Milk Creek Battle
Encyclopedia
The Battle of Milk Creek began on September 29, 1879, in northern Colorado
, and lasted several days as the United States Army
and warrior
s of the White River
Ute tribe engaged in what was to be one of the last true battles of the so-called Indian wars.
were deeply rooted in the Manifest Destiny
doctrine, an unalterable belief that God willed the boundaries of the United States
be expanded, through force if necessary, from sea to sea and perhaps even all of North and South America. Its first great milestone was the Louisiana Purchase
and it continued through the first decade of the twentieth century, particularly after the American Civil War
. Nathan Meeker
, characterized as obdurate and patronizing Indian Agent at the White River Ute Agency in Colorado, was the very embodiment of this imperial philosophy.
In the years preceding the Milk Creek battle and Meeker Massacre, the idealistic, but ambitious and debt-ridden, Meeker had taken the advice of friend and mentor Horace Greeley
to go west, where he made an ill-fated attempt to establish a utopian socialistic community at the site of present-day city of Greeley
, Colorado. Failing there, he then secured the Indian Agent position through political connections.
The Ute tribe, ensconced protectively among the spires of the Colorado Rocky Mountains
, were among the last of the native American horse nomads to be destructively encroached upon by settlers. Most importantly, horses had, in fact, gained totemic significance among the Utes. After the civil war each succeeding governmental administration, bowing to the acquisitiveness of the railroad, land and mining barons, had attempted to effectuate control of the natives by destroying these economic bases. Nathan Meeker with messianic zeal embarked upon a program to replace the Ute horses and bison with plowshares and seeds.
The Utes, passionately attached to their horses and culture, dug in their heels. In the late summer of 1879 some of the band's young men left the reservation for a buffalo hunt. Meeker considered this a flagrant violation of agency rules and then repeated his demand that the band kill some of their horses and ordered their race track plowed under. Tempers flared, culminating in a brief but portentous shoving match or fist fight between the Ute medicine man, Canalla and Meeker. The Agent reacted by wiring Department of Interior superiors for assistance. The Department, having no enforcement power, then contacted the War Department and no less a person than General
William Tecumseh Sherman
for federal troops to quell what he considered to be the initiation of an Indian uprising.
Orders descended from General Sherman in Washington to General Philip Sheridan
in Chicago
to General George Crook
in Omaha to send a force to back Meeker expeditiously. That force consisted of a mixture of Fort Steele infantry
, located east of Rawlins
, Wyoming
and two companies of cavalry
from Fort D.A. Russell
outside Cheyenne
to the White River Agency over 180 miles distant. On the morning of September 21, 1879 a column of about 175 men and 25 wagons departed Fort Steele for Rawlins under the command of Major
Thomas Tipton Thornburgh, a West Point graduate and Civil War officer. By September 25, Thornburgh having been given only the vaguest of orders and possessing an equally imprecise knowledge of the situation at the Agency, dispatched a message to Meeker informing him of the column's location and requesting Meeker meet him on the trail for a strategy session. On or about this same date cavalry outriders reported seeing mounted Ute warriors in the distance; the buffalo hunters under Nicaagat, or Captain Jack, a young part-Apache sub-chief at the agency who had been raised by Mormons and served as a scout under General Crook.
Eventually, Jack and some of his men approached Thornburgh and asked where the column was headed. When told it was headed to the agency, the tribesmen sullenly departed only to return that night and inform the Major that to do so would be a treaty violation. Instead Jack suggested a combined party of five Utes and five officers ride to the agency for a meeting with Meeker. Fearing a trap, Thornburgh declined. Ironically, Meeker, in a last-ditch attempt to head off the looming catastrophe, had dispatched a rambling letter to Thornburgh requesting, as Jack had wanted, that he, Thornburgh, halt his column outside the reservation and, proceed to the agency with a small number for a peace conference. Thornburgh then provided a no less murky response, written and verbal, the latter leading the Indians to conclude he was moving forward with his entire command. Thornburgh’s scout, Joe Rankin reported seeing about twenty-five mounted warriors on the ridge in front of the column where the road crests a pass and dips into Coal Creek Canyon
, an excellent place for an ambush.
