The Great, The Good, and the Ugly in Greeley

 Today we visited the town of Greeley, Colorado.  Named for Horace Greeley, the owner of the New York Tribune and avowed abolitionist since well before the Civil War. His agricultural editor, one Jacob C. Meeker, chose to follow Greeley's advice to, 'Go west young man, go west', and took a load of book learning about farming and little practical knowledge of the art to a railroad crossing without a name on the northeastern Colorado plains.  He did find good ground and plenty of water and his marketing skills, along with some of Greeley's money, founded what was first called Union Colony.  A religious, somewhat pietistic settlement that allowed most protestants but no Catholics to apply.  The town grew, and prospered, and grew some interesting eccentricities as well.

George W Fisk was called the Stradivarius of the Plains. He learned to craft his own violins and very highly thought of they were, and still are.

Greeley farmers learned to grow sugar beets and pinto beans for the world market and a group of five men and their companies, called the "High Five" held the reins to these and other local markets for many years.

On a lighter note, we learned that the term 'rose colored glasses' was coined in Greeley and comes from eye shades for chickens made of solid metal, like the one in the picture here, or of dark red opaque material. They were placed on chicken's beaks as shown so that chickens, who are drawn to kill other wounded birds in the flock  upon seeing any blood, would ignore it and let those chickens heal.

 One of the twentieth Centuries interesting Greeley tales involves a woman who lived alone in a small white clapboard home. She was known as Rattlesnake Kate.  She earned her name by killing thousands of rattlesnakes in her lifetime for meat, and for a small bounty.  She even had a dress made from rattlesnake skin to wear when her man's style jeans and shirt wouldn't do.

 Bicycling has been a huge part of the plains, and now the mountains, of Colorado since the velocipede was invented. Today there is even a club, called a STACK, in Greeley that still rides old time two and one wheeler's.
This pic is of the club in period getup in 2002.

 And this week, we learned, was the week of the Greeley Stampede.  not quite so large as that other one up in Western Canada, but full of rodeo, music, and carnival, etc just the same.  We missed the rodeo and 94 degree temps kept us from staying more than a couple of hours                                                            at the carnival, but it was fun.

 Mona did the laundry today in nice air conditioning while I trekked to the Jacob Meeker House. This well preserved and restored founder's home sat, when built, on a quiet southern rise overlooking the rivers that watered the Greeley farms and the town to the north.  Today the town has grown around his home, still following the wide avenues and tree lined plans he established originally with                                                                           Horace Greeley.

As I said, it was a scorcher outside today so what a joy when I found not only that the home was open, but that two wonderful and well educated guides were waiting to tour visitors through.  Kayla, on the left, is a graduate of Colorado State University at Fort Collins and Dana, on the right, is a sophomore at her high school right here in Greeley.  Both love history and while Dana is learning from Kayla this summer, both are eager to talk about what happened to the Meeker's in Greeley, and after.

To find out more about what these and many others do to tell the tales of Greeley, and the Greeley Museum program, go to:  http://greeleymuseums.com/

After a while Jacob ran into financial difficulties and had to take a job away from Greeley, as the Indian Agent on the White River Ute Reservation in Northwestern Colorado, to pay back his debts.


Jacob had been a great agricultural editor for Mr. Greeley, and a pretty good developer of a town, but had  not been a very successful farmer. And he knew much less about Indians, especially the Ute tribe whose welfare he was to oversee.  This blog is no place to try to write the disastrous 50 years of American's misunderstandings and nefarious deeds which created our own nations sin of genocide (called 'Manifest Destiny' at the time) against the many Indian peoples of our continent.  But regarding the Meeker's, Jacob and Arvila, his wife, and daughter Josephines, tragic move to the white River Reservation, I will touch on briefly.

There he tried to turn some of the greatest horsemen of Colorado into farmers.  Enough said?  Well, then he began seeking ways to force them to be farmers.  He was sure that if he could not remove them from being hunter-gatherers the people in power in Denver and Washington would do away with them one way or another just for their land.  Sadly, in this, he was right. Anger, misunderstanding, and fear began to infect what had been a reasonably good relationship between the Utes and Americans before the Meeker's arrived..

I invite you to go to a 2012 Denver Post article for more specifics on what became known as the 'Meeker Massacre' to Americans :    http://blogs.denverpost.com/library/2012/10/15/meeker-massacre-forced-utes-colorado-attack-backlash/4274/

 The battle of Milk River, near Meeker's Agency, occurred through more misunderstanding, and the retaliation for that misunderstanding, and the long brewing rage at Meeker's repeated degradation of Ute customs was murder. A band of angry Utes, without permission from their leaders, attacked the Agency and killed Meeker and several of his American workers. And perhaps most awfully, in the eyes of the citizens of Colorado and the chief's of the Ute Nation themselves, those who attacked took Arvila and Josephine and one other woman hostage, and during their several days of captivity raped them. Some say they were abused 'ceremonially', meaning as an act of retribution for the deaths of so many Indian women and children in so many violent raids upon unsuspecting Indian villages, such as the Sand Creek Massacre in central eastern Colorado during the Civil War.

In the restored Meeker home Dana and Kayla showed me the bedroom furniture of the Meeker's, and the original widows veil that Arvila wore for a year and more after the death of her husband, and her own rape.

The story of the Meeker's in the town of Greeley ends with the death of the Meeker children. No known grandchildren existed.  It is a story that epitomizes the entire western contact between peoples who had never before met.

Misunderstandings, mistranslations, mistakes and managed manifest destiny.  Thomas Jefferson spoke of it to Virginia neighbor George Washington almost one hundred years before.  Something like, "I have never seen a more healthful and happy lot as the varied Indian peoples of the west (then the Alleghenies). However our nation will grow, and those fine people will have to move farther west before us. I am glad I will not live to see the result."

-Ken