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Show 130 Although Meeker was possessed of a brilliant mind, he was not a patient man; he was also well known as a vigorous defender of his own beliefs, making him peculiarly unfitted for the job of dealing with the Utes who were moving from a hunting society toward an agrarian one, and not liking either the idea or the methods employed. It was his methods which proved the undoing of Nathan Meeker. Added to a volatile personality was the additional problem of loneliness. He was four score miles from a neighbor, and even though his wife and daughter accompanied him to the agency he soon sent to Greeley for some of the young men he knew and trusted to take the jobs at the agency. Even this did not tame the forces within him. Meeker's correspondence with Washington is filled with all manner of minor complaints, especially about the personalities and character of the Indian people. The people in Washington, D.C. were illprepared to deal with Meeker's concepts of Ute personality deficiencies at so distant a spot. Also, to the Indians he seemed constantly angry, constantly pushing, constantly brusque. To the fun-loving and usually placid Utes, he was strange. In his roles as agricultural theorist in New York and his colonizing attempts at Union Colony, Meeker had embraced the concept of a Jeffersonian agrarian America. After looking over the White River Agency, he was certain that the place would never serve that role. He decided to move the Agency to a more suitable site where farms could be made: Powell's Valley, a few miles |