Westing in America

Nathan and Ouray
Ezra Meeker seldom mentions the Civil War in his many writings. It was very distant from Washington Territory, and news traveled slowly. The Meekers who stayed behind, scattered from New Jersey to Iowa, bore the weight of that war. Military records show 330 of them serving in the Union Army, all from Midwestern and Northeast states. My great-grandfather, Joshua, enlisted from Iowa and was wounded in Louisiana. He was disabled for the rest of his life. Some Meekers seem to have moved to Canada to avoid the Civil War.

Another descendant of William Meeker, Nathan, was born on a failing farm near Cleveland in 1817. Nathan Meeker showed an early flair for writing, and a passion for organized Utopian communities. Nathan was an idealist with very strong beliefs. He acted as if his beliefs should be held by everyone, and he was rigid in his application of his favorite ideas to others. His first novel, The Adventures of Captain Armstrong (1856), included a plan for civilizing Polynesians by converting them to farming and communal living. Horace Greeley, publisher of The New York Tribune, liked the book and published several poems and articles by Nathan. When the Civil War began, Greeley hired Nathan as war correspondent for The Tribune, and he made a name for himself as a good journalist. When the war ended, Nathan pursued his dream of founding a planned community with the blessing and financial support of Horace Greeley.

Greeley is best remembered for his repeated urging to “go west young man.” Nathan went as far west as Colorado, where he bought twelve thousand acres of land, enlisted contributing members, and founded the Union Colony, later to be known as Greeley, Colorado. The colony was initially successful, but by 1878 it was in trouble because of poor weather, mismanagement, internal strife, and a national economic depression. Nathan’s patron Horace Greeley had died and his successor at The Tribune refused to pay Nathan for his writing. Nathan was deeply in debt and needed a job to survive. After pulling some political strings, Nathan was appointed Indian Agent to the Ute tribe in 1878.

When Spanish conquistadores brought horses to America in the early 1600s, the Utes fell in love with horsemanship. From a simple nomadic people, their culture was transformed into a proud and prosperous people who roamed the high plains hunting, trading, raiding, and thriving from horseback. In 1868, when pressures from white immigrants was intense, the Ute statesman leader, Ouray, negotiated a sixteen million acre reservation for the Utes in southwest Colorado, the largest such area ever established for Indian people, and guaranteed to them exclusively forever by treaty. Ouray was a leader of many parts, beloved by his people and skilled in dealing with whites. He spoke four languages and moved easily and with respect in Native and white contexts.

Nathan Meeker had no experience with Indians and spoke none of their languages. As Indian Agent, his task was to convert the Utes from hunting to agriculture. He built a model farm and tried his best to persuade the Utes to emulate it. He provided plows, farm implements, and the latest steam-powered machinery for them. When reason and inducements failed, he withheld food and annuity payments unless they adopted his plan. He even developed a breeding strategy to convert the slim Ute ponies into draft animals for farm use. The Utes remained unmoved, and continued to hunt and to develop their horsemanship on the racetrack they had long used. Nathan became depressed and angry with the Ute refusal to adopt the white man’s civilization or to become farmworkers.

To force his agricultural agenda, Nathan decided in 1879 to order a symbolic act: the plowing of the Ute racetrack where young Utes competed and practiced their horsemanship. It was perhaps equivalent to plowing a football stadium today, but for the Utes, it struck at the core of their culture. When one of the plowmen was fired upon by Utes, Nathan became frightened enough to send for protection by the U.S. Army. The Utes, believing that the Army was coming to destroy them, went on the attack. A sniper killed the commander of the military force, and wounded several soldiers. The Utes also killed Nathan Meeker and eleven of his agency employees, abducted Nathan’s wife and daughters, burned the agency buildings, and dragged Nathan’s body around the racetrack on a chain behind their ponies.

The incident quickly became known nationally as “The Meeker Massacre.” Hatred and fear of Indians, coupled with lust for the valuable mineral and settlement opportunities on their reservation lands, led to rapid Congressional action. The Ute treaty was rescinded by Congress, and the Army was dispatched in massive force to relocate the Utes to land further west in Utah. The Ute leader Ouray proved his wisdom in the face of inevitable change by negotiating an orderly and peaceful completion of this process shortly before his death from illness in 1880. No one was ever prosecuted for the deaths that had occurred. The women hostages were freed by the Utes and returned to the Meeker home in Greeley, which is now a museum housing artifacts and documents of this period. The town near the site of the massacre was named Meeker, Colorado. The full story of Nathan and the Utes is told well by historian Marshall Sprague in his book, Massacre: The Tragedy at White River (University of Nebraska Press, 1957).

The North American Review published articles about the incident in 1881 and 1882. Carl Schurz was Secretary of the Interior during the period of the Ute events. After leaving office, he published an NAR article in 1881 on “the Indian Problem.” Schurz notes that “the history of our Indian relations presents, in great part, a record of broken treaties, of unjust wars, and of cruel spoliation,” and that “Indian tribes were exposed to great suffering and actual starvation in consequence of the neglect of Congress to provide the funds necessary to fulfill treaty stipulations.” He admits to government high-handedness “in moving peaceable Indian tribes from place to place without their consent,” and to the failure of the military to prevent encroachment on Indian lands by aggressive miners and settlers. Discussing the Utes’ removal from Colorado, Schurz compares Chief Ouray with other Indian leaders he has known, such as Spotted Tail, Red Cloud, and Chief Joseph, and describes Ouray as “a man of comprehensive mind, of large views, appreciating with great clearness not only the present situation of his race, but also its future destiny and the measures necessary to save the Indians from destruction.” When the Utes were removed from their lands, “Chief Ouray was probably the only man among them who had a clear conception of the whole extent of that change.” Schurz then sets forth his program for the future civilizing and assimilation of Indians into white society.

Responding to the Schurz article in 1882, William Justin Harsha published in NAR an article on “Law for the Indians.” Hirsch’s basic argument is that changes in the law are more likely to solve “the Indian problem” than government programs for assimilation. He also refers to the recent Ute conflict and quotes Nathan Meeker on the character of the Utes: “These Ute Indians are peaceable, respecters of the rights of property, and, with few exceptions, amiable and prepossessing in appearance. There are no quarrelsome outbreaks.” Nathan wrote this shortly before the Meeker Massacre.