Unknown to Thornburg his response to Meeker and subsequent actions had panicked the Utes at the agency who remembered all too clearly the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre
. They immediately assembled a fighting force of 200 to 300 warriors, mounted and afoot, armed with a wide variety of weapons. On September 28, more messages and warnings were sent and received by all three parties. Communication was chaotic and events had taken on a life of their own.
On September 29, Thornburgh led his column spearheaded by two companies, one from the 5th Cavalry and one from the 3rd Cavalry two miles ahead of the wagon train of supplies and infantry with another company of cavalry in a distant reserve position. He approached Milk Creek, a thick, meandering alkali slough slicing an arroyo
through a terraced, mile wide park bordered by steep ridges covered with pine, cedar, oak brush and sage. This, in fact, was the point of no return. They were about fifteen miles from the agency and, to the Utes, clearly in violation of the treaty provisions. Concealed by the ridges, brush and trees they had dispersed and waited.
Tension within Thornburgh’s ranks was palpable with many of the soldiers probably remembering the Little Big Horn disaster only a little over three years ago. Because the expedition was not to be construed as offensive the men were issued only forty rounds of ammunition. A reconnaissance team comprising about four officers including Major Thornburgh and two scouts probed cautiously toward the crest of Yellow Jacket Pass
seeing as they proceeded mounted warriors passing back and forth along its crest. At almost exactly twelve o'clock noon Lieutenant
Samuel Cherry waved his hat either in peaceful greeting to the Utes or to signal Major Thornburgh. A shot rent the still mountain air followed by a brief silence and then fusillades from both sides.
Though the battle lasted for nearly a week the stage was set for the duration within the first two hours with the Utes racing to out flank and segment the column and the soldiers struggling to consolidate a defense. Because neither side expected a full-on shooing match neither had developed plausible strategies nor tactics. The Indians thought that blocking the soldiers at the reservation boundary would cause them to reverse direction and go home.Thornburgh, because of muddled communications thought a show of force on the Ute reservation would suppress any burgeoning uprising. The Ute chief Colorow has been documented as commenting at the time that a key objective is to capture the wagons containing the food supply which would sustain the Indians and starve the soldiers into a retreat as opposed to retribution and annihilation . Even Jack standing on a hill side smoking his pipe watching the battle unravel pondered its suddenness and complete lack of a tactical objective other than halting the troop train.But if retreat was the overall Ute strategy they were quickly defeating that purpose by the tactic of killing all the cavalry horses and draft animals and unleashing such a hail storm of bullets that it provided the soldiers no opportunity for a fighting withdrawal.
Thornburgh, dashing about organizing a defensible position with wagons, animals and infantry on an adobe bench one hundred yards above Milk Creek fell mortally wounded from a bullet wound to his chest. The battle was less than an hour old. Command passed to the wounded Captain Scott J. Payne, who tried to pass it on to Captain Lawson the latter refusing saying Payne was still able to command. Within hours of the first shot fired at Milk Creek the Utes remaining at the White River Agency received word of the battle and ran amok killing and burning, sealing as their fate.
Virtually all of the expedition's deaths happened before 5:30 the evening of September 29 when the foundations of the defenses were established. At that time those defenses consisted of a circle of remaining wagons within which 150 defenders had dug another circle of seventeen trenches each two to four feet deep and approximately seventy-five feet long. These revetments were reinforced with boxes and sacks from the wagons and dead animals. From the first the animals had been targeted by the Indians at the end of the first day's fighting consisted of approximately 127 mules and 183 horses. The Ute sharpshooters aimed to wound many of the animals inside the enclosure so their agony and stampeding would cause even more chaos and injury among the troops. Those deaths coupled with the humans killed in action inadvertently provided the Utes one of their next hopeful tactics; capitulation by gasification.
