"`How About That!': Mrs. Charles W. Wiegel Versus the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1923-1941."

            In 1925,  Mrs. Charles W. Wiegel (Nellie), The Colorado Federation of Women's Clubs (CFWC) Chairman for Indian Welfare, wrote a terse letter to Edward McKean,  Indian Agent on the Southern Ute Reservation in Southwestern Colorado. Wiegel began by reminding McKean that CFWC was "a great and powerful force and whether it is used for good or not so good remains to be seen."  She assured him that, while her group [did] "not want to cause trouble," they were "three and a half million strong and must be reckoned with." She credited McKean with integrity writing, "I believe you have the best interests of the Indians at heart, that you are doing your best, and that you are the proper man for the place." She then presented a list of grievances concerning finances and the allocation of Ute resources. Wiegel was the voice of righteous indignation, exclaiming "how about that?!" after every point she raised. "I can hear you swear and know what you will say about it all," she wrote in closing, "but never mind that at all!... Do the square thing by me and I am always, yours to command for a better understanding."[i]  Wiegel was not clear why she was concerned about Ute finances, but it is likely that some Utes wrote to her knowing that they might get support from the CFWC: a white women's organization dedicated to education, cultural and civic improvements, political activity, and social welfare work.

            McKean's reply soothed Wiegel's irritation.  He thanked her for her interest and then refuted her charges, assuring her that the Utes' financial affairs were well taken care of  by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Wiegel seemed satisfied with McKean's response. Yet within two months she wrote Commissioner of  Indian Affairs (CIA) Charles H. Burke, demanding a further accounting of Ute funds.  Burke responded with a lengthy explanation of Ute finances and proposed that, rather than concerning herself with reservation finances, she devote her efforts instead to projects for the Ute women and children.[ii] Wiegel, however, continued to agitate for the Ute's political and economic empowerment.

            These confrontations were typical of Nellie Wiegel's relationship with the BIA between the years 1923 and 1941.  During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the BIA attempted to "civilize" Native Americans living on reservations, and women's clubs played an important supporting role. Nonetheless, tensions sometimes developed between the Indian Bureau and the CFWC. These problems were, in part, related to the force of Wiegel's confrontational personality and her construction of her role as Indian advocate.  Although she continually professed that she was only trying to assist the "proper authorities," Wiegel constantly challenged the actions of BIA personnel.  While they answered her queries and professed gratitude for her help, many policy makers grew to resent Wiegel's "interference."  Despite her repeated claims that she was not a "troublemaker," Nellie Wiegel raised an enormous amount of trouble for the Indian Service in her career with CFWC.

            Wiegel's experiences as an Indian activist reflect several important themes in the lives of many well-to-do women in the early twentieth century, and research into these activities reveals the difficulties of writing the history of "ordinary women".  An extended search of  historical records in Colorado failed to locate any information on Wiegel's life other than her correspondence with the BIA, her reports to the CFWC,  and a newspaper clipping about her collection of Indian Art, published in Denver's newspaper The Rocky Mountain News in 1938.  Other than her references to a married daughter and to her husband in her correspondence, Wiegel's personal life is invisible to historians; even the date of her death could not be ascertained. 

            What is known is her controversial career as an Indian activist. A middle-aged woman in the 1920s, Wiegel came of age during the Progressive Era when women of all classes were active in reform.  Wiegel was a wealthy Denver homemaker who, like many clubwomen, was engaged in civic affairs.  She had the leisure and means to travel, and she used her social position to win appointments to committees that advised government officials on social policy.  As chair of the Indian Welfare Division for the CFWC, and as Chairman of the Colorado State Indian Commission, a committee of volunteers appointed by the Governor to oversee Indian Affairs in the state, Wiegel emphasized self-help for Native Americans, including education, employment opportunities, and citizenship--defined as voting.[iii]  In this, she promoted a conservative social welfare agenda common to many Progressive Era campaigns.

