"A Look Back"

The Stories presented here are about people and events during the early days when this corner of Colorado was first settled.

Joseph S. Collom, Pioneer Axial Basin Rancher
By Compiled by Chuck Mack

Pioneer Axail Basin Rancher Relates Experiences of Early Days In Northwestern Colorado--(part one) By Joseph S. Collom From the Pages of the Craig Empire-Courier---Wednesday July 18th, 1934 Compiled and Written by: Chuck Mack--January 4th, 2006

I was born in Wokhampton, England in 1851. My uncle, John Collom, was living in America when my parents died, leaving me, two brothers and a sister, orphans. Uncle John was working in the Comstock mines at Montezuma and we joined him. I was sixteen years-old, big enough to work. My first job was hauling quartz at Georgetown. I freighted ahead of the railroad on Clear Creek. We lived in that country seven years. By that time my sister had married and she and her husband and we boys decided to come to the western slope. I don't remember whether we came through Middle Park or around by Laramie, but we put in the summer of 1874 driving around Bear River Valley. We were looking for homes--a place where we could run some cattle. We had two light wagons and four yoke of oxen. Joe Morgan had a sutler's store at the mouth of Elk Head and traded with the Indians. There was hardly anybody in the country. I remembered Jim Baker. People said he and Major Oakes had surveyed White River by tying a red rag on a buggy wheel. They measured distance by counting the rag every time the wheel turned. When our family arrived on Bear River we had only ten dollars between us. There was a settlement at Hahns Peak and we went there. Then we crossed the divide to Snake River and worked for Old Man Reed on his ranch close to where Baggs is now. That was the first job I had in this country. We earned enough to buy our winters grub and built a cabin on the north bank of Snake River just east of the Muddy. After it started to snow we did not see anybody until spring. Bob Dixon had a ranch on Snake River west of the Muddy and when the breakup came we felled a cottonwood across the Muddy for a bridge and went to his house and told him that we were up against it. Our grub was gone and our clothing worn out. He had no work for us but we made a deal with him to grub sagebrush at $2 an acre and board. I remember the first time I went to White River. Joe Rankin freighted from Rawlins to the Indian agency with a four-mule outfit. He got stuck once and I took a thousand pounds of his load on my light wagon and went to the agency with him. The old agency was located above the mouth of Coal Creek-- just below where White River comes out of the canon. We delivered the goods to Agent Littlefield and loaded back with beaver. Perkins had a sutler's store on Snake River where Dixon is now. He had the mail contract between Rawlins and Meeker. Jerry Hoff carried the mail on horseback once a month. I carried the mail for Perkins after Hoff quit. I made the trip every two weeks; had a packhorse and camped where each night overtook me. If the young fellows nowadays had to go through the things we did in those days, I don't know what they would do. There were a few settlers coming into the country all the time but not many. Hulett and Torrence were on Bear River and so was Tom Iles. It kept me busy most of the time with the mail and I didn't see them often. I put the mail through on time all the first winter and was proud of my record, but along in March the snow got deep. On my way to White River when I got to the mouth of Fortification I could not go any further with my horse. Dick Clements was Postmaster and loaned me some snowshoes. I went fifty miles to the agency on them. Danforth and Littlefield were both agents at White River before Meeker. Indian affairs were getting worse all the time. We settlers knew that there was trouble coming to the agency. When Meeker came he had a lot of big ideas. Danforth had hauled wheat from Fort Steel for the Indians. Meeker wanted to save money and make the Utes raise their own wheat. That didn't suit the Indians. Next he moved the agency to Powell Park. The Indians said "No move him. That winter range for horses." Meeker did everything he could to make the Indians mad. Once a four-horse load of flour for the Indians was unloaded on Bear River. The Utes asked Meeker to get it for them. Meeker said "I can't touch it until it is delivered here at the agency." The Indians didn't understand things like that and started to act up. They gave me a scare once. My mail route came down Fortification; I had a canoe at the head of Williams Fork River, put my pack into it and swam my horse behind my canoe; went over Iles Mountain and dropped off the bluff where Iles’ house is now; then up milk Creek and over Yellow Jacket Pass to Meeker. This time I'm telling you about, I got as far as the big flat south of Iles’ house when I saw some Indians. They watched me for a minute, then came for me lickety-split. They had on their war paint and my first thought was to run. A man thinks quickly at a time like that and I knew their horses were faster than mine, so I stopped and faced them. They came up to me and Kannucky Johnson's horse hit me. He bumped me hard, made my head jolt. "Johnson." I said "let me tell you something. Don't you ever run at a white man that way again. If I’d brought my six-shooter on this trip I'd have killed you sure as the world. Then there would have been trouble for every body. Remember that a white man will shoot when he sees Indians coming like you were and" (I stuck my finger into his naked belly) "the first place he'd shoot would be right there." They rode off and left me. When Perkins mail contract ran out my brother John and I went to work at the agency. John got to be an interpreter. The Indians called him "Toro Comeence." Meeker's wife and daughter arrived at Rawlins the latter part of June. I took a government team and drove them from the Union Pacific to the agency. Winfield Scott Fullerton, a Greeleyite, was their escort. I remember we camped one night at a spring by Fortification rocks, twenty five miles north of Bear River. I didn't tell the women that the rocks were a rattlesnake den as that would have upset them. They didn't have a tent and slept on the ground. White men weren't allowed on the reservation and while I was working for Meeker he heard of a trespasser. Meeker told me, "Go find that man's business." I took an Indian woman named Jane and her husband, Pah-Veets, and a packhorse. Pah-Veets rode ahead and he never took his eyes off that man's track. Jane rode behind and never took her eyes off the hills. We rode on a trot, uphill and down. Finally the track went into a little wash and Jane said "There he is! There he is! Across the wash! What we do now?" "Let's ride up to him." I said "and have a talk." He was nothing but a new settler riding around to see if he could sell some butter and eggs and such stuff. That squaw, Jane Pah-Veets, was called Red Jacket Jane. They say she was helping Mrs. Meeker in the kitchen, heard Mr. Meeker say the soldiers were coming and told the Indians about it. That made the Indians so mad they killed all the men at the agency. Jane could talk good English and had lived with the white people and she told me she would rather live with Indians then with whites and be called a "squaw".