"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 Axial Basin Rancher Relates Experiences of Early Days In Northwestern Colorado--(part two) 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

The White River Indians had horses and sheep. They didn't have cattle. The government had six or seven hundred head of cattle branded I. D. (Indian Department) that they ran for the Utes. These belonged to the Indians, I guess, but the government took charge of them. I remember an Indian once, named Jenkins, shot another Indian, a medicine man, right at the agency. Jenkins wife had died and he killed the medicine man for not saving her. The medicine man lived for two days after he was hit. In 1878 I took up a ranch on Collom Creek and cut a hundred tons of hay on the meadows. Next summer I cut the hay again. There was no market for this hay. In the late summer of 1879 a big party of Utes went north on a buffalo hunt. They had guns and lots of ammunition, and met Major Thornburg north of Bear River coming with the soldiers. They told him, "If you want to see Meeker, go ahead but camp them soldiers outside the reservation." "I can't do that," said Thornburg "I'm ordered to take the soldiers to White River and I will have to do it." The buffalo hunters all turned back to the reservation. At this time Perkins had a sutler’s tent on Spring Creek, where Axial is now. It was a summer store on the edge of the reservation. He carried a stock of guns, ammunition, beads, paint and butcher knives. Mike Sweet was tending store for him and Black Wilson was packing the mail from Rawlins to Meeker. Black always stopped at the tent as he went by. I knew it was mail time and rode to the sutler’s tent to get news from the outside. Black Wilson told us Major Thornburg was coming with some soldiers. "Why don't you sell him that hay you've got piled up on Collom Creek?" "That's an idea," I said. "You're a better talker then I am and more used to that kind of thing. You see him for me, will you?" The soldiers were coming along what we called the "old government road" and Black went to meet them. They had traveled faster than he figured and he saw by their tracks that they had gone by. He followed them and came to some Indians who knew Black, rode up to him and said, "Go back!" Black Wilson understood Indians and knew they meant it. "There's going to be a fight," he said, when he got back to the tent. "What had we better do?" Mike Sweet had been digging a cellar beside the tent and we decided to bury the guns under the loose earth. We no more than had them covered when some Indians came in sight. They rode up and said, "We want guns, bullets." "All gone," says Sweet. "Me send ‘em back to Snake River." The Indians rode around the store in a little circle and came back. "Heep lie. No wagon tracks. We want ‘em guns." Sweet thought fast. "Me send ‘em with pack horses." The three of us were sitting on the guns when he said it. The Indians rode off At twelve o'clock that night we dug up the guns, loaded the trinkets in a wagon and set out for Bear River. We got to the crossing where Duffy's ranch is, by morning. Here we met the Morgan boys with a bunch of horses. They were getting them out of the country as fast as they could. We decided to camp and let our stock eat. Black Wilson said "You boys stay here and I'll ride on to Snake River and see what Perkins wants us to do." After he'd gone I walked up on a hill to look around. Then I came back to camp and said. "Boys I can smell smoke. They’re having a fight." It doesn't sound reasonable that you could smell powder fifteen miles away, but I did. Joe Rankin has told me about the fight. The soldiers started up Milk Creek where it runs north from Yellow Jacket Pass. The main road went up the bottom of the gulch. There was another road I used sometimes when I carried the mail that went up the ridge east of the creek. The officers and the light wagons went up that road. The heavy wagons and most of the soldiers went up the bottom of the gulch. The Indians got between the officers and the men and all around them too, lying on their bellies in the oak brush. Rankin said to Thornburg, “My God, Major! Cut loose on them. Can't you see what they are up to?" "My orders are to let the Indians shoot first," said Thornburg. The Indians did and after that it was too late for the soldiers to do anything. When we smelled the smoke on Bear River we didn't wait to hear from Perkins, but pulled out with his stuff and delivered it to him on Snake River. We hadn't been there but a couple of days when General Merritt came along with a lot of soldiers. Wilbur Hugus made a business of following soldiers with a sutler's outfit. Wilbur was a brother of Judge Hugus who ran a chain of stores in this country ten and twenty years later. When Merritt’s soldiers piled in on White River, Wilbur Hugus followed them. He wanted to get his goods moved to the new fort. I had a team of oxen that could walk as fast as horses and got the job. On the way to White River we camped one night on the battleground. The dead were not buried very deep. Soldiers came back later and moved them. The grass had been burnt and my oxen quit us in the night. Next morning I left Wilbur Hugus in camp and set out to find them. I rode all that day. They had gone home to my place on Collom Creek. I found them in the meadow and started back after dark. I went by the way of Mountain Meadows. Captain Henry was camped there with the White Horse cavalry. He kept me prisoner all night and when I went to the battleground next day my load was gone. I thought it was stolen but found out later that Wilbur Hugus had walked 25 miles to Meeker and sent a man back for it. There was a big camp of soldiers where Meeker is now and they were busy cutting down cottonwood trees. The man who had the contract to furnish the soldiers with beef did not show up, so two other fellows got a new contract. They furnished the soldiers with beef all winter-- bought four steers from Baggs the cattleman to do it with. Nobody could prove anything but we figured they must have butchered ID cattle to fill the contract. There was a lot of this kind of thing going on. You can figure this; if there was a white man around an Indian agency or any army camp he wasn't there for his health. I know for the fact that rations were shipped to White River, condemned, bought and sold back to the soldiers. Things got so bad United States Deputy Marshall MacGarger was sent to Meeker to make some arrests. MacGarger was a corker, whiskey controlled him. I recollect he deputized me and some other boys to help him make an arrest. We rode two hundred fifty miles, bedrocking three horses, and when we caught our man the marshal decided not to arrest him. I sold my ranch on Collom Creek a good many years ago to Gossard, the corset man. I spend my winters now with my daughter in California. This isn't an old man's country.