            In some respects, however, her activities reflected new cultural forces at work in the 1920s and 1930s, when appreciation for selected aspects of Native American culture became popular.  Rather than insisting upon complete assimilation for the Utes, Wiegel devoted much of her energy to encouraging appreciation among non-Indians for unique and colorful Indian "traditions."  This campaign also included encouraging the Utes to appreciate their culture. She told the Rocky Mountain News: "We should teach them [the Utes] to be proud of their Indian blood, proud of their heritage of bravery.  It is a mistake to try to make whites of them."[iv] Wiegel's conceptualization of cultural pluralism, however, was not about a cultural and political identity as a separate nation.  Rather, she encouraged the Utes to assimilate to mainstream culture while preserving non-threatening aspects of Ute culture, such as arts and crafts, history, mythology, and ceremonialism. Her paradigm was to preserve Indian traditions within a new context--the Indian as an educated, self-sustaining American citizen. Wiegel dedicated countless hours to helping the Utes realize these goals.

            Wiegel's construction of her identity as a reformer is also instructive.  In some ways she continued a traditional woman's role.  While very active in public life, Wiegel never translated her volunteer work into a paid job, nor did she ever run for an elected political office.  Instead she chose to remain a volunteer--a hold over from the era of "Lady Bountiful"--the well-to-do woman altruist of the late nineteenth century, who "uplifted" the "less fortunate" by helping them "improve" their homes.  Framing her public advocacy in the traditional role of the homemaker as protector and moral guardian of society, Wiegel informed the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (CIA) in 1932 that, "as are the homes of the nation, so is the nation."[v] Perhaps seeking to derail possible accusations that she was "out of her place," she always conducted her activities under the auspices of male authority figures.  Thus, in some respects, Wiegel represented a very "traditional" approach to women's reform work.  Her actions in playing this role, however, reveal tensions over women's public identities in the early twentieth century.

            In the 1920s and 1930s, women were increasingly turning volunteer work into paid employment as social workers, and were struggling to construct professional identities for themselves.  In their new vocation, women were enjoined against "putting too much of one's own prejudices, sentiments, loves and hates into one's job," and encouraged to be "rational" and "scientific."[vi] As more women joined the ranks of professional social workers, they also endured popular stereotypes which characterized them as meddlers. Perhaps aiming to head off this kind of potential opprobrium, Wiegel stated her desire to "be a help and not a meddle."  Moreover, Wiegel was apparently sensitive to possible gendered criticisms of  her volunteer work as frivolous, for she occasionally asserted that she was no dilettante. Rather, she represented herself as a dispassionate and objective observer who could advocate on behalf of the Utes. Thus, Wiegel's life may be seen as a type of transitional figure between the homemaker-volunteer reformer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the professional social worker or political official of later decades.  An examination of her activities with the Southern Utes illuminates how she shaped this role.

             The U.S. government first created a reservation for the seven bands of Utes in 1868.  Anglo greed for Ute lands, however, continually eroded its acreage.  In 1880, four of the seven bands were relocated to Utah and the remaining--the Capote, Mouache and Weminuche,  numbering about 807--were confined to the Southern Ute Reservation, a narrow strip of land in the southwestern corner of Colorado. The CFWC,  founded in 1895, showed an interest in Indians immediately by sponsoring a campaign in 1898 to preserve the prehistoric cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, Colorado near the reservation. The Federation created a Committee on Indian Welfare in 1921; this Committee became a Division in 1925 and Wiegel became its first chair in 1926. Immediately, she investigated conditions at Southern Ute, helped establish a State Commission on Indian Welfare in the Governor's office, and introduced a bill in the Colorado legislature to erect a memorial to Ute chief Ouray in Montrose, Colorado. For this work, Governor Adams appointed Wiegel chair of the new Colorado State Indian Commission. [vii]

