Special to the HT
MEEKER | The Rio Blanco County Historical Society will continue its traditional July 4 activities this year. Along with Root Beer Floats, the Stagecoach and the Buick in the parade, we will again offer the Milk Creek Battlefield Tour. As this is the Sesquisemiquincentennial, events that shaped Colorado history are important to remember.
When most people hear about the Battle of Milk Creek in September 1879, they usually hear the military side of the story — the soldiers, the siege and the death of Major Thomas Thornburgh. But the deeper I have studied this history, the more I believe the greatest losses at Milk Creek were carried by the White River Utes.
Not just in lives lost on the battlefield, but in everything that followed.
Historians estimate that between 19 and 37 Ute warriors were killed during the fighting connected to Milk Creek and the violence at the White River Agency. Chief Jack reportedly said 19 men were killed and seven were missing. Those numbers are important, but they tell only part of the story.
Because what happened here was larger than a battle.
By 1879, tensions between the White River Utes and Indian Agent Nathan Meeker had been building for years. Meeker believed the Utes should abandon their traditional way of life and become farmers. He pushed policies that directly interfered with Ute culture and traditions. Land used for horse racing was plowed under. Long-held ways of living were treated as backward rather than valuable.
To many settlers, these may have seemed like changes meant to “improve” the Utes. But from the Ute perspective, this was about much more than farming. It was about control, identity and survival.
Then the Army entered the situation.
When Major Thornburgh crossed onto reservation land with troops, many Utes feared the worst. The memory of Sand Creek was still fresh in Native communities across Colorado. Only 15 years earlier, Cheyenne and Arapaho people had been massacred under a flag of peace. It is impossible to understand Milk Creek without understanding that fear.
The fighting that followed was brutal and tragic on all sides. Soldiers died. Ute warriors died. Families on both sides were forever changed.
But when the smoke cleared, the consequences for the Utes were devastating.
Public outrage across Colorado quickly turned into demands that “The Utes Must Go.” Soon they did. The White River and Uncompahgre Utes were forcibly removed from Colorado to Utah. Some had participated in the fighting. Many had not. In the end, it made little difference.
They lost their homeland.
They lost access to valleys, rivers, mountains and hunting grounds their people had known for generations. They lost the ability to remain in most of the state they had called home long before Colorado became a territory or state.
That, to me, is the real story of Milk Creek.
Not simply who won or lost a battle, but what was ultimately lost afterward.
Today, standing here in Meeker, it is important that we tell the full story — honestly and completely. Not to place blame on people living today, but to better understand the complicated and painful history that shaped this region.
Organizations like History Colorado and other historical institutions have increasingly worked to include Native perspectives in telling these stories. That matters because history should never belong to only one side.
The Army lost soldiers at Milk Creek.
The Utes lost their home.
And I think that is something we should never forget.
By TERESIA RUCKMAN REED
