155 Years Ago
George West, founding father of both Golden and its newspaper, the Transcript, was generally a friend to all. His bonhomie encompassed people of all races, and even temperance advocates. The one notable exception was Native Americans.
His anger with this group was evident in an article published on June 29, 1870: “Will the West Stand for It?” I have no doubt that West himself wrote this article, expressing fury with the Grant administration for their efforts to make peace with the Plains Indians.
It is not at all strange that western people look with the most supreme contempt upon the President and officers of the government who have debased themselves and insulted every man, woman, and child west of the Missouri by this miserable driveling over the lousy, cutthroat Sioux whom they have been feasting and fawning upon for the last three weeks. These very brutes and their followers have been murdering our men and women with the most horrible indecencies for the past five years….
Colorado Transcript – June 29, 1870
The article goes on to refer to them as “these murderers of our brethren and ravishers of our wives and sisters…murderous savages…villainous brutes.”
West made the trip across the plains several times by wagon before the railroad reached Colorado. That would have been a harrowing trip, since the indigenous population was up in arms over the landgrab by Europeans. I don’t know whether West himself ever clashed with the natives, but he was certainly wary of them.
The article ends with the threat of the western states seceding from the union “if the government does not cease its insults and give us the protection we have the right to claim!” (This, coming from a Union officer!) It was an unusually passionate and angry article from the normally low-key, good-natured George West.