Though haled by the besieged as saviors, the men of the 9th Cavalry simply joined in the siege with food and ammunition. On October 5, twenty officers and 234 men the 5th cavalry led by Colonel
Wesley Merritt
from Fort D.A. Russell near Cheyenne, Wyoming arrived after a forced march of 170 miles. Chief Jack, realizing no good purpose could be served by continuing the engagement surrendered with a piece of white tent canvas.
and approximately thirty were decorated for heroic conduct in one of the most decorated battles of the Indian wars. Chief Jack estimated that nineteen warriors were killed and seven were unaccounted for though other sources say the Utes lost thirty-seven killed in both the Meeker incident and the battle.
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, and lasted several days as the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
and warrior
Warrior
A warrior is a person skilled in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based society that recognizes a separate warrior class.-Warrior classes in tribal culture:...
s of the White River
White River (Utah)
The White River is a tributary of the Green River, approximately long, in the U.S. states of Colorado and Utah. Flows vary from 450 ft³/s late summers in dry years to well over 12,000 ft³/s in spring....
Ute tribe engaged in what was to be one of the last true battles of the so-called Indian wars.
Background
The origins of the Ute WarWhite River War
The White River War, also known as the Ute War, or the Ute Campaign, was fought between the White River Utes and the United States Army in 1879, resulting in the forced removal of the White River Utes and the Uncompahgre Utes from Colorado, and the reduction in the Southern Utes' land holdings...
were deeply rooted in the Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
doctrine, an unalterable belief that God willed the boundaries of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
be expanded, through force if necessary, from sea to sea and perhaps even all of North and South America. Its first great milestone was the Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...
and it continued through the first decade of the twentieth century, particularly after the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Nathan Meeker
Nathan Meeker
Nathanial C. Meeker was a 19th-century United States journalist, homesteading entrepreneur, and Indian agent for the federal government. He is noted for his founding in 1870 of the Union Colony, a cooperative agricultural colony in present-day Greeley, Colorado...
, characterized as obdurate and patronizing Indian Agent at the White River Ute Agency in Colorado, was the very embodiment of this imperial philosophy.
In the years preceding the Milk Creek battle and Meeker Massacre, the idealistic, but ambitious and debt-ridden, Meeker had taken the advice of friend and mentor Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery...
to go west, where he made an ill-fated attempt to establish a utopian socialistic community at the site of present-day city of Greeley
Greeley, Colorado
The City of Greeley is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Weld County, Colorado, United States. Greeley is located in the region known as Northern Colorado. Greeley is situated north-northeast of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. According to the...
, Colorado. Failing there, he then secured the Indian Agent position through political connections.
The Ute tribe, ensconced protectively among the spires of the Colorado Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...
, were among the last of the native American horse nomads to be destructively encroached upon by settlers. Most importantly, horses had, in fact, gained totemic significance among the Utes. After the civil war each succeeding governmental administration, bowing to the acquisitiveness of the railroad, land and mining barons, had attempted to effectuate control of the natives by destroying these economic bases. Nathan Meeker with messianic zeal embarked upon a program to replace the Ute horses and bison with plowshares and seeds.
The Utes, passionately attached to their horses and culture, dug in their heels. In the late summer of 1879 some of the band's young men left the reservation for a buffalo hunt. Meeker considered this a flagrant violation of agency rules and then repeated his demand that the band kill some of their horses and ordered their race track plowed under. Tempers flared, culminating in a brief but portentous shoving match or fist fight between the Ute medicine man, Canalla and Meeker. The Agent reacted by wiring Department of Interior superiors for assistance. The Department, having no enforcement power, then contacted the War Department and no less a person than General
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...
for federal troops to quell what he considered to be the initiation of an Indian uprising.
Opening of hostilities
Philip Sheridan
Philip Henry Sheridan was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. His career was noted for his rapid rise to major general and his close association with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S...
in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
to General George Crook
George Crook
George R. Crook was a career United States Army officer, most noted for his distinguished service during the American Civil War and the Indian Wars.-Early life:...
in Omaha to send a force to back Meeker expeditiously. That force consisted of a mixture of Fort Steele infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...
