le 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 canyon,
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 m