            Wiegel's activities early in her career complemented BIA plans to acculturate Native Americans. She established "a young women's club through which good work is being done along the lines of the Home Making and Better Homes clubs." This organization functioned to help "the young mothers who desire to make 'American Homes' patterned after those of  their white sisters [and] who wish to raise their children to be good citizens, self-supporting and self-sustaining." Her "Save the Babies" campaign taught Indian women scientific methods of childrearing. Wiegel also promoted another cause dear to the hearts of BIA administrators--citizenship. She wanted "to merge [the Utes] into the citizenry of the Nation as self-supporting, law abiding and EDUCATED citizens." To this end, she encouraged the Utes to vote, and had "tried to busy the residents [near the reservation] in the matter. If they want to do something to help the 'poor Indian' let them do their duty as citizens to see that the said Indian gets to the polls!"[viii] 

            In keeping with her emphasis on self-help, Wiegel lobbied for more federal funds for education and marketing Indian crafts. In 1926 she attempted to get Congressional funding for an Indian cultural center in Durango, Colorado (near the reservation) where the Utes and other tribes could sell handicrafts. She sent craft supplies and secured agent McKean's support. Writing to him about her plans, Wiegel deferred to his authority over the Utes, "Without the assistance of you and your force I realize I could do nothing; with that hearty assistance, together we can do some splendid work. We will set a pace for the other agencies to follow." Wiegel noted that having McKean's backing meant she could now "drum up support" for the project.[ix] Despite Wiegel and McKean's enthusiasm, the center never materialized, probably because Wiegel was unable to raise the funds. Economic realities, then, sometimes limited her effectiveness, but she continued her advocacy undeterred.

            Wiegel's construction of  her role as the Utes' protector propelled her into a defense of Ute treaty rights. In 1931 she asked members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to end the leasing of lands on the Ute reservation to Navajo shepherds for grazing.  She appealed "to the friends of the Indians against a great injustice which may be done to my Utes--I say MY advisedly, because I have been adopted by them as a 'red sister'." Wiegel feared that when the Navajo leases expired, whites would take the lands because they were "immensely rich in gas, oil, and coal." In closing she asked "are treaties, promises, agreements, acknowledgment of ownership, etc. again mere scraps of paper to be tossed aside when the white man begins to covet that which is the Indians (sic) by every known right?"[x]  The proposed leases apparently never took place, but the direct impact of Wiegel's activism on this decision cannot be gauged.

            Even as Wiegel assumed the role of the champion of the powerless, she was careful to portray herself as objective.  In 1928, at the entreaty of a Ute father, Wiegel sought the whereabouts of Max Buffalo, a missing Ute policeman accused of murder. "The poor old fellow," she wrote of Max's father, "...is heart broken. Max'[s] wife is 'carrying on' raising her baby and trying to keep her little batch of sheep together hoping that someday her man will come back to her. She is neat and clean and so sad looking...This is sob stuff, maybe, a heart story and you know I have kept clear of that in my dealings with the office, but this is a peculiar case." The Bureau promised to help, but the young man was never found. Wiegel's assertion that she shied away from emotional issues in her work reflected her image of herself as a professional whose work should be treated seriously.[xi]

            Wiegel's interactions with BIA officials were a delicate balancing act. She justified  her behavior, including sharp criticism of BIA policy, as necessary for the defense of "her Utes." Yet, in most interactions, she claimed deference to BIA authority. In 1927, on behalf of several Utes, she raised a number of charges against reservation employees, including an allegation that Agent McKean and an agency farmer were skimming profits from Ute funds. The BIA investigation cleared McKean, but found the farmer guilty of incompetence and the Bureau fired him. Commissioner Burke informed Wiegel of his decisions and noted that they could do little more since she refused to name the Utes who had sought her assistance. Wiegel's reply expressed disapproval of Burke's decision, but deferred to his authority: " I feel that you are making a grave mistake but of course the action taken by you is matter for you to decide."  Wiegel also defended her refusal to name her sources. "Knowing the power of a superintendent in his 'dominion'," she wrote, "I did not think it just or honorable to expose anyone, either employee, Indian or resident of that locality to a vindictive retaliation for telling the truth." Wiegel concluded by restating her conservative conceptualization of her role as guardian. "Information came to me without my seeking," she wrote, "after verifying same to my satisfaction, I passed it on to the Bureau and there my duty ended…Personally it is now a closed chapter."[xii]

