The Life Radiant Part 9

Flagstaff has no little archaeological interest, also; the famous cliff dwellings of the Zuni tribe, which Frank Cus.h.i.+ng explored and studied so deeply, are within a few miles of the town, located on the summit and sides of an extinct volcano. They now present the appearance of black holes, a few yards deep, often surrounded with loose and broken stone walls, and broken pottery abounds all over the vicinity. The most remarkable group of the cliff dwellers is to be seen in Walnut Canon, eight miles from Flagstaff. This is one of the deep gorges, the cliffs rising several hundred feet above the valley; and they are sheer terraced walls of limestone, running for over three miles. In these terraces, in the most singularly inaccessible places, are dozens of the cliff dwellings. Some of them are divided into compartments by means of cemented walls, and they retain traces of quite a degree of civilization.

The petrified forests of Arizona are a most extraordinary spectacle, with its acres of utter desolation in its giant ma.s.ses of dead trees lying prostrate on the ground. Arizona is a land of the most mysterious charm. The Grand Canon alone is worth a pilgrimage around the world to see,--a spectacle so bewildering that words are powerless to suggest the living, changing picture. "Long may the visitor loiter upon the rim, powerless to shake loose from the charm, tirelessly intent upon the silent transformations until the sun is low in the west. Then the canon sinks into mysterious purple shadow, the far s.h.i.+numo Altar is tipped with a golden ray, and against a leaden horizon the long line of the Echo Cliffs reflects a soft brilliance of indescribable beauty, a light that, elsewhere, surely never was on sea or land. Then darkness falls, and should there be a moon, the scene in part revives in silver light, a thousand spectral forms projected from inscrutable gloom; dreams of mountains, as in their sleep they brood on things eternal."

[Sidenote: A Tragic Idyl of Colorado.]

I hung my verses in the wind, Time and tide their faults may find.

All were winnowed through and through, Five lines lasted sound and true; Five were smelted in a pot Than the South more fierce and hot; These the siroc could not melt, Fire their fiercer flaming felt, And the meaning was more white Than July's meridian light.

Suns.h.i.+ne cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know.

Have you eyes to find the five Which five hundred did survive?

--EMERSON.

Not only verses, but lives, are "winnowed through and through," and time and tide reveal their faults and their virtues. In the history of the State of Colorado there is one man whose life and work stand out in n.o.ble pre-eminence; whose character is one to inspire and to reward study as an example of intellectual and moral greatness. This man is Nathan Cook Meeker, the founder of the town of Greeley, Colorado; the founder and for many years the editor of the Greeley "Tribune;" later appointed by President Hayes, in a somewhat confidential capacity, the Indian Commissioner at White River, where he died the death of a hero, and where, marking the spot of the tragic ma.s.sacre, the town of Meeker now stands, among the mountains of the Snowy Range.

Mr. Meeker, who is one of the heroes of pioneer civilization, founded this town in the very desert of sand and sage-brush. Its first inception is a wonderful idyl of the extension of progress into the unknown West.

The vision of the bands of singing angels in the air that fell upon the shepherds in the Judean plains was hardly more wonderful than the vision out of which the town of Greeley arose from the desert. On a December night in the late sixties Mr. Meeker found himself one evening standing under the brilliant starry skies of Colorado near the foot of Pike's Peak. The marvellous splendor of the scene filled his mind with sublime picturings. In the very air before him he seemed to see a city arise in the desert--a city of beautiful ideals, of high purposes, of temperance, education, culture, and religion. The vision made upon him that permanent impression which the heavenly vision, revealed for one instant to a life, forever makes, however swiftly it may be withdrawn; however deep and dark the eclipse into which it fades and seems forever lost.

To Mr. Meeker had been granted the angelic vision. The ideal had been revealed, and it was revealed in order that it might be realized in the outer and actual world. He felt the power, the nameless thrill of enchantment that pervades this wonderful country. One who is a poet in heart and soul has said of this Pike's Peak region:--

"Over the range is another world--a happy valley hundreds of miles in extent, fenced in with beauty and joy; palisaded with G.o.d's own temples; roofed with crystal and gold, and afloat in dream life; perpetual youth in thought and growth--all of it life to the soul; music and rapture to the weary traveller of earth. Oh, the leaping ecstasy of it by day and by night, and at the dawn!"

