a thesis by Flora Jane Satt - Shealtiel

Negotiations leading to the final settlementFlora Jane Satt—annotated by Miles SaltielSo to the troublesome matter of the colonists’ financial position which was to consume nearly a year of negotiations. Wemay see this by examining the next sequence of events.a. Before 23 October 1882Colonists on generally good terms with the management of the colonyColonists acknowledge their debt to HEAS and expect to be in a position to repaySource: Schwarz, generally and p16.b. Before 30 January 1883Colonists in dispute with the management of the colonyColonists no longer expect to pay their debt.Source: RMJHN; for expansion see below.c. Late Summer 1883HEAS agrees to send the colonists a cash sum (received in October)(This reversed the former flow of liability, telling us that HEAS andSaltiel forgave the colonists their debt and mutually settled)Sources: Roberts, p130; Satt, p29.To summarise, the position reversed from (a) where the colonists were to repay $10,000 to HEAS, to (b) where HEASactually paid a further $2,000 to the colonists. This can only have come from hard negotiation between the colonistsand HEAS, complicated by the presence of a third-party, Saltiel, to whom the colonists also owed money.The correspondence between Kohn & Wirkowski and H S Henry, the President of HEAS, is best seen as the secondround of the colonists’ campaign. The first was the settlers’ appeal to HEAS for “aid and counsel in how to regain theirlost money” (Satt, p25). As they had expended only filing fees on land they were still occupying, we may take it thatHEAS dismissed this out of hand. Presumably, however, this appeal also conveyed to HEAS the unwelcome news thatthe pioneers no longer considered themselves bound to repay the $10,000 defrayed by HEAS on their behalf, let alonethe credit they had run up at Saltiel’s store, between the $1,545 disclosed by Schwarz (p15) and the $8,000 reported byJalomstein’s as discussed above.At more or less this time, the settlers made their position known to the Denver community, from whom they had beenbuying kosher meat since August (Schwarz, p13; Roberts p129; Satt, p26) and with whom there were able to make telegraphcontact (see the discussion of Henry’s prompt response to Kohn & Wirkowski above). Kohn & Wirkowski thenvisited the colony. The record shows that Kohn took the settlers under his wing; in effect they became his clients, eitheron a contingent basis or pro bono as they had no cash to ante up.Kohn launched the second round of the settlers’ campaign with the report he drew up with Wirkowski, which was dated30 January, sent to HEAS on 5 February, and published in the Denver Tribune on 7 February (all 1883). There then followeda campaign in the Denver Republican, who characterised the settlement as a “vile atrocity” and spoke harshly ofSaltiel (Satt, p27). Even so, at this point Kohn’s tack with HEAS was to more to talk up the colonists’ hardship than torubbish the conception or management of the colony, with his report to HEAS dwelling on the pioneers’ financial andphysical predicament.These developments put Henry and HEAS in a spot. Henry presided over a charity which had solicited funds on the basisthat they were to be loaned to pioneers, not tendered as out-and-out grants. His comments about the mendicantcharacter of the Russian immigrant—so grating to modern ears—may be seen not merely as a piece of stereotyping, butas a confirmation that by the time of his letter the colonists had signalled their intention to defect from their obligationsand an understandable reflection of his chagrin. In any event, his reply of 15 February 1883 dismissed Kohn &Wirkowski's report as hyperbole, so the second round of the settlers’ campaign came to nought. The settlers and theirattorney, Kohn, now faced a tactical dilemma. In order to achieve their negotiating objectives, they had to get Henryand HEAS to overcome their scruples about the basis on which moneys had been furnished. We lack a full record ofwhat then took place, but there was evidently a prompt third round of approaches. Satt writes that the settlers renewedtheir pleas in the spring (p27), but on 2 March 1883, HEAS wrote back counselling patience and fortitude (Satt, p27;Oswald p26). By the late summer, however, HEAS had reversed its position, abandoning its claim on the pioneers andagreeing to send them a further $2,000, with funds delivered in October 1883 (Satt, p28).47