General Hall of Colorado, who is said to be the most authoritative historian of that state, thus wrote of Mr. Meeker's entrance on the agency at White River.
"In the spring of 1878 Mr. Meeker, founder of Union Colony and the now beautiful city of Greeley, at his own solicitation was appointed resident agent, succeeding several who had attempted to carry this benevolent enterprise into effect, but without material success. He was a venerable philanthropist, eminently representing the humanitarian school of the Atlantic seaboard, under the example of Horace Greeley, whom he revered above all the public men of his time.
"Thoroughly imbued with the purpose of educating, refining, and Christianizing the wild rovers of the mountains, and longing for an opportunity to put his cherished theories into practice, confident of his ability to bring about a complete transformation of their lives and character, he entered upon the work with deep enthusiasm. His ideals were splendid, eminently worthy of the man and the cause; but, unhappily, he had to deal with savages, of whose natures he was profoundly ignorant. He took with him his wife and youngest daughter, Josephine, and also a number of mechanics from Union Colony to aid in the great work of regeneration and redemption."
The Honorable Alva Adams of Pueblo, Colorado, ex-Governor of the state, writing of Nathan Cook Meeker, said:—
"Meeker was a patriot, and no soldier upon the field of battle was more loyal, and no one in the annals of our country has ever made a more awful sacrifice than the Meekers. But I need not tell the story. Back of it is the incompetent treatment of the Indians that was responsible for the Meeker massacre. Upon the government rests the blood and outrage of the Meekers. Nor can I recall that the Indians were ever adequately punished for the crime. It is a black spot."
Mrs. Meeker entered into the views and the work of her husband in this new field with sympathetic comprehension and sustaining aid. Their youngest daughter, Josephine, who shared the idealism of the family, opened a free school for the Indians.
Mr. Meeker encountered peculiar difficulties over a period of several months, during which he appealed, unsuccessfully, for government aid and protection. General William T. Sherman, in his report (1879) to the Secretary of War, alludes to these troubles; General Pope was familiar with the situation, and Major Thornburg, at Fort Steele, held himself ready to send protection to Mr. Meeker at a day's notice; but the government failed to give that notice.
The tragedy came swiftly and suddenly, like the fates in a Greek drama, and on September 29, 1879, Mr. Meeker was brutally massacred, his wife and daughter were taken into captivity, where, for twenty-three days, until rescued by General Adams, they endured unspeakable sufferings, and the agency buildings and their contents were burned.
To the awful spectacle of her husband's mutilated body, his wife—a woman of gentle birth and breeding—was led by the Indians, in their savage cruelty, to thus first learn of the tragedy. Through her agony of tears she pleaded to be allowed to stop and kiss the cold lips of him whose faithful, tender companion and wife she had been for thirty-five years. This last sacred consolation was denied her. With diabolical glee they reviled her tears and her prayers.
Her daughter Josephine, a girl of twenty, with the Evangeline type of face, was torn from her arms and hurried away into a deep, lonely cañon, which is now called "Josephine Valley." Mrs. Meeker herself was shot in her hip and left lame for life. She was thrust on a horse without even a saddle and carried off into the lonely mountains in this terrible captivity. Yet so sublime is the character of Mrs. Meeker in her deep religious feeling that in this moment of supreme desolation,—her husband's murdered body left alone on the ground; her daughter snatched from her arms; her home in smoking ruins behind her,—so remarkable is her character in its religious exaltation, that even in this hour of supreme agony she could say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!"