As author Kay Beth Avery ably puts it in her introduction, Unbroken Spirits is the stories of three courageous hardworking women who triumphed over their adversities not by becoming rich, powerful, winners in society but by enduring patiently and nobly under terrible adverse conditions. These women were not queens or princesses. They were underdogs. Some might even call them "losers." Each of these very special women played an important role in a famous Colorado conflict. Chipeta, wife of famous Ute Chief Ouray, was an orphan but became famous among the whites as "Queen of the Utes." When her tribe was banished from Colorado, she chose to give up considerable power, wealth, and prestige to spend the next forty years with her people in utter poverty in the eastern Utah reservation. Marion Sloan Russell is best known for her book Land of Enchantment, the story of her travel over the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico. However few realize that she was a key player in the twenty year battle with the rich, powerful, and crooked Maxwell Land Grand Company. She and thousands of other southern Colorado and northern New Mexico homesteaders battled over ownership of pieces of the nearly two million acre grant and eventually lost everything although she and her husband had been given a U.S. Patent to the family homestead. Mary Pearl Waters Jolly became a nurse but married a coal miner, one of Colorado's lowliest workers. Eventually she and many other women became involved in the Ludlow Massacre, one of the low points in Colorado's history. Kay Beth Avery, using her unique writing style of combining historical fiction and creative biography, has written two other popular books, Warriors, Widows & Orphans and Tales from the Trappers Trail, both published by Western Reflections Publishing Company
Long before English speakers set eyes upon it, the volcanic plug on the south bank of the Huerfano River was tagged with a moniker that means "the orphan." Spanish conquistadors saw it as a rock pile that God dumped in the middle of nowhere, an odd little cone far removed from the regular foothills edging the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range. In the 18th century, this outcropping and the river that bears the same name were famous landmarks for Native American tribes, Hispanic explorers, and French adventurers. Then in the 19th century, along came US mountain men, gold-seekers, cowboys, sheep ranchers, railroad workers, town developers, and coal miners from 31 different countries, speaking 27 different languages. Counterculture revolutionaries discovered the area in the 1960s and established five separate communes west of Walsenburg. Each wave of immigrants brought new perspectives and lifestyles.
Long before English speakers set eyes upon it, the volcanic plug on the south bank of the Huerfano River was tagged with a moniker that means "the orphan." Spanish conquistadors saw it as a rock pile that God dumped in the middle of nowhere, an odd little cone far removed from the regular foothills edging the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range. In the 18th century, this outcropping and the river that bears the same name were famous landmarks for Native American tribes, Hispanic explorers, and French adventurers. Then in the 19th century, along came US mountain men, gold-seekers, cowboys, sheep ranchers, railroad workers, town developers, and coal miners from 31 different countries, speaking 27 different languages. Counterculture revolutionaries discovered the area in the 1960s and established five separate communes west of Walsenburg. Each wave of immigrants brought new perspectives and lifestyles.
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