The Ute War of 1879: Meeker, the White River Agency, and the Road to Utah

Ute families counted their horses the way other people counted acres. A herd widened a band's range through the passes and high parks of the Rockies, carried the meat and hides that saw a winter camp through, sealed marriages and looked after relatives in need. In September 1879 the agent at White River, Nathan Meeker, set his men to plowing the pasture where the Utes grazed and raced their horses. When a Ute man shoved him in the quarrel that followed, Meeker telegraphed for troops.

They came under Major Thomas Thornburgh. On September 29, as his column crossed Milk Creek onto the reservation, fighting broke out with Ute warriors on the ridges above. Thornburgh was killed and his men were pinned down for days. That same day at the agency, Meeker and the men who worked for him were killed, and the women and children were taken captive.

First, though, the country before the line: the seasonal circuits of the bands, the treaties of 1863 and 1868, the shrinking reserve, the differences between the Uncompahgre and White River peoples. After Milk Creek come the relief column and the reckoning, and Ouray's last winter, spent trying to hold on to what was left.

Ouray died in August 1880. The next year, soldiers escorted the White River and Uncompahgre bands out of Colorado to new reservations in Utah.