A Short Accounting of the Causes of the Meeker Incident

The causes of the Meeker Incident are generally known: Meeker tried to plow up the White River Ute peoples’ grazing or racing land, which they prized for their ponies; Major Thornburgh crossed the reservation boundary which incited the Battle of Milk Creek. Simplifying the incident into those events makes it quick and easy to understand, but there was much more to it than plowed land and a crossed boundary.

The Ute people had interacted with European and American settlers for generations prior to Meekers’ arrival in 1878. They had fought, traded, and adapted to Spanish and then Mexican colonists, their neighbors to the south, and later with Mormons emigrating from the east. The Ute people faced many of the same troubles that other Native tribes did when they came in contact with Euro-American settlers: disease, violence, and forced treaties and/or removal. (Decker, 24-28) In 1864, they watched Coloradoans praise and justify the Sand Creek Massacre, which “served as a graphic lesson to Indians throughout the West, and particularly in Colorado, that the promises of ‘peaceful’ intentions of the territory’s white authorities could not be trusted.” (Decker, 32)

The newspapers and press in Colorado, as well as throughout the U.S., encouraged conflict between white settlers and Native tribes–almost to the point of inciting violence. (Decker 63) Settlers and miners, as well as the territorial politicians, wanted the land and resources of the Ute reservation, which they believed they deserved as part of their Manifest Destiny—but they were legally prohibited from reservations by treaty (though encroachment was rarely punished).

In 1868, an earlier treaty between the Ute people and the U.S. was reorganized. The Brunot Treaty “guaranteed the Utes ‘absolute and undisturbed use’ of the reservation lands (except for government officials and their agents), a prohibition against whites (e.g., miners) to ‘pass over, settle upon, or reside in’ the reservation.” (Decker 38). These treaties also supplied annuity goods and payments for land and resources, although by the mid-late 19th century, those agents had “gained over the years a well-deserved reputation for corruption.” (Decker 50)

The agents prior to Meeker’s arrival in 1878, “Regardless of the background or training of the agents…found it impossible to control whites entering and, in many cases, settling upon the reservations”–which was illegal per the 1868 Brunot Treaty. (Decker 51) The White River Agents prior to Meeker were either too slow in their “civilizing” duties (which cost the government too much money to maintain) or unable to manage the impact of Bureau regulations on what people (Ute or white) could or couldn’t do on and off reservation. 19th century U.S. Indian policy made for a difficult system to navigate: “When the agents defended the Indians, their treaty rights, and their general welfare by criticizing Washington and its politics, they faced the overt threat of dismissal. But if agents followed to the letter the dictates and regulations of the Indian Bureau, they threatened their own lives and those of their agency coworkers.” (Decker 65)

Thus, the Ute people at both reservations, White River (north) and Los Pinos (south), in western Colorado understood the process of American expansion and the potential for violence that came with it.  And, by the time Nathan Meeker had arrived, they had gone through several agents, each with their own methods of “civilizing” them.

Nathan Meeker was passionate about his beliefs. When it came to his role at the White River Agency, Meeker’s beliefs were that “the Indian…needed only the firm guidance of someone trained in agriculture, and, within a generation, he would be delivered from his ‘savage’ existence.” (Decker 91). For all his beliefs, Meeker—and others like him—failed to understand and appreciate that the Ute people, like other Native tribes and communities, were not “deficient” nor were they “ignorant, savage or uncivilized.” Their culture, practices, beliefs, values and social structures were not the same as that of 19th century Americans—and while we understand today that that does not automatically mean it is “wrong,” Meeker and his contemporaries did believe they were in the right in their “civilizing” missions. Meeker believed that if the Ute people ceased their cultural practices and ways and adopted, instead, American farming and agricultural practices, they would be “civilized.”

So, upon his arrival at the Agency in 1878, Meeker plowed ahead with his plans to turn White River and its inhabitants into a prosperous agricultural community—not unlike his earlier colonization project of Union Colony, now Greeley, Colorado. First, he decided that the Agency buildings were not located in the right spot to manage and expand an agricultural community—the better spot was down river, in a valley used as grazing ground for over a thousand horses. A few of the band chiefs allowed Meeker’s changes, to varying degrees of acquiescence, but all continued to live as they had since long before Meeker’s arrival.

