Legends of the Old West - BUFFALO SOLDIERS Ep. 3 | “The Meeker Incident”

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

In northern Colorado, a column of the 5th Cavalry becomes trapped near Milk Creek during an ambush by Ute warriors. Two days into the siege, a troop of 9th Cavalry arrives to help its struggling comrades. Sergeant Henry Johnson leads a life saving mission to bring water to the wounded. Thanks to our sponsor, Quince! Use this link for Free Shipping and 365-day returns: Quince.com/lotow Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was just after midday on September 29, 1879, when Major Thomas Thornburg and his command stopped to water their horses at the shallow stream marked on their maps as Milk Creek. Today, that stream winds through the high country of northwestern Colorado, not far from the town of Meeker. The Ute tribe had called it Little River. Years later, white settlers gave it a new name after a wagon overturned while crossing the stream and spilled its load of milk cans. At the end of 1879, after a long summer,

the water in Milk Creek wasn't much, but it was a necessary stop for Thornburg's command. Thornburg had marched south from Fort Fred Steele near Rollins, Wyoming, with nearly 200 men. He had three troops of the fifth cavalry, a company of the fourth infantry, and a supply train of 25 wagons. Their mission was to answer the desperate plea of Indian agent Nathan Meeker, who had clashed violently with the Ute at the White River Agency. Meeker's alarm had brought soldiers deep into Ute country, and warriors were waiting. As the cavalrymen watered their horses at the stream, hundreds of Ute warriors lay hidden on the ridges above.

Their leader was Chief Collarrow. He was heavyset and not the prototypical specimen of a warrior chief, but he was cunning. At his signal, the hills erupted with rifle fire. The first volley cut through Thornburg's command with devastating force. The major fell dead in the opening minute, one of 13 soldiers who were killed almost instantly as the battle tilted hard against the army. The survivors circled their wagons and dragged the carcasses of horses into place near the wagons. The soldiers covered the bodies of the horses with dirt until they acted as defensive earthworks. Along the banks of Milk Creek, 190 men were trapped.

The ridges above gave the Ute command of the ground, and every movement inside the wagon circle drew fire. Soon, the stench of rotting animals and soldiers hung heavy in the air, and drew. clouds of flies. Chief Colerose warriors jeered at the spectacle and taunted the soldiers to come out and fight. As night fell, Captain J. Scott Payne of the 5th Cavalry assumed command. He sent couriers into the dark, hoping against hope that someone would break through the lines and bring reinforcements. The next day, a courier found Captain Francis Dodge and D troop of the 9th Cavalry. The The Buffalo soldiers were on patrol near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and Dodge quickly issued 225 rounds of ammunition to each man.

The troop pretended to make camp to fool any Ute scouts who might be watching. And then after dark, the troop rode hard through the night to reach Milk Creek. Before sunrise on October 2nd, the trapped soldiers of the 5th cavalry heard hoofbeats. They froze as they waited to see if the sound meant rescue or ruin. From the ridges above them, the warriors began to chant something that the soldiers couldn't understand. The quick bursts loosely translated to the black-white men. It meant buffalo soldiers.

Thirty-five cavalry men of D-Troop arrived to help the 190 men who were trapped along the banks of Milk Creek. The problem was D-Troop couldn't break the siege. ended up becoming part of it, and the battle dragged on for three more painful days. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling a collection of stories about the famous Buffalo soldiers, the courageous black soldiers of the infantry and cavalry who served in the West after the Civil War.

This is episode three, the meeker incident. The Embers of the Battle of Milk Creek had been smoldering for years, and in the late 1870s, they roared to life like a wildfire. The Ute of Colorado had lived for generations as hunters and horsemen, Their way of life followed the rhythm of the seasons, hunting buffalo, moving camps, and tending herds. To the tribes of the Great Plains, horses were wealth, mobility, and freedom. But after more than 10 years of nonstop warfare in the West, few tribes could claim any sense of freedom. From Dakota Territory in the north to Texas in the south, the U.S. Army had subdued the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, Nezperse, and dozens of others.