            Nevertheless, Wiegel's failure to get what she wanted from the Indian Service also frustrated her, and expressing her exasperation sometimes offended government officials. Writing to BIA inspector H.H. Fiske, who had investigated the charges against McKean and the agency farmer, Wiegel noted, "I have about decided that all efforts by anyone in or out of the Service for the betterment of the Indians will have about as much effect on the powers in control in Washington as throwing pebbles against one of these old stone buildings. 'Was, is now, and ever shall be' applies and all the King's horses and all the King's men will not change the methods or minds of the great bosses back east. You see I am very much discouraged this morning." Fiske reacted to Wiegel's despondent letter by forwarding it to the Commissioner and the Office of the Chief inspector of the BIA with comments about how she was "a most 'difficult' person." He dismissed Wiegel as "a gabster, spreading her secrets wherever she thinks she may find a retentive ear. Foolish and to no purpose."[xiii] 

            Wiegel apparently knew she had been criticized, for in 1931 she asked Commissioner Rhodes if his "oft repeated permission to go onto the reservation still holds... If, for any reason, you would rather I stay away, kindly wire...and I will comply with your wishes. I believe in obeying 'rules and regulations."  Rhodes replied that the Bureau welcomed her "suggestions and cooperation in matters pertaining to the advancement of the Indians and while it is not always possible to accept and act upon them, nevertheless we are pleased to consider them." Wiegel then responded that she knew he approved of her work but that some Indian Service employees did not. In the same letter, Wiegel sounded quite bitter about her failure to get action from the Indian Service. She reported that, although she had information about the new superintendent of the Ute agency, Edward Peacore, that indicated his unfitness to serve, "I have no report to make regarding same, no suggestions, no recommendations… Whatever I say would only be 'considered' and not acted upon in any way, so why bother?"[xiv]

            The CFWC, however, did not share Wiegel's disillusionment. At their annual convention in La Junta, Colorado, on September 22-25, 1931, the CFWC passed a resolution calling for an investigation of Peacore. Within two weeks, Wiegel informed Commissioner Rhodes that the CFWC was not "bringing accusations against any person or persons in the Indian service," but were placing evidence of "alleged mis-conduct and alleged mal-administration [by Peacore] before the proper authorities for immediate investigation."  Wiegel explained that the CFWC had a duty to report its findings to the Indian service because:

 We hold that when these Indian girls are taken from their homes and parents by the federal government and placed in the reservation school, that the Indian Bureau, through its' representatives, is making itself a direct guardian of said Indian girls. [xv]

 Wiegel and the CFWC, then, felt obligated to help the BIA live up to its responsibilities to protect Indian girls from immorality and sexual exploitation. In this capacity, Wiegel contacted agency employees and people who lived near the reservation and collected testimony for the investigation.[xvi]

      Various reservation employees accused Peacore of sexual misconduct that set a low moral tone for the reservation.  According to some reports, Peacore was guilty of having an affair with a teacher at the reservation boarding school and of threatening the jobs of Mrs. Hattie Haren, school cook, and her husband Mack, the school engineer, "if she did not have guilty intercourse with him." Moreover, Peacore allegedly overlooked other immoral behavior on the reservation. Former agency employee Lottie McCall described how Eric R , visiting nephew of the reservation trader, seduced, impregnated and abandoned Ruth C., a young Ute woman. Ruth agreed to have sex with Eric, but McCall felt Peacore should have taken steps to remove Eric and protect Ruth's morals. Peacore also failed to protect fifteen year old S. D., a Ute student who claimed she had been raped and held by the rapist in his home for several days. Lottie McCall testified that she and her husband had asked Peacore for help with this situation and he replied that he could do nothing unless they had "been caught in the act." S.D. was "now living with first one man and then another," McCall concluded, blaming Peacore for her ultimate turn to "immorality."[xvii]