This indescribable ecstasy of the Colorado air communicated itself to Mr. Meeker. He went home to New York; he called a meeting in Cooper Inst.i.tute; Horace Greeley presided, and Mr. Meeker outlined his plans to the large audience. He presented them, also, in full detail in the columns of the "Tribune," and the result was that in 1870 he led a colony of some seven hundred to this most favorable site--now mid-way between two state capitols--fifty miles north of Denver and fifty miles south of Cheyenne; he laid out the town with broad boulevards and double rows of shade-trees while yet they lived in tents, and the shade-trees seen in his imagination are now an established fact. Greeley is to-day a town embowered in trees. The first work was to dig a ca.n.a.l at a cost of sixty thousand dollars, this being the initial experiment of upland irrigation. Such is, in outline, the history of Greeley, which the colony desired to name Meeker--for its founder--but which Horace Greeley's friend and a.s.sociate editor insisted should bear its present name. Greeley is known as the "garden city" of Colorado, and that it was founded in faith and in ideals has been a determining fact in its quality of life and its phenomenal progress.

Nathan Cook Meeker was born in the "Western Reserve," in Ohio, in 1814, coming of the order of people whom Emerson characterized as those "who go without the new carpet and send the boy to college." Behind him were a long list of distinguished ancestry, men who through successive generations had stood for achievements. Mr. Meeker in his youth taught school, went into journalism, was connected with the New York "Mirror,"

and later was a.s.sociated with George D. Prentice on the Louisville "Journal," now the "Courier-Journal," edited by the brilliant Henry Watterson. A versatile writer in both prose and verse, he wrote two or three books, one of which he dedicated to President Pierce. He married a woman of great force and exaltation of character, a native of Connecticut, and a descendant of Elder Brewster. She shared his aims and ideals.

In the decade of 1860-70 Horace Greeley, who was always waving his divining rod to see if it indicated the proximity of genius, discovered Mr. Meeker, and invited him to become the agricultural editor of the "Tribune," succeeding Solon Robinson. Mr. Meeker's work made a strong impression on the reading public of the day, and even Emerson inquired as to the authors.h.i.+p of some of Mr. Meeker's editorial work, which won the appreciation of the Concord seer.

In 1868 Mr. Meeker made a trip to the West for the "Tribune," writing a series of valuable letters embodying his observations of the country. It was during this journey that the night came which lends itself to imaginative picturing with dramatic vividness when, just after Christmas, he stood in the Garden of the G.o.ds near the foot of Pike's Peak, while the stars of the Colorado skies blazed above him, and, as if by a flash of vision saw a town arise in the desert. The vision fell upon him like an inspiration. Founding towns seemed, indeed, to run in the family, as one of his ancestors had founded the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, naming it after his wife.

Mr. Meeker returned to the Tribune office with his dream of a beautiful city to arise out of the sand and sage-brush of the desert. An idealist himself, Mr. Meeker had also the good fortune of having married a woman capable of sharing ideal dreams and of rising to the heights of sacrifice, and she, too, embraced his new enthusiasm.

"Go ahead," replied Mr. Greeley, when Mr. Meeker mentioned his new project, "the 'Tribune' will back you."

A meeting was then called in Cooper Inst.i.tute, as before stated, Horace Greeley presiding, and John Russell Young entering into the idea with sympathy. Mr. Meeker presented his project of a Union colony to establish itself in Colorado. Of the conditions he said:--

"The persons with whom I would be willing to a.s.sociate must be temperance men and ambitious to establish good society, and among as many as fifty, ten should have as much as ten thousand dollars each, or twenty should have five thousand dollars each, while others may have from two thousand to one thousand dollars and upward. For many to go so far without means could only result in disaster."

The members were to each contribute one hundred and fifty-five dollars to a fund to purchase and prepare the land. It was in April of 1869 that the committee made the purchase of forty thousand acres, located between the Cache la Poudre and the South Platte rivers, twenty-five miles from the Rocky Mountains and in full sight of Long's Peak. Greeley has a beautiful situation, and a perfection of climate that perhaps exists hardly anywhere else in all Colorado. Whatever the heat of the day, the nights are cool. The days are so bright, so beautiful, that they seem a very foretaste of paradise.

In the spring of 1870 the seven hundred members of Union Colony, with their families, arrived.

Mr. Meeker further stipulated:--

"In particular should moral and religious sentiments prevail, for without these qualities man is nothing. At the same time tolerance and liberality should also prevail. One thing more is equally important.

Happiness, wealth, and the glory of a state spring from the family, and it should be our aim and a high ambition to preserve the family pure in all its relations, and to labor with the best efforts life and strength can give to make the home comfortable, to beautify and to adorn it, and to supply it with whatever will make it attractive and loved."