The Apache in Arizona and New Mexico would continue to fight for several more years. But for the Ute in the northern Rocky Mountain region, the final reckoning was coming. The U.S. government wanted the Ute to settle on farms, cut their long hair, send their children to boarding schools, and worship the Christian god in churches. The Ute resisted, and every year the tension grew worse. A year before the battle at Milt Creek, those tensions nearly exploded on the Laplata, River. In 1878, a dispute over land and rations turned into an armed confrontation between Ute and settlers. Shots were fired, warriors gathered, and the situation threatened to ignite a war.

Somehow, cooler heads prevailed on both sides, and the conflict ended without bloodshed. But the truce was fragile, and tensions rose again in 1879. The trouble started at a Ute reservation called the White River Agency in northwestern Colorado. The agency was supervised by Nathan Meeker. He was a former newspaperman, a man of strong ideals and stronger convictions. Meeker had once been a utopian reformer in Ohio, writing about communal living and moral progress. When he took the position as Indian agent, he carried the same vision, with him. Meeker believed that the Ute could be, quote, saved if they abandoned their nomadic ways

and took up farming. He wrote glowing reports to readers in the East about how he would transform them into civilized people. But his words didn't match the reality on the ground. At White River, Meeker ordered the plowing of traditional horse pastures and demanded that the Ute fenced the land and plant crops. He told them to send their children to the schoolhouse on the agency grounds. When they resisted, he punished them by cutting food rations. Meeker believed he was leading the Ute to a better future. The Ute believed he was stripping them of their past. Tempers ran hot, and in September of 1879, they boiled over.

Meeker accused a Ute named Johnson, the brother-in-law of a powerful leader, of interfering with the agency's work. Johnson had complained about food being withheld. The argument escalated until Johnson struck Meeker and knocked him to the ground. The blow was more than a personal insult. To Meeker, it was proof that his life was in danger. He believed the Ute were on the edge of revolt. He sent messages to Washington and to nearby military posts, saying he was in peril

and he needed troops immediately. The army responded with orders for Major Thomas Thornburg of the 5th Cavalry at Fort Fred Steele, a frontier outpost on the Union Pacific Railroad near Rollins, Wyoming. Thornburg was 35 years old and a respected officer. He was a veteran of the Civil War, and later a West Point graduate with years of frontier service. He gathered a force of nearly 200 men, three troops of cavalry, a company of infantry, and a supply train of 25 wagons. As the column marched south into Ute territory to protect Meeker, Thornberg took precautions. They marched in battle order, with scouts ranging ahead and wagons in tight formation. Thornburg hoped the show of force would prevent violence, that the Ute would see the

army coming and back down. Unfortunately for Major Thornburg, the site of the army column had the opposite effect. The Ute were angry at Meeker's heavy hand. They remembered the confrontation at La Plata River the year before. They knew what had happened to neighboring tribes when the army moved in. And so, as Thornburg's column entered the valley of Milk Creek, Nathan Meeker was right. His life was in danger.

But the troops he requested would never make it to the agency to save him. The Ute struck at midday on September 29, 1879. Thornberg's column had just reached the shallow stream of Milk Creek when the ridges above erupted with gunfire. Warriors hidden among rocks and sagebrush opened fire in a coordinated volley that cut straight through the army line. The first volley shredded men and animals alike. Men fell from their saddles. Horses collapsed into the waters of Milk Creek.

Soldiers scrambled to return fire, but the Ute had the high ground. From every direction they poured fire into the valley. Major Thomas Thornberg, leading from the front, never had a chance. A bullet pierced his skull just above the ear. He toppled from his saddle and lay still on the ground, where his body would remain for the next five days. Within minutes, 13 soldiers were dead. Every officer above the rank of captain was gone.

Command of nearly 200 men fell to junior officers who were caught in the middle of a slaughter, and they weren't the only ones. At the same hour, miles to the south, gunfire erupted at the White River Agency. Ute warriors stormed the settlement and cut down Nathan Meeker and his employees in the first rush. By sundown, every white man at the agency was dead.

The buildings were smoldering, and the women and children who survived were marched away into captivity. At Milk Creek, the battle still raged. Thornburg's men reeled from the ambush. The only option was to fortify in order to avoid being wiped out. wagon drivers worked like mad to move their wagons into a defensive formation. Animals died during the opening barrage of gunfire, and drivers leapt down from the seats, cut the reins, and dragged the wagons into place.

