This June a new sign was placed along RBC County Road 8. If you are traveling east toward Buford and Trappers Lake you will pass right by it. Look for it just past the 6-mile marker on the right-hand side. It is worth the time. The sign is a culmination of planning and hard work by the Rio Blanco County Historical Society, Kay Bivens and many others. The new sign is a replacement for one that has been there for years, pointing out the historical site of the first White River Agency.
The Agency was built to house employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was located where three Ute trails came together and where the valley began to widen. They were civilians tasked with overseeing the new Ute reservation created by the 1868 Ute Treaty. Prior to 1868, the Ute tribes of the Colorado Territory had possession of a huge portion of what would later become the State of Colorado. Except for a few mountain men trapping animals, the white men were mostly bypassing Colorado in favor of easier trails going to California gold fields, Oregon and Santa Fe. Farmlands in the Southeast were old Spanish land grants, sparsely inhabited and limited to river valleys.
The Ute tribes, along with other tribes were nomadic hunters. Horses were highly valued as transportation and sport. The 1859 cry of “GOLD!” was the downfall of the tribes as miners poured into the territory. Of course, the U.S. government once again rewrote all the treaties to suit the mining industry in the mountains and the land-hungry settlers. The Treaty of 1868 pushed the White River band of Utes into Northwest Colorado, away from metal mining. Except for a few year-round rivers, the area land was too dry to farm unless irrigation ditches enabled it. The Utes were able to hunt the bountiful herds of deer and elk and could enjoy their traditional lifestyles. The Treaty granted them annuity goods to supplement the hunting. To distribute the government annuities to the White River Utes, a permanent agency was needed. Major Donald Oakes arrived from Rawlins in 1869 to build six cabins and a warehouse to accommodate Lt. Parry, the new agent. After distributing the annuity, Oakes, Parry and the workers left before winter set in.
Lt. Parry never returned to the agency and a Capt. Beck was appointed as agent. Agents communicated directly to Washington, D.C., with concerns and needs. The process was painfully slow. Weeks could pass before actions were approved. Frank W. Reynold became the first postmaster on Sept. 29, 1871. Joseph D. Littlefield became the second on Dec. 12, 1872. John Edwards on Nov. 20, 1873. On Sept. 29, 1871, H. E. Danforth was appointed Agent for the White River Agency. His wife, Ellen C. Danforth, became the postmistress of White River Agency in 1874.
There was a succession of agents at this location. Not much is known other than a general lack of progress among the Indians. “Progress” being measured by white men in transforming the Native Americans into white men who valued the land in economic terms; private landowners working hard to farm the land. Please keep in mind, to the nomadic Utes, this concept was foreign. Male Utes did not “work,” they hunted and provided meat to their families and the tribal community. That was their role in society: to hunt, provide and defend. Digging was not in the Ute male’s job description. Leisure time was taken up by horse breeding, trading and racing. This set up the fundamental conflict between agents trying to “civilize” the Utes and the Ute leadership trying to preserve the old hunting way of life.
The last agent to attempt this conversion arrived in Spring of 1878. Nathan C. Meeker soon realized the impossibility of large-scale farming by the tribe in this upriver meadow. The growing season was simply too short. The crops did not have time to ripen and the area was too small. Nathan Meeker pushed aside objections from the Ute leadership and moved the agency buildings west to what was known as Powell Park, where he proceeded to bully the Utes into abandoning their way of life to become farmers. As we know from historic events, this approach did not go over well. It cost Nathan Meeker and his male employees their lives on Sept. 29, 1879. It also cost the Utes the entire White River reservation in Northwest Colorado.
Sources: M. Wilson Rankin, Reminiscences of Frontier Days 1935, Rankin; We Shall Fall as the Leaves, Howard E. Greager 1996.
By ED PECK
