LaConte: “Mean Girls” and the Meeker incident

Often in history we hear modern stories compared to ancient legends, treating the original tales with a new luster that can both embellish and betray earlier tales.

This is common in the Wild West, where tales abound and a romanticized view of history is often spoken of with rose-colored glasses.

In John F. Finerty’s “War-Path and Bivouac: The Conquest of the Sioux”, Finerty compares the Battle of Little Bighorn to in 1876 Montana at the Battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece, with General George Armstrong Custer as a Leonidas-like figure. It’s a troubling comparison by today’s standards, but in 1890, when the book was first published, Custer’s battle was seen as a tragedy that people considered heroic rather than ill-conceived.

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Closer to home we have the legend of the Lover’s Leap. In this story, which was passed down primarily orally in the Eagle River Valley, an Arapaho warrior is said to have fallen in love with a Ute woman while the two tribes fought over the hunting grounds between Two Elk Creek and present-day Gilman. in the 1850s. The young couple attempted to flee the battlefield on horseback, but were pursued by angry Utes. So they left the large rock outcropping above present-day Red Cliff rather than surrender, plunging to their deaths about 500 feet below.

In this tale, the rhymes with Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” are so obvious that it seems likely that the story has been garnished with some of the glamorous memories of the Montagues and Capulets of the later settlers, served with a side of the Noble trope Savage. .

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Succumbing to this same sort of (perhaps imperfect) comparison, I recently found my mind wandering during the Vail Performing Arts Academy’s production of “Mean Girls, Jr.” in June. As I watched the local kids put on an impeccable production, I couldn’t help but notice how some of the plot elements seemed analogous to accounts of the Meeker incident that ultimately drove the Utes from their lands in western Colorado. The Meeker Incident took place almost exactly 145 years ago, in late September and early October 1879, which is why I chose to return to it this week.

While it’s true that Custer was no Leonidas, I think Indian Agent Nathan Meeker was a bit of a mean girl. And here’s why.

The Meeker Incident is unfolding today in Meeker, Colorado, where a Ute settlement suddenly found itself in conflict with a U.S. Indian Affairs base that was assigned to tribally owned land pursuant to to the Ute Treaty of 1868.

The setting of “Mean Girls, Jr.” is a high school where a group of outcasts find themselves at odds with a clique of cool, arrogant kids known at Plastics.

In this analogy, the Ute tribe are outcasts—clinging to their hunter-gatherer lifestyle—while U.S. Indian Affairs agents are the Plastics, smug and determined to transform the region into an agricultural hub. The main antagonist of “Mean Girls, Jr.” is Regina George, the leader of the Plastics, who attempts to convert the main protagonist – Cady Heron – to her lifestyle.

Heron is like a character in Meeker’s story known as Johnson (whose real name was Canavish), a Ute leader who claims to adopt Meeker’s lifestyle while reporting to the Utes on Meeker’s plans. This is quite similar to the plot of “Mean Girls Jr.”, in which Heron pretends to adopt George’s lifestyle, dressing and acting like her while reporting to the outcasts.

One of Meeker’s main goals was to steer the Utes away from horse racing, one of the tribe’s passions, by instead insisting that they use their horses for agricultural purposes, such as plowing fields. Johnson pretends to adopt the farming lifestyle and Meeker rewards him with a workhorse.

As told in History Colorado’s Encyclopedia of Colorado“Johnson tricked Meeker into training horses for him by saying they would be used for farming when he actually intended to race them.”

Johnson was indeed farming at the time, but only because he had discovered that crops were a substance that could be used to make his horses gain muscle weight, making them faster in preparation for the next horse race. horses of his tribe.

When Meeker learned that Johnson was growing crops to feed his racehorses, Meeker became furious and plowed the field. This led to the conflict that gave the town of Meeker its name.

In “Mean Girls.” Jr.”, Heron also finds a substance that will gain weight, something called Kalteen Bars, but instead of giving them to a horse like Johnson did, she gives it to George, tricking him into gaining as much weight. weight as it can. She no longer fits into her cool-kid clothes.

George discovers this and becomes furious, like Meeker, leading to a conflict that results in her getting hit by a bus and fracturing her spine.

But that’s where most of the similarities between the stories end. In Mean Girls, Jr., the Plastics eventually disband and George makes a full recovery.

For Meeker and the Utes, the story is much more tragic. Meeker and his men were killed by the Utes, and the settlers’ ensuing rage led the state to decide to evict the Utes from their land.

On both sides of the Meeker incident, those involved made choices they would later regret, and that’s where the final comparison to “Mean Girls, Jr.” can be found. Amidst the chaos of conflict between high school cliques, the audience learns that all of the characters are capable of possessing mean girl characteristics and behaving in ways they would later regret.

Read about Eagle County’s response to the Meeker incident in the Sept. 30 edition of Vail Daily’s Time Machine.

John LaConte is a reporter for the Vail Daily. Email him at [email protected].