Josephine Meeker, was a teacher and physician at the White River Indian Agency in Colorado Territory, where her father Nathan Meeker was the United States (US) agent. On September 29, 1879, he and 10 of his male employees were killed in a Ute attack, in what became known as the Meeker Massacre. Josephine, her mother Arvilla Meeker, and Mrs. Shadruck Price and her two children were taken captive and held hostage by the Ute tribe for 23 days.
Photograph of Josephine Meeker
Etching which depicts the aftermath of the Meeker Massacre, when women and children were taken captive by Ute Indians. Her father's grave is shown in the lower left corner.
"The Captive" 1891 picture by E. Irving Couse. Alleged either to have been based upon an incident involving a Cayuse Chief Two Crows and an 1847 Whitman Massacre survivor Lorinda Bewly or possibly upon the experience of Josephine Meeker
Nathan Cook Meeker was a 19th-century American journalist, homesteader, entrepreneur, and Indian agent for the federal government. He is noted for his founding in 1870 of the Union Colony, a cooperative agricultural colony in present-day Greeley, Colorado.
Nathan Meeker
The site of the Meeker massacre.
Meeker's former home, now The Meeker Memorial Museum in Greeley, Colorado
An etching that appeared in the December 6, 1879 edition of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper depicts the aftermath of the "Meeker Massacre." Meeker grave at lower left; W.H. Post grave at lower right.
