ute Indians from Colorado to Utah and the opening of thousands of acres of land that had formerly been the Ute Reservation.
I don’t know what happened to “Captain Jack,” the Indian Chief. Maybe he lost his wampum in a Central City poker game?