            The investigation of these incidents was intensely bitter, and Wiegel's activities became a focal point of the controversy. Special Investigator Roy Nash disparaged her intensely, accusing her of spreading "malicious slander...and gossip...before a meeting of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker in a village the size of Ignacio!" Nash discounted her investigation by contrasting her methods with his.  "Unlike Mrs. Wiegel," he reported,  "I decline to interview cooks and servants in this matter;" instead, Nash questioned the boarding school faculty.  On another occasion, Nash wrote: "The influence of this woman is wholly evil and must be terribly disorganizing, it is to everybody's interest that she be eliminated from the scene." Allison L. Kroeger, of the Colorado State Indian Commission, wrote to Governor Adams complaining that Wiegel had "upbraided" him for not investigating thoroughly. In response, Kroeger replied that he, unlike Wiegel, was not a "scandal monger." Wiegel, he concluded, wasn't "interested in the welfare of the indians [sic] other than to use them to satisfy her own personal desires for power. She apparently is the wife of an employee of the Denver Rio Grande Railroad Company and therefore able to travel about on a pass and make trouble and try to rule and ruin." He urged both Adams and the BIA to remove Wiegel from Indian Affairs. Needless to say, agent Peacore also maligned Wiegel.[xviii]

            As a result of the altercation, the BIA cooled their relationship with Wiegel.  In February 1932 Commissioner Rhodes wrote to the Secretary of the Interior, Ray Lyman Wilbur, urging him to try and curb Wiegel's influence in Indian Affairs.  "It is better to have her as an active enemy than to compromise with her in an effort to work together," he wrote. "She apparently has no idea of the ethics of public work."  He then sent Wiegel a chilly letter thanking her for her interest in the BIA and citing his support for Peacore, who was absolved of her charges, but was transferred to another agency because of the negative publicity. Colorado Congressman Edward Taylor, representing the district containing the reservation, joined the anti-Wiegel faction and pressured Governor Adams to remove her from the State board. Governor Adams, however, stood by Wiegel.[xix]

     Wiegel to the controversy replied by writing to Secretary of the Interior charging that "the so-called investigation of Nash was partial to Superintendent Peacore" and citing numerous commendations of her work by both the Commissioner and the Secretary of the Interior. She noted that she had seen a preliminary copy of Nash's report and wondered if "any action be taken by you against Mr. Nash for his vicious and public attack on me."  Wilbur's reply was apparently non-committal (it was not found in the files) for, ten months later, Wiegel was still requesting a formal copy of Nash's report and the official response in "vindication of  the Governor's stand in my behalf and as my just right and due." This was her last letter on the topic found in the historical record and it is unclear if she ever received the report.[xx]

            While she was not removed from the Colorado Indian Commission, Wiegel was forced out of her position as Chairman of Indian Welfare in the CFWC from 1932 to 1936. She claimed that "the wives of Congressman Taylor's Durango group...took up the fight which that group of men has been waging against me for eight months or more and threatened to withdraw the southwest district from the State Federation...if I was continued in the chairmanship of Indian Welfare." Abhorring the controversy, Wiegel refused the nomination, and noted that the new chair of Indian Welfare was "the wife of one of  the most active of Congressman Taylor's Durango group." She despaired that the Indian welfare department for the next two years would be "all for Durango business interests, and who cares for the Indians."[xxi]  An examination of the circumstances surrounding Peacore suggests that her cynical assessment of Colorado Indian Affairs may have been accurate.