With the wagons clattered together in a rough circle, drivers and soldiers pulled the bodies of dead horses into a line. They shoveled dirt over the bodies of the dead horses to turn them into earthworks for cover. soldiers and wagon drivers now crouched behind those grim barricades and scratched rifle pits in the dirt to use as firing positions. Around them, the battlefield was horrific. Dead soldiers and dead horses littered the ground. Wounded animals and wounded soldiers yelled in pain. 13 soldiers had died in the opening minutes and the survivors gagged on the overwhelming smell of blood blended with gunpowder. Flies quickly swarmed in dark clouds, and bullets from the ridge lines continued to wind past their heads and slam into wagon wood or thud into the makeshift earthworks.

Inside the wagon circle, no one moved. Every attempt to cross open ground was suicide. The column was pinned down near the creek, but not in the creek bed. The stream, with its life-saving water, was just a few yards away, but it might as well have been miles. Wounded men begged for water, but anyone who tried to crawl toward the creek was driven back by gunfire. The siege dragged on throughout the afternoon. After the initial chaotic battle with coordinated gunfire from the warriors and wild return fire from the soldiers, the troopers counted cartridges and rationed every shot. When they focused their return fire, they hit their targets on the ridges, but the numbers

still heavily favored the warriors. Captain J. Scott Payne had assumed command of the army column after Major Thornburg was killed in the opening moments, and Payne moved from barricade to barricade, checking on the men and urging them to hold fast. He did it despite gunshot wounds to his left side and left shoulder, which he had suffered during the initial ambush. With Thornburg dead, supplies dwindling,

and the soldiers pinned down by superior numbers, it was only a matter of time before the Ute overwhelmed them. By nightfall on the first day, September 29th, the soldiers believed they had killed 37 warriors, but for every warrior who fell, more seemed to appear. As dusk settled over the valley, Captain Payne believed that the only hope for survival was to send riders to find help.

It would be a gamble, but they had to do it. A handful of couriers climbed into the saddles of the saddle of the horses which remained and slipped into the night. They rode hard into the darkness and hoped to break through the euk cordon. In the wagon circle, the night was long and heavy with the reek of death. Ute voices carried down from the ridges. Chief Collarrow mocked the soldier's misery. He told the warriors, this bad smell will bring many flies, big, fat, blue flies. Those flies will get even fatter on those dead horses. And when the soldiers run out of food, They can roast them.

Flies swarmed over the carcasses that formed the barricade. They crawled into the men's nostrils and over their eyes as they tried to rest. The wounded moaned in the dust. Everyone was desperate for water, but no one could reach the creek. They had no way of knowing if their couriers had broken through or if help was coming. By the dim glow of campfires, Major Thornburg's command stared into the darkness and waited for dawn. The next day, September 30th, 1879, was nearly as bad as the first. The soldiers who were trapped near Milk Creek spent a full day under the hot sun

and surrounded by flies, dead animals and men, the cries of the wounded, and the taunts from the warriors on the ridges above them. October 1st brought no change. It was hot, thirsty, and nauseating during the day, and cold and demoralizing at night. By the time the sun set that evening, the soldiers had been trapped for roughly 56 hours. No one knew if the couriers had escaped or found help. And then, before first light on October 2nd, the soldiers heard hoofbeats.

At first, the sound froze them in place. Every horse that had survived the ambush was inside the barricade. If the men heard horses out there, it could mean one of two things. Riders were coming to their rescue, or warriors were coming to. to finish them off. Through the dim morning light, they saw the silhouettes of cavalry troopers. Captain Francis S. Dodge and D Troop of the 9th Cavalry had arrived.

The warriors on the ridges fell silent, then started laughing and chanting a phrase, which loosely translated to the black white men. To the Ute, the sudden appearance of black soldiers was almost comical. To the besieged men inside the wagon circle, it was a miracle. But salvation was only partial. Once the initial shock wore off, the Ute resumed firing.

