White River Ute Indian Agency

The White River Ute Agency at Meeker, Colorado was established at the same time as the first Los Piños Agency under provisions of the Treaty of 1868. The agency was intended to serve the White River Ute band as well as some of the other bands from northwestern Colorado. As the site of the Meeker Incident and the Battle of Milk Creek, the White River Agency was the focal point of important episodes of violence between Native Americans and whites that led to the removal of many Utes from the state. These violent episodes as well as the story of the White River Agency epitomize the consequences of the US government’s nineteenth-century policy toward Indigenous people, which pushed people like the Utes to the point of desperation, either through basic ineptitude or outright deceit and neglect of existing treaty terms.

The White River Agency, which consisted of a collection of cheaply constructed, primarily log buildings, was first built several miles east of present-day Meeker on mountainous terrain near the White River. The site was eventually moved to a much more promising location with lots of pasture and fertile land in Powell Park along the White River, just west of Meeker. The agency served as an administrative and logistic center that distributed rations and sponsored a school.

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The ruins of the White River Ute Indian Agency in 1879 shortly after the Meeker Incident. Courtesy of the Western History Collection, Denver Public Library, X-30699; the original is from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, December 6, 1879.
(click on image for larger view)

Source: Colorado, the late outbreak and massacre at the White River Agency, the ruins.
Courtesy of Denver Public Library, Western History/Genealogy Department.

 

Commemorative marker for the White River Ute Indian Agency and site of the Meeker Massacre of 1879 just west of Meeker, Colorado. Courtesy of the Western History Collection, Denver Public Library, X-30688.

For more in depth information, read the article here.
https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/white-river-ute-indian-agency

 

 

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