, located east of Rawlins
Rawlins, Wyoming
Rawlins is a city in Carbon County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 8,538 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Carbon County...
, Wyoming
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...
and two companies of cavalry
Cavalry
Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the third oldest and the most mobile of the combat arms...
from Fort D.A. Russell
Fort D.A. Russell (Wyoming)
Fort D. A. Russell, also known as Fort Francis E. Warren, Francis E. Warren Air Force Base and Fort David A. Russell, was a post and base of operations for the United States Army, and later the Air Force, located in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The fort had been established in 1867 to protect workers for the...
outside Cheyenne
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Cheyenne is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Wyoming and the county seat of Laramie County. It is the principal city of the Cheyenne, Wyoming, Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Laramie County. The population is 59,466 at the 2010 census. Cheyenne is the...
to the White River Agency over 180 miles distant. On the morning of September 21, 1879 a column of about 175 men and 25 wagons departed Fort Steele for Rawlins under the command of Major
Major
Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...
Thomas Tipton Thornburgh, a West Point graduate and Civil War officer. By September 25, Thornburgh having been given only the vaguest of orders and possessing an equally imprecise knowledge of the situation at the Agency, dispatched a message to Meeker informing him of the column's location and requesting Meeker meet him on the trail for a strategy session. On or about this same date cavalry outriders reported seeing mounted Ute warriors in the distance; the buffalo hunters under Nicaagat, or Captain Jack, a young part-Apache sub-chief at the agency who had been raised by Mormons and served as a scout under General Crook.
Eventually, Jack and some of his men approached Thornburgh and asked where the column was headed. When told it was headed to the agency, the tribesmen sullenly departed only to return that night and inform the Major that to do so would be a treaty violation. Instead Jack suggested a combined party of five Utes and five officers ride to the agency for a meeting with Meeker. Fearing a trap, Thornburgh declined. Ironically, Meeker, in a last-ditch attempt to head off the looming catastrophe, had dispatched a rambling letter to Thornburgh requesting, as Jack had wanted, that he, Thornburgh, halt his column outside the reservation and, proceed to the agency with a small number for a peace conference. Thornburgh then provided a no less murky response, written and verbal, the latter leading the Indians to conclude he was moving forward with his entire command. Thornburgh’s scout, Joe Rankin reported seeing about twenty-five mounted warriors on the ridge in front of the column where the road crests a pass and dips into Coal Creek Canyon
Coal Creek, Boulder County, Colorado
Coal Creek, locally known as Coal Creek Canyon, is a census-designated place in Boulder, Gilpin, and Jefferson counties in the U.S. state of Colorado...
, an excellent place for an ambush.
Unknown to Thornburg his response to Meeker and subsequent actions had panicked the Utes at the agency who remembered all too clearly the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre
Sand Creek Massacre
As conflict between Indians and white settlers and soldiers in Colorado continued, many of the Cheyenne and Arapaho, including bands under Cheyenne chiefs Black Kettle and White Antelope, were resigned to negotiate peace. The chiefs had sought to maintain peace in spite of pressures from whites...
. They immediately assembled a fighting force of 200 to 300 warriors, mounted and afoot, armed with a wide variety of weapons. On September 28, more messages and warnings were sent and received by all three parties. Communication was chaotic and events had taken on a life of their own.
On September 29, Thornburgh led his column spearheaded by two companies, one from the 5th Cavalry and one from the 3rd Cavalry two miles ahead of the wagon train of supplies and infantry with another company of cavalry in a distant reserve position. He approached Milk Creek, a thick, meandering alkali slough slicing an arroyo
Arroyo (creek)
An arroyo , a Spanish word translated as brook, and also called a wash is usually a dry creek or stream bed—gulch that temporarily or seasonally fills and flows after sufficient rain. Wadi is a similar term in Africa. In Spain, a rambla has a similar meaning to arroyo.-Types and processes:Arroyos...
through a terraced, mile wide park bordered by steep ridges covered with pine, cedar, oak brush and sage. This, in fact, was the point of no return. They were about fifteen miles from the agency and, to the Utes, clearly in violation of the treaty provisions. Concealed by the ridges, brush and trees they had dispersed and waited.