He added: "I make the point that two important objects will be gained by such a colony. First, schools, refined society, and all the advantages of life in an old country; while, on the contrary, where settlements are made by the old method, people are obliged to wait twenty, forty, or more years. Second, with free homesteads as a basis, with the sale of reserved lots for the general good, the greatly increased value of real estate will be for the benefit of all the people, and not for schemers and speculators. In the success of this colony a model will be presented for settling the remainder of the vast territory of our country."

Every deed granted forbade the sale of intoxicating liquors. The town was founded in the purest moral ideals of education, culture, faith, and prayer, and Greeley is everywhere pointed out to the tourist in Colorado as one of the most interesting features of the Centennial state.

Of the town Mr. Meeker himself said in one of his letters to the "Tribune": "Individuals may rise or fall, may live or die; property may be lost or gained; but the colony as a whole will prosper, and the spot on which we labor so long as the world stands will be a centre of intelligence and activity."

In 1876 Mr. Meeker was appointed commissioner from Colorado to the Centennial Exposition. He was strongly talked of for Congress, but his destiny led elsewhere.

Early in the seventies he founded "The Greeley Tribune," which he edited with conspicuous ability, making it the leading country paper of that part of the state.

The Indian troubles became a prominent problem of the government in the decade of the seventies, and this question deeply engaged Mr. Meeker's attention. He had his own theories regarding their treatment--ideas much in advance of his time, and which in some respects have been adopted in the best Indian legislation in Was.h.i.+ngton within the past two years. One point in Mr. Meeker's policy was that "work should go hand in hand and to some extent precede school education"--an insight comprising much of the truth taught to-day by the more eminent leaders of industrial education, and one which the recent Indian legislation, during the fifty-seventh Congress, has recognized. Mr. Meeker believed that the Indian could be advanced into the peaceful arts of civilized life, and this aim he held with conspicuous courage and fidelity.

With a desire to carry out these theories, Mr. Meeker applied for and received, under President Hayes, the post of commissioner to the Utes on White River in Colorado, his appointment being, as before stated, of a somewhat confidential nature, and charged with more important responsibilities than are usually included in this office. Mr. Meeker entered on the duties of this position with much that same high and n.o.ble purpose that inspired General Armstrong in his work at Hampton.

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 ma.s.sacre. 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 ma.s.sacred, 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 canon, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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!"

A little mountain town of some five hundred inhabitants, named Meeker, for the heroic man who there met his tragic death, now marks the site of the ma.s.sacre. Even at this day it is forty-five miles from the nearest railroad station, Rifle, on the Denver and Rio Grand scenic route. The little town reminds one of Florence, Italy, in the way it is surrounded by amethyst mountains, and the White River on which it is located is far more beautiful than the turbid Arno. The name of Nathan Cook Meeker is held in the greatest reverence by the people of the entire region.

On an August afternoon more than twenty years after this tragedy a visitor to Colorado stood on the site of the ma.s.sacre under a sky whose intense blue rivalled that of Italy. With the peaceful flow of the river murmuring in the air and the hum of insects in the purple-flowered alfalfa, the tragic scene seemed to rise again and impressed its lesson,--the ethical lesson of apparent defeat, disaster, and death in the outer and temporal world, while, on the spiritual side, it was triumph and glory and the entrance to the life more abundant. The man might be ma.s.sacred,--the idea for which he stood cannot die. It rises from the apparent death and is resurrected in the form of new and n.o.bler and more widely pervading ideals which communicate their inspiration to all humanity.

In the cemetery of Greeley lie buried the body of Mr. Meeker and of his daughter Josephine, whose early death followed close upon the tragedy.

The aged widow, now in her eighty-ninth year, still survives, occupying her home in this Colorado town. Mrs. Meeker retains all her clearness of intellect; all her keen interest in the affairs of the day. She reads her daily newspapers, writes letters that are models of beautiful thought and exquisite feeling, and still continues to write the verse which through life has been the natural expression of her poetic nature.

Mrs. Meeker writes verses as a bird sings--with a natural gift full of spontaneous music.

The work of Nathan Cook Meeker in all that makes for industrial and social progress and moral ideals contributed incalculable aid to Colorado. All over the state the tourist is asked, "Have you seen Greeley? That is our ideal town."

During all the years of Mr. Meeker's residence in Colorado he remained a staff correspondent of the "Tribune." Horace Greeley went to the West and visited the Colony; and in the fine high school building of Greeley to-day, there hang, side by side, the portraits of Horace Greeley and Nathan Cook Meeker.

In this world in which we live events are not finished when they have receded into the past. They persist in the texture of life. They stand for certain fulfilments, and, like Banquo's ghost, they will "not down"

until their complete significance is worked out to its final conclusion.

"Say not the struggle naught availeth."