            The Peacore scandal caused bitter factionalism. Irate citizens from nearby communities petitioned the BIA for Peacore's removal, while others wrote in his favor. Among the anti-Peacore faction were the La Plata County Taxpayers League and  mayor R. R. Garrick of Igancio (a town on the reservation), while the mayor of  nearby Cortez, Colorado sent a petition with twenty businessmen's signatures in support of Peacore.  Ultimately, Peacore was found guilty of sexually harassing Mrs. Haren and making false statements during the investigation and given ten days to "show cause...why he should not be dismissed from the Service, demoted or transferred."[xxii]

            Peacore was then transferred to South Dakota and immediately suspended.  Bureau officials denied that his suspension was because of Wiegel's charges, but rather cited new charges uncovered in the investigation that Wiegel had begun. Wiegel, however, knew she had been vindicated, for Mayor Garrick informed her of the circumstances of  Peacore's departure: 

The great and noble Mr. Peacore is gone. He left Saturday night when it was dark and he took his sweetheart with him...He was supposed to be in Denver at the Brown Palace Hotel Monday evening. I would have liked to have followed him and see what assumed name he travels under. [xxiii]

In departing the reservation, Peacore abandoned his wife and children, apparently leaving with the home economics teacher Wiegel had named as his mistress.  Early in 1933 he left his new post, and vanished. In the aftermath of his disappearance, the BIA discovered  that he had paid "an excessive amount" of money to Allison Kroeger to survey the reservation, had used Indian funds to do county road work, had given government supplies and favorable leasing agreements to friends, and had hired other friends for lucrative construction work who were completely unqualified for the job.[xxiv] Thus, true to Wiegel's assertions, at least some of  Peacore's support may have been from people who profited from his administration.

            Despite Peacore's disappearance in 1933, (which she viewed as vindication of her position) Wiegel did not regain the chairmanship of the Division of Indian Welfare until 1936; the CFWC and BIA records are silent about her activities during those years and about the circumstances of her reinstatement.  Once back in her old position, she reactivated her campaigns to better the Ute's lives through self-help. This time, however, she also pushed to have people sympathetic to her goals appointed to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. In late 1936, Wiegel began a crusade to completely abolish "the stupendous, all-powerful machine called the Bureau of Indian Affairs...[in which] American Indians are held as 'wards' of the Federal Government with no rights to life or property except as granted or dictated by said Federal Government."[xxv]       

            Aligning herself with a group of Native Americans who sought political autonomy from the federal government, Wiegel began lobbying  the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs for the discontinuance of the BIA.  At the annual CFWC convention in 1937, Wiegel hammered through a resolution petitioning Congress to abolish the Indians' position as wards of the federal government. The proclamation  noted that Indians had become citizens in 1924, but the Indian Bureau still hindered their "complete, full citizenship." The resolution did not call specifically for the abolition of the BIA, but it cited excerpts critical of the Indian Service from the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior.  The report noted that many tribes had won claims against the government for broken treaty promises, but that government bureaucracy had hindered the payment of the settlements.  The CFWC concluded that "even though tribes may have funds to their credit, under the existing laws they are still in the position of INCOMPETENT WARDS WITH INHERITANCES LYING IN THE HANDS OF A GUARDIAN."  To Wiegel and her supporters this was unconscionable.[xxvi]  

            Wiegel's new campaign represented a shift in her thinking.  From her earlier paradigm that envisioned the federal government as a tool for Indian assimilation, and thus empowerment, Wiegel had come to believe that the government hindered Native Americans empowerment. This belief became fairly commonplace among persons active in Indian affairs in the 1940s and 1950s; thus, Wiegel was on the proverbial "cutting edge" in Indian policy.  Despite the growing popularity of this idea among policy makers, (and the introduction of numerous bills in Congress) the campaign to abolish the Indian Service failed.

