Special to the Herald Times
The White River Museum has a collection of letters that Meeker founding father Thomas Baker kept for many years. There are letters from Nathan Meeker and prominent figures like Chief Ouray, ex-Indian Agents, and the violently anti-Indian Colorado Governor Pitkin, as well as various Army officers from 1874-1879. The letters tell a compelling story from a dramatic period of local history to be shared here.
White River Agency, Colorado
Jan. 6, 1879
Sir: In this monthly report, and it may be considered quarterly also, I have to say that the employees have been divided into three groups; two men having been steadily engaged in the pinery twenty miles above this agency, two men are detailed at the agency, to attend to the necessary work and business of weekly issue, and in addition is the teacher and physician, while six men are most of the time at Powell Valley, the new agency location. They occupy a good-sized, comfortable log house they have built for cooking and sleeping quarters; and a blacksmith shop of logs, hauled from this place, has been erected and put into as comfortable and effective condition as possible. Another house has also been removed, intended for my own use, but stormy and bad weather has prevented completion. The butchering of the cattle is now done in that valley, saving the Indians and employees a long weekly journey, and I know of no reason why butchering should not always be done there, though a corral will be required.
Once a week a team comes up to the agency, bringing a load of coal and taking back lumber or some articles needing to be moved. We are now burning coal, except in one fire-place, causing a great saving of time and labor in chopping wood, and adding greatly to the comfort of the house.
A house is in the process of erection in Powell Valley, for an Indian, named Johnson, who has two wives, and who is so civilized as to want many things. This house is located with a view to making an addition, and upon a street to be devoted to other Indian houses, each with proper allotments of land.
All the houses are located so as to be permanent, and with the intention to have shingle roofs, boarded sides, and plastered walls—that is, it has been the object all along, in doing any work of this or of any kind, to have it part of a complete whole, and to avoid expenditures for temporary purposes.
The teacher has now three pupils, two boys and one girl, who are cared for as much as if they were her own children; cooking, washing, mending and the making of their clothes being all done for them. The girl in particular is clothed well; perhaps this seems so because she takes most care of herself, and the general style and cut of her garment is similar to that of a girl of a good family living in the city. A great change has taken place in these children; they are learning to read, and reckon with fair success and their manners at the table are decidedly good, while they are rapidly learning English, though they speak it with diffidence, especially before their kin and strangers. On Christmas eve their stockings were hung up, and in them, next morning, were found the well-known assortment of gifts; and now, neatly dressed and well behaved, the contrast is marked from the day when they came without a shirt.
Little can be said in regard to the health of the Indians, because the great body of them, in fact all but four families, are either in Powell Valley or off their reservation on Bear and Snake Rivers, but I hear of no deaths. The number of cases treated has consequently been small.
The two employees engaged at the lumber camp will, by the close of this week, have cut about 400 pine logs, from 20 inches to 3 feet in diameter. This will make, when saved, about 80,000 feet first-class lumber, and if we succeed in making a successful drive to Powell, next June, we shall have accomplished much. The location of this pinery is elevated; the snow is on the side hills, where they are chopping, knee-deep, and though snow falls almost every day the mercury has been but once 2° below zero. That is an almost unknown region, and it was a surprise to learn from those employees that, only a few miles beyond where they are working, they found vast forests of pine easily accessible. The mercury here, at the agency, is often 10° below zero; in Powell Valley, seldom below. The snow here is about one foot deep.
The cattle belonging to this agency are almost wholly on the ranges below, 300 being in Powell Valley, and they are all doing well. The beef killed is fat, and from 4 to 5 head a week are slaughtered. I wish to say here, in particular, that if, at any time, you should desire to make a special investment with the funds belonging to these Utes, that none can be sounder than to purchase a car-load of bulls and heifers, each of good short-horn blood to keep up the grade, and to increase it, for at present, as is inevitable, it is degenerating—since the predominating blood is Texan.
Respectfully,
N. C. MEEKER
Indian Agent
HON. E. A. HAYT
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington, D.C