Tension within Thornburgh’s ranks was palpable with many of the soldiers probably remembering the Little Big Horn disaster only a little over three years ago. Because the expedition was not to be construed as offensive the men were issued only forty rounds of ammunition. A reconnaissance team comprising about four officers including Major Thornburgh and two scouts probed cautiously toward the crest of Yellow Jacket Pass
Yellow Jacket, Colorado
Yellow Jacket is an unincorporated town and a U.S. Post Office located in Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The Yellow Jacket Post Office has the ZIP Code 81335.-Geography:Yellow Jacket is located at .-History:...
seeing as they proceeded mounted warriors passing back and forth along its crest. At almost exactly twelve o'clock noon Lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
Samuel Cherry waved his hat either in peaceful greeting to the Utes or to signal Major Thornburgh. A shot rent the still mountain air followed by a brief silence and then fusillades from both sides.
Siege
Thornburgh, dashing about organizing a defensible position with wagons, animals and infantry on an adobe bench one hundred yards above Milk Creek fell mortally wounded from a bullet wound to his chest. The battle was less than an hour old. Command passed to the wounded Captain Scott J. Payne, who tried to pass it on to Captain Lawson the latter refusing saying Payne was still able to command. Within hours of the first shot fired at Milk Creek the Utes remaining at the White River Agency received word of the battle and ran amok killing and burning, sealing as their fate.
Virtually all of the expedition's deaths happened before 5:30 the evening of September 29 when the foundations of the defenses were established. At that time those defenses consisted of a circle of remaining wagons within which 150 defenders had dug another circle of seventeen trenches each two to four feet deep and approximately seventy-five feet long. These revetments were reinforced with boxes and sacks from the wagons and dead animals. From the first the animals had been targeted by the Indians at the end of the first day's fighting consisted of approximately 127 mules and 183 horses. The Ute sharpshooters aimed to wound many of the animals inside the enclosure so their agony and stampeding would cause even more chaos and injury among the troops. Those deaths coupled with the humans killed in action inadvertently provided the Utes one of their next hopeful tactics; capitulation by gasification.
Rescue
However, the Utes had incompletely surrounded the trapped soldiers and during the night couriers were dispatched north for reinforcements which arrived three days later in the form of Captain Francis Dodge and thirty-five men of D Company 9th Cavalry plus two civilians.Though haled by the besieged as saviors, the men of the 9th Cavalry simply joined in the siege with food and ammunition. On October 5, twenty officers and 234 men the 5th cavalry led by Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
Wesley Merritt
Wesley Merritt
Wesley Merritt was a general in the United States Army during the American Civil War and the Spanish-American War. He is noted for distinguished service in the cavalry.-Early life:...
from Fort D.A. Russell near Cheyenne, Wyoming arrived after a forced march of 170 miles. Chief Jack, realizing no good purpose could be served by continuing the engagement surrendered with a piece of white tent canvas.
Aftermath
Ultimately, the army failed to prevent the Meeker Massacre and the Utes lost their horses and lush mountain reservation and in 1881 were removed to the Utah desert. The army and militiamen lost thirteen dead and forty-four wounded, most of them in the first twenty-four hours of the engagement. Eleven soldiers were awarded the Medal of HonorMedal of Honor
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is bestowed by the President, in the name of Congress, upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her...
and approximately thirty were decorated for heroic conduct in one of the most decorated battles of the Indian wars. Chief Jack estimated that nineteen warriors were killed and seven were unaccounted for though other sources say the Utes lost thirty-seven killed in both the Meeker incident and the battle.