            The last public record Nellie Wiegel left was a handwritten note dated January 12, 1948 and addressed to "Dear Folks."  She spoke of her husband's sudden death from a heart attack in June and complained of her difficulty in finding an apartment. She was still active in Indian Affairs, writing, "Quite a stir about the Indians. The Bureau will get a bigger appropriation and the Navajos nothing," and noting that she wanted to sell her house so as to be able to "come and go as I please" without worry. A history of the CFWC listed her as Chair of the Division of Indian Welfare until 1941, when the Division became a standing committee under the Division of Public Affairs. With her disappearance from the public record, Wiegel's ultimate fate cannot be established.[xxvii]

            Wiegel's career began as an adjunct to the government's assimilationist agenda.  She  promoted education, citizenship, and middle-class homemaking skills--the very things the Indian Service was attempting to impart to Native Americans.  She also organized voters and lobbied Congress for her goals.  Her strategy, common to twentieth century women reformers, enlisted the activist state to implement her welfare work. Through these actions, Wiegel clearly defined herself as a political player--head of a power bloc of politically organized women working through the "proper channels" in the service of Indian welfare. Wiegel's actions reflected a view held by most well-to-do women reformers--the idea that the government was supposed to protect the weak, and women could organize as a political pressure group to ensure that it did.

            In her role as protector of the disempowered, however, Wiegel was drawn into conflict with male employees of the Indian Service.  The climax of this oppositional relationship came in the 1931 investigation of Agent Peacore.  Nonetheless, her dispute with the Bureau in this particular affair was on a small scale--Wiegel sought the removal of an individual whom she judged immoral.  At that time, she did not offer a substantive challenge to the status quo.  Gradually, however, Wiegel grew increasingly disillusioned with government bureaucracy.  The temporary loss of her place in volunteer Indian work highlighted the linkage between volunteers & the Indian "establishment," who held ultimate power over Native Americans.  This undoubtedly shaped her conclusions that the main obstacle to Indian empowerment was the Indian Service. Wiegel, therefore, called for a radical action on behalf of a conservative agenda. In her latter years, she abandoned all pretenses of working for established authorities and turned her attention on those authorities themselves.  As always, she did this in the name of the Indians and under the auspices of their best interests; a traditionally selfless female role.

            The question of power in Wiegel's activism is an intriguing one, for her relationship with power appears to be ambivalent.  At times, Wiegel publicly claimed or implied that she held substantial sway, both as a member of the CFWC, and as an individual. In her first correspondence with a Ute agent she asserted that her organization was "three and a half million strong and must be reckoned with." Assistant Indian Commissioner E. B. Merritt at least gave lip service to that claim telling Wiegel, "we need the sympathetic interest and cooperation of all good citizens of this country and especially of the organized womanhood..." Allison Kroeger informed Governor Adams that Wiegel declared that "she is the personal representative of Governor Adams [and] a woman with a great deal of influence not only in Colorado, but also in Washington." He also professed that when Wiegel tried to provoke his resignation from the Colorado Indian Commission, she informed him "that she had consented to our appointments, leaving the impression that the appointments were up to her." A letter Wiegel sent Kroger confirms his interpretation of her as a woman confident in her prestige. She reminded him that, in the investigation of Peacore,  she was "the chairman of this commission and you were suggested as the delegate from Durango."  She then took credit for the appropriation of funds for the Ute hospital (something Peacore had been claiming), and instructed Kroeger to go to the reservation himself and look beneath the surface of the Peacore administration. "A word to the wise you know," she concluded, "And this is only for you as one of this commission-as yet."  Kroeger interpreted this letter--most probably her remark "as yet"--as an example of Wiegel's desire to intimidate him . Investigator Nash also saw Wiegel as a bully.  He forwarded to the Commissioner a copy of a letter Wiegel had sent the principle of the reservation boarding school regarding the Peacore investigation: 

In any forthcoming investigation, as you value your future standing, be very careful that you 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.' The truth is known and will be acted upon later and it will be just too bad, so I am informed, for the person not 'coming clean.'...You doubtless remember a certain principle of that school who served others than the government authorities for whom he was supposed to be working and what happened to him.[xxviii]

While Wiegel's letter does not directly state that she will "bring down" Principal Harshbarger, she obviously felt that she wielded enough clout to intimidate him into cooperating with the investigation. Nash also contended that Wiegel claimed she had Agent McKean transferred from the Ute reservation in 1927;  there are, however, no records of Wiegel declaring this herself.