Captain Dodge and his men dismounted and dragged horses, rifles, and ammunition into the perimeter. They had reached the battlefield, but they hadn't broken the siege. They had only joined it. There's no detailed account of a meeting between Captain Dodge and Captain Payne, but it must have happened. And Dodge must have explained how his troop of both. Buffalo soldiers made it to the battlefield. One of the couriers who escaped the siege on the night of September 29th

found Dodge's camp near Steamboat Springs on September 30th. After dark on September 30th, more than a day and a half into the siege on Milk Creek, Dodge and D-Troop started their ride. What followed was one of the hardest pushes in the regiment's history. The 35 men of D-Troop rode 70 miles across broken country in 20 hours. When they arrived, they received a raspy cheer from the survivors of the trapped column. The soldiers of Major Thornburg's command were happy to have help, but the reality was still dark. Dodge's men stepped into a horror show. Dead horses lay heaped around the perimeter. Injured men

groaned in the dirt. The common description of, a plague of flies took on new meaning. And the trickle of water in Milk Creek was just out of reach. It was impossible to touch without drawing fire. Sergeant Henry Johnson was a hardened veteran who had served with D-Trope of the 9th Cavalry in Texas and New Mexico, and now in Northern Colorado. He had earned a reputation as a steady non-commissioned officer, and he took charge of arranging the men of D-Troop in the camp. He called out orders, shifted positions, and directed the fire where it was needed most. Bullets spat into the barricades around him, but Johnson moved with purpose and displayed composure, which helped steady the men around him. The added firepower from the Buffalo soldiers bolstered the chances that the column would not get overrun, but it wasn't enough to break the siege.

By October 3rd, the siege at Milk Creek had stretched into its fifth day. The sun rose over the valley, and with it came another round of gunfire from the ridges. The defenders huddled low behind the barricades. The smell of the dead worsened, and the need for water grew more dire. Like the men who had been trapped on Reno Hill during the Battle of the Little Big Horn three years earlier, the men who were trapped near Milk Creek knew they were going to have to take desperate measures. The additional manpower and firepower wouldn't mean much if they all died of thirst.

Without water, the defense couldn't last. At Reno Hill, the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry had been forced to run down ravines to the Little Big Horn River to collect water and then run back up again. At Milk Creek, the soldiers of the 9th Cavalry would have to race across open ground in full view of Ute sharpshooters. Get to know yourself and your roots better with Ancestry DNA. Want to know where your family comes from in northern France?

Maybe you'd like to see how your genes influence certain traits like diet, fitness, and allergies. There's so much of you and your heritage to discover. Visit Ancestry.ca and get started with an AncestryD4. DNA kit today. Sergeant Henry Johnson left the relative safety of the wagons to inspect rifle pits which had been hastily dug around the perimeter in the early stages of the battle. Soldiers had occupied the firing positions throughout the five-day siege, and Johnson checked

their strength. Like everyone else, they needed water. By October 4th, the wounded were near collapse and the strength of the uninjured was rapidly failing. Sergeant Johnson volunteered to lead a water party. At dawn, he gathered a handful of buffalo soldiers, and they grabbed as many canteens as they could carry. There was no good way to do it. They just had to go. Together, they rushed from the barricades and sprinted across the open ground toward

the creek. Gunshots cracked around them. One man went down, shot in the arm, but Johnson pressed forward. He reached the stream, filled his canteens under fire, and urged his men back toward the lines. The return was even more dangerous. Every step back to the barricades drew fire from the ridges. Bullets tore through clothing and ricocheted off rocks. Johnson ran last, covering the others and urging them forward. Somehow they made it. The canteens were passed to the wounded, and the water kept the men alive for another day. that was all they would need.

Colonel Wesley Merritt of the 5th Cavalry at Fort Fred Steele in Rollins, Wyoming, had received word of Thornburg's disaster. Merritt rallied five troops of cavalry, about 450 men, to save the three troops who had left the fort five days earlier. He drove his men forward with punishing speed. They covered 160 miles in 48 hours, though not without constant. consequences. Horses dropped along the trail and men reeled in their saddles, but Merritt pressed them onward. Before dawn on October 5th, Merritt's column thundered into the valley of Milk Creek.