The horse, to 19th century Ute people, was not merely livestock, but a cultural measurement of wealth and status, essential to their traditional hunting practices and as a means of transportation. Meeker saw this not as a cultural cornerstone, but as a major obstacle to his federal directive to “civilize” the Ute people through farming.

Meeker also struggled to keep hunters and traders of the White River band on the reservation, though they had hunting rights outside the reservation boundaries in North and Middle Parks. Meeker wrote to Major Thornburgh several times in 1878 and 1879 to use the army to return the Ute people to the reservation. Meeker lectured and had fields plowed, and withheld annuity goods and rations from the families of the hunters and traders. Meanwhile, Governor Pitkin was fueling the fires of misinformation about the Ute people burning farms and forests in Colorado, hoping to use political pressure to remove the Utes from Colorado entirely and open the western half of the state for settlement.

Nicaagat, also known as Chief Jack, was one of several influential leaders of the White River band, and he was deeply concerned with Meeker’s plans and threats and lectures. Nicagaat even went to Denver to petition Governor Pitkin for Meeker’s removal, but Pitkin only read one of Meeker’s letters out loud, a letter that alleged Nicagaat had burned down a house—a house that Nicagaat had passed on his way to Denver, perfectly fine and intact. Pitkin dismissed Nicagaat and ordered him back to the reservation. (Decker 114)

In September 1879, Meeker decided to expand the plowed land for farming at the agency, and he informed Chiefs Quinkent (Douglas), Canalla (Johnson), and Nicagaat (Jack) of his plans. They were not in agreement, but Meeker promised a new stove for Canalla’s family, and the plowing began. An unknown Ute fired a shot over Meeker’s agency worker while plowing, and Meeker called a council and informed them that “the plowing would continue, that neither he nor his workers would be intimidated, and that the land was not theirs but the government’s. He threatened them with arrest and imprisonment by the army if they attempted again to halt plowing.” (Decker 116) The plowing proceeded.

Canalla approached Meeker several days later, frustrated. They argued, and some small physical altercation happened: Meeker alleged that Canalla grabbed him, dragged him from his office, and threw him to the ground; Canalla testified that he had taken Meeker by the shoulder and told him to leave the reservation. Meeker immediately sent a telegram asking for army protection.

It was Major Thornburgh who received the order to investigate Meekers’ pleas for help. Thornburgh knew “only of the need to make arrests and of Meeker’s stubborn, inflexible management of his Indians. He had learned over the summer to mistrust the agent’s reports. Had the agent, to protect his authority with the Utes and his reputation with the government, exaggerated his trouble and lied again?” (Decker, 121)

Thornburg made his way towards the reservation, communicating with Meeker through messengers as he went. Thornburgh met Nicagaat on his way, who warned him that crossing onto the reservation would mean war, and after a series of messages and deliberations, Thornburgh decided to cross Milk Creek and head directly to the agency with his troops and met Nicagaat’s contingent of men just after crossing. A shot rang out, and suddenly there was war. When the message reached Quinkent at the agency that Meeker had brought the army in and invaded the reservation, his people moved into action.

So, it was not as simple as a plowed field and a crossed boundary that led to the violence on the White River reservation in September 1879. It was not an isolated incident, but rather one of many interactions of the 19th century as the U.S. moved its borders west.

Written by Katie Henry, former Assistant Curator of Education
Blog post excerpted from Katie’s thesis work at the University of Nebraska at Kearney

For further information, please see:
The Ute’s Must Go! American Expansion and the Removal of a People by Peter Decker (Fulcrum Publishing, 2004).
A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek by Ari Kelman (Harvard University Press, 2013)
Troubled Trails: The Meeker Affair and the Expulsion of the Utes from Colorado by Robert Silbernagel (University of Utah Press, 2011)