            Thus, while insisting that she was simply gathering information to give the proper authorities, Wiegel often behaved quite assertively in reservation affairs; and, despite her assurances that she was "not against anyone," she threatened action against people whom she felt were uncooperative. Wiegel's repeated public assertions that she was not doing what she was clearly doing either represents self-delusion or a strategy (conscious or unconscious) to cloak her offensive with the mantle of submission to authority. In the absence of real power to effect change, Wiegel frequently adopted a passive aggressive approach, a traditional ploy to appropriate power used by those who feel powerless.[xxix]  In employing these tactics, Wiegel may have been responding to the rhetoric policy makers employed to reproach her. None of Wiegel's detractors directly accused her of forgetting her place as a women, but their censure was phrased in derogatory gendered language used to rebuke "uppity" women: gossip, meddler, slanderer, foolish woman, and trouble maker.  Her harshest critic, Congressman Taylor, went so far as to call her "evil."  Wiegel's behavior was forceful and at times appears imperious, but the hyperbole in her critics' attacks suggests an anger at her activities that may well be connected to her gender.  Bureau correspondence concerning Peacore never used such opprobrious language, even after he disappeared, leaving behind his family and evidence of betrayal of his oath as an Indian agent.

            This use of language was probably not lost on Wiegel for, throughout the controversy she positioned herself carefully as an objective and discreet observer who went through the proper channels. She asserted that she never instigated the investigation--that persons upset with Peacore contacted her and she simply gathered data, not evidence. She directly refuted the accusations of gossip and slander, claiming that she had not made the charges against Peacore public, but rather it was Peacore's defenders who did so. While she wrote forcefully in her defense and took full credit for Peacore's dismissal, she continually stood behind male authority figures such as the Governor and the Mayor of Ignacio.[xxx] For all the anger directed against her as a troublemaker motivated by a will to power, her activism was one of influence (rather than actual power) wielded under the protection of male government officials.

            Wiegel's penchant for hiding behind male authority figures may have reflected her reading of who held actual power in early twentieth century America, for she interpreted the actions of her female critics in light of male behavior.  Wiegel implied that the CFWC women who opposed her were pawns of their husbands and saw her ouster from the Indian Welfare Chair as a result of an attack directed by men. She wrote Commissioner Rhodes that they "took up the fight which that group of men has been waging against me for eight months or more." According to Wiegel, Congressman Taylor's clique informed her that "We Durango ladies care nothing about the superintendent's morals. We care nothing about the morals of the Indians. We are only interested in how much financial prosperity the Indians can bring to Durango."  Her hand-picked successor for Indian Chairman was, in Wiegel's account, "very keen [for the post] but after consideration informed me that her husband had a certain business deal under way, which, if she accepted the nomination, would not be consummated!"  Her contempt for the women who allowed their husbands' business interests to override their concern for reservation morality was vehement. "Their methods," she wrote, "are despicable."  Wiegel dismissed her women censors by blaming their husbands, but she did not excuse their behavior.  Rather, she "resigned from all and every federated club of which I was a member."[xxxi]  Wiegel obviously believed women should stand firm in matters of morality, even if it meant contradicting their husbands.  Her strategy for fighting the business interests that threatened the Utes, then, sought action in both private and public realms. She blended the traditional idea that wives should effect moral change by influencing their husbands at home with direct opposition to those men in the public sphere.

            The history of women's experiences in constructing their public lives is compelling and complex.  As women of the early twentieth century sought to enter civic life and effect real change, they wrestled with conflicting ideas about their roles in society. As a dynamic woman who was unafraid to challenge government power structures, and yet who frequently camouflaged her affront beneath the cover of male authority, Nellie Wiegel is a fascinating example of this process.