The Ute had had the numbers to pin down a couple hundred soldiers who were burdened with supply wagons and livestock, but now there were 500 to 600 soldiers in the valley, and the reinforcements would likely be itching for a fight when they caught their breath. By the time the sun rose, ridges were empty, and the warriors had melted away into the hills. When the siege had been broken and the threat had passed, the soldiers of the 5th Cavalry, the 9th Cavalry, and the 4th Infantry, buried the dead and loaded the wounded for the long trip back to Fort Fred Steele. When the Buffalo soldiers of D-Troop of the 9th Cavalry entered the fort,

they passed between two lines of white soldiers who honored their return. When an exhausted Captain Dodge, commander of D-Troop, saluted the colonel of the fort, the colonel raised his hat, and started a round of applause from all those in attendance. Black soldiers rarely received any form of public honor for their actions, but they did on that day. Later, the governor of Colorado, Frederick Pitkin, publicly honored D-Troop as the men passed through Denver on their way to New Mexico. They had ridden like mad to throw themselves into a terrible situation in order to help the survivors of Major Thornburg's column hold out long enough for a full rescue column to reach them.

The Battle of Milk Creek and the simultaneous killing of Nathan Meeker and his agency staff shocked the nation. Newspapers carried lurid headlines describing massacres and mutilations. Politicians seized on the fear. The rallying cry became, the Ute must go. Within a year, the Ute were forced to cede millions of acres. and were confined to smaller reservations in Utah and Southern Colorado. On the battlefield along Milk Creek, about 15 miles from the town of Meeker, Colorado,

a peak in the ridgeline where the Ute Warriors lay is now called Thornburg Mountain. In 1879, when D. Troop had time to recover, Captain Francis Dodge wrote his official reports. He praised his men for their endurance, but one name appeared again and again, Sergeant Henry Johnson. Dodge singled him out for coolness under fire, for his willingness to risk himself in exposed rifle pits, and above all, for leading the water party which saved dozens of men from collapse. Dodge recommended Johnson for the Medal of Honor. But Sergeant Johnson would not have the same experience as Corporal Clinton Greaves two years earlier, either with the Medal of Honor or with his career.

Like many enlisted men on the frontier, Johnson's career was uneven. The same soldier who had braved enemy fire at Milk Creek found himself in trouble in quieter times. He was promoted to sergeant three times, and had his rank reduced three times. In 1881, he faced a court-martial for insubordination. The charges were not unusual. The friction between black enlisted men and white officers often led to knee-jerk punishments. Regardless, Johnson lost his stripes, his pay, and his standing. It was a humbling reversal.

Despite the setbacks, Johnson persevered. He re-enlisted more than once, rode long patrols across Texas and New Mexico, and endured the monotony of life in frontier garrisons. The army remained his only steady livelihood. And though his file held as many reprimands as commendations, the memory of Milk Creek remained. Dodge's words stayed in these. official record as a permanent reminder of what Johnson had accomplished.

More than a decade later, the honor went through. In 1890, after years of petitions, Johnson's Medal of Honor was finally approved. The citation was brief, as was customary for the time. It read, Sergeant Henry Johnson voluntarily left fortified shelter, and, under heavy fire at close range, made the rounds of the pits to instruct the guards, fought his way to the creek and back to bring water to the wounded. For the rest of Johnson's career, he wore the medal with quiet pride, but the honor did not equal prosperity. After leaving the service, Henry Johnson faded into obscurity. Like many black

veterans of the frontier, he had little to fall back on when his service was done. By the turn of the century, he was living in poverty. When he passed away in 1904, he was largely forgotten, but not entirely. He was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, under the same simple white headstone as all the soldiers in that hallowed ground. His headstone bears the inscription Medal of Honor. And for those who were inclined to visit, Sergeant Henry Johnson lies in Section 23, number 1657. Next time on Legends of the Old West, while D-Troop of the Ninth Cavalry was helping Major Thornburg's command in northern Colorado,

much of the rest of the 9th Cavalry was chasing Apache Chief Victoria in New Mexico. When Victoria crosses into Mexico, the 10th Cavalry joins the hunt. In battles all over the deserts and mountains on both sides of the border, the Buffalo soldiers face some of their toughest adversaries. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program received the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com.

This episode was researched and written by Matthew Kearns. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.