“I figure if a girl wants to be a legend, she should go ahead and be one”.

~Calamity Jane Cannary

Chipeta (White Singing Bird) was born Kiowa Apache, adopted and raised Uncompahgre (Tabeguache) Ute (or Núuchiu) in the Shining Mountains, now called Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. She was skilled in beadwork, played the guitar and could sing in three languages. When she was 15, she was chosen to care for the young son and household of newly-widowered Chief Ouray, and they married a year later in 1859.

By this time, the Colorado Gold Rush was bringing thousands of settlers into the hills, competing with the Utes for land and resources. Ouray was hired by agents as an interpreter, and in 1863, representing the Tabeguache Utes, he attended treaty negotiations with the US government in Washington DC. Due to his leadership and language skills, the US viewed Ouray the representative of all Utes in Colorado, even though he only represented one band. Ouray and Chipeta were in the impossible role of diplomats, trying to maintain peace between the many different Ute peoples and the US government by negotiating treaties.

Chipeta accompanied Ouray when he traveled to tell Ute men of new treaty provisions. She visited with the women and heard how they and their husbands really felt about matters. While other Ute leaders were skeptical of Ouray, Chipeta was welcomed in some camps where Ouray was not. She was the only woman of her time allowed in Ute councils, and at the time, few women anywhere in North America had as much of a political voice as Chipeta.

Chipeta and Ouray helped negotiate several treaties in attempts to keep the Ute homelands, but the terms of the treaties were seldom kept by the US government. In 1868, Ute bands were moved to a reservation on Colorado’s western slope. Gold was found in the San Juan mountains, and that land was carved from Ute Territory in 1873. This loss of land and way of life led to an Ute uprising in 1879. After helping US agents negotiate the release of captives, the hostages were taken to Ouray and Chipeta’s home. Stories of Chipeta’s care and compassion spread and endeared her to the society taking her homeland, but could not stop the colonization. Chipeta and Ouray traveled to Washington DC to negotiate again, but the Ute people were forced from their homes in Colorado to arid northeastern Utah in 1881.

Ouray died in 1880, and in Utah, Chipeta remarried. She taught beadwork to girls, and remained an influential member of her community, caring for many orphans. The US had not followed through on promises of good land and homes on the reservation. In 1916, a former agent sent to investigate reported Chipeta as “destitute” and pleaded for irrigation water for the parched land. Instead, the commissioner of Indian affairs sent Chipeta a shawl. After ceaseless injustices, Chipeta became a sort of celebrity in her later years. People sent her gifts, and President Taft invited her to Colorado to the opening of the Gunnison Tunnel- a project designed to bring water to the new stewards of her homeland, the Uncompahgre Valley. This irony was surely not lost on Chipeta, and she kept her head high as she rode with the president on his train to the ceremony. Chipeta died in 1924, at the age of 81, the same year the US recognized Indigenous people as citizens. She was laid to rest near her old home in Montrose, Colorado.

Here is Chipeta at home in her Shining Mountains~ in a high country meadow of columbine below today’s Chipeta Mountain 💙

In 1877, 22 year old Elizabeth (Lizzie) McCourt married Harvey Doe in Wisconsin. They moved west to Central City, Colorado, where Harvey was to manage a gold mine, a wedding gift from his father. Inexperienced Harvey found difficulty in working the mine, so Lizzie put on pants and boots, and worked alongside him. With a pretty face and curls, and a lively spirit, Lizzie raised eyebrows around town, and other miners began to call her "Baby Doe". Harvey resented this attention and her help. He lost the mine, and other jobs, and the Does moved to nearby Black Hawk into smaller housing. He started drinking heavily, drifting around camps looking for work, and visiting brothels, leaving Lizzie alone for weeks.

Lizzie divorced Harvey and moved to Leadville (80 miles away) with a friend (and admirer), Jake Sands, to work at his new clothing store. In Leadville, Cloud City, two miles high, her story continues...

Horace Tabor and his wife Augusta ran stores and post offices in Colorado mining towns, settling in Leadville in 1877, where Horace was elected the town's first mayor, and served as postmaster. He grubstaked (invested in) a mine that struck rich in silver, and then bought more mines, including the Matchless, near Leadville. With his new fortune, he established the town's bank, newspaper, and a grand opera house. Horace lived the life of a silver king, and through political favors, even served for a short time as a state Senator.

Lizzie (Baby Doe) met Horace in Leadville, and they immediately became sweethearts (he was 49, she was 25). Horace moved her into a suite at a hotel next to his Tabor Opera House, and gossip spread like wildfire through Leadville and Denver. Horace divorced Augusta, and the new couple were married in 1883 in a lavish ceremony in Washington, DC. Congressional members and the President attended the wedding, but their wives refused to attend the "disgraceful" event, and the scandal made front-page news nationwide.

(continued in part 3)

Horace bought a block-long mansion in Denver for Lizzie, with 100 peacocks kept on the lawn, and built Denver's Tabor Grand Opera House. Gossip and rumors of Baby Doe's "scandalous" past persisted, and she was never accepted into Denver's exclusive high society. Even so, she continued to support and donate office space for the Suffrage cause. At this time, the Tabors were one of the five wealthiest families in the country. By their accounts, they had a happy home and were in love. Engraved silver coins were given out to announce the birth of their first daughter, Lillie; their younger daughter was named Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor, and called Silver Dollar.

Tabor's mines, including the Matchless, brought in millions in silver for years, until 1893 when the US moved to a gold standard and the value of silver (and the Tabors' fortune) came crashing down...

(continued in part 4)

Lizzie, Horace, Lillie, and Silver Dollar moved out of their Denver mansion into a tiny rented cottage. At age 65, Horace shoveled in mines until he secured a position as postmaster. Many thought she would leave Horace if he lost his fortune, but Baby Doe remained supportive and devoted until he died in 1899. Lizzie was 45, and resourcefully found ways to "hold on to the Matchless", seeking investors and selling silverware and jewelry for help. She returned to Leadville with Lillie and Silver Dollar and moved into a one-room shed right above the mine to work it herself.

Fifteen year-old Lillie heard stories about her mother's past in Leadville, and so resented her new home that she borrowed train fare from an uncle and went to live with her grandmother in Wisconsin. Silver Dollar heard stories of her father, the self-made silver king, and reveled in the legends. She was adventurous, independent, and enjoyed working at the mine. She acquired a burro, and transportation into Leadville, a mile and a half away. She wrote poetry, and Lizzie helped her to get a song published. "President Roosevelt's Colorado Hunt" was well-received around the state and in 1910, Silver Dollar met the president.

Silver went to parties around town and became involved in scandals of her own. Lizzie now heard stories about her daughter and sent Silver to Denver. There, she worked for a newspaper and wrote a western novel, but then her life spiraled downward. Lizzie and Silver agreed that Silver would join a convent, she moved to Chicago and joined a burlesque show. She lived wildly and sadly, met a tragic fate. Lizzie forever defended that "her" Silver was not the poor girl in Chicago, that her daughter was safe in a convent.

Lizzie lived alone above the Matchless for 35 more years. She dressed in rags, and was too proud to accept charity left at her door. The town was kind, and shopkeepers let her pay for her meager groceries with "valuable ore", rocks picked up around the property, and firemen from passing trains would drop coal for her to find. She kept journals on scraps of paper, recording her communications with spirit voices, angels and saints, her dreams and visions. During a week-long blizzard in 1935, 81 year-old Lizzie, Baby Doe, the Silver Queen, froze to death alone in her shack.

Baby Doe's rags-to-riches-to-rags story is (fabulously?) tragic, and may be my favorite Colorado legend for this very real woman's tenacity and spirit 🖤

Gals, have you heard the story of Colorado's Rattlesnake Kate Slaughterback? 🤎 Katherine McHale was born in a log cabin near Longmont, CO, in 1893. She attended nursing school in Denver, and during WWI, nursed wounded soldiers in Aurora. After the war, Kate returned to the northern CO plains; she married and divorced six times during her life. Her second husband was Jack Slaughterback; in the early 1920s, they moved to a homestead near Hudson, in Weld County. Jack soon left, so Kate worked the homestead herself. She raised crops and animals, hunted, and made and sold bootleg liquor during Prohibition to support herself. When neighbors were unable to raise their child, Kate adopted their son, Ernie, and raised him as her own.

On Oct. 28, 1925 (100 years ago this year), Kate and 3 year-old Ernie were on horseback, headed to a pond near her property, hoping to find ducks left by recent hunters. Leaving Ernie on the horse, Kate walked towards the pond. She found herself in the middle of an autumn rattlesnake migration, when hundreds of rattlers gather in dens for the winter. Kate fired her rifle until no bullets remained, but she, her horse, and Ernie were surrounded. Kate grabbed a three foot-long wooden "no hunting" sign, used it as a club, and battled the snakes for two hours to get back to her horse and Ernie. She rode home, exhausted but unharmed, and returned with a neighbor the next day to collect the rattlesnakes. She had killed 140.

Real or embellished, Kate's story was reported in CO newspapers. With a photograph of her with the snakes on a line outside her house, her story spread nationwide. She recognized an opportunity and called herself Rattlesnake Kate for the rest of her life. She made herself a flapper-style gown with the snakeskins and a choker necklace with the rattles. She wore it for photographs and events, and later claimed that the Smithsonian Institution had offered to buy it for $2000. Kate learned taxidermy and raised rattlesnakes on her homestead, selling skins and rattles, and served as a nurse during WWII. She learned how to milk rattlesnake venom (by making snakes bite into a sponge), and sold it to scientists that made antivenom for snake bites.

Kate lived and worked on her homestead until her death in 1969 at 76. Before she died, Kate donated her rattlesnake gown to the Greeley History Museum, where it is displayed with her rifle and other artifacts. Her small cabin, built by Kate herself, was purchased by the city of Greeley and moved to Centennial Village, a living history site near town.

Poker Alice Ivers Tubbs often embellished her own legend. Alice Ivers was either born in Devonshire, England, in 1851, or in Virginia to Irish immigrants. Her father was a schoolmaster and Alice was eastern-educated and refined. Her family followed the silver rush to Leadville, CO. Alice married Frank Duffield, a mining engineer, and together, the couple frequented gambling halls of Leadville.

Alice studied Frank's plays and learned the games. She began to play herself, and found she was clever at counting cards and figuring odds. After only a few years together, Frank was killed in a mining accident. There were very few respectable jobs available for women in mining camps, so Alice supported herself with her talent at the tables.

Alice was a finely-dressed beauty, and refused to gamble on Sundays. She played poker and faro, travelled and worked as a dealer in camps around Colorado. Her reputation and success earned her the nickname "Poker Alice". She proudly boasted that she "broke the bank" in Silver City, New Mexico, winning over $6000 in one night. She may have just saved her winnings over time, but she took a grand trip to New York City, and returned to Colorado dressed in the latest fashions. She then worked for a while in Creede, as a dealer in a tent saloon owned by Robert Ford, the man who killed Jesse James.

Alice moved on to Deadwood, South Dakota, to deal cards in another saloon. One night , a drunken miner pulled a knife on the dealer at the next table, Warren G. Tubbs. Alice pulled out her revolver and shot the miner in the arm. Warren and Alice fell in love, married and had seven children together. The family moved from rough Deadwood to a quiet homestead near Sturgis, South Dakota.