The government had an interest in maintaining good relations with the various Indian Tribes. But more importantly, the government wanted the Indians restricted to certain areas called reservations. There they could be controlled and kept away from the intruding white settlers. To meet that end, the government designed a new treaty with the Colorado Utes. The government wanted to relocate the Utes on a small reservation and to establish a headquarter for them in the San Juan Mountains.

Rapid change is difficult and societies generally avoid it. Slow alterations can be accepted and made. But sudden great changes in a traditional way of life should be avoided whenever possible. Too much of a culture is destroyed by such changes.

The first major land cessions were near the Utes but, it was just the beginning of governmental action which would eventually take most of the Ute lands.

In 1848, the Ute lands came under control of the United States. That control was given by the Mexican government in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That treaty ended the war between Mexico and the United States and resulted in the transfer of land. The Utes were not asked.

The take-over of Ute country by the United States forced the greatest changes in Ute society and government. In 1848, the U.S. won war against Mexico. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war. Mexico gave up all claims to the Northern province of Mexico including land used by the Utes.

The U.S. encouraged non-Indians to move into the territories. Ute leaders and U.S. officials signed their first treaty in 1849. This treaty was signed in Abiquiiu, New Mexico, by Quiziachigiate, and twenty-seven other Ute leaders. Most of these Ute leaders were from the Mouache and Capote bands. Most of the other Ute leaders didn't sign the treaty to be valid for all the Utes.

Negotiations and Treaties Help the Situation

James S. Calhoun, superintendent of Indian Affairs, negotiated the first treaty. So the treaty was called the Calhoun Treaty and was ratified by the United States senate on September 9, 1850.

The Utes promised to recognize the legal power of the government over their lands and to obey the laws of the United States. Government agencies were to be allowed onto the Ute lands.

The government in return promised agencies, goods, and sometimes money for them to exchange lands. Some Utes tried to establish peace in Utah.

Agencies were established in the 1850's to help provide for the Utes, as was promised by the treaty. But these agencies were usually too far removed to be of much assistance to the Weeminuche.

The Utes were not pleased with the idea and disagreed with government policy and aims for Indians. The goal of the government was to make the Ute and other Indians into farmers and to have them join in with non-Indian society.

The Ute Indians are a tribe in Western Utah and Colorado. The name of Utah came from the Ute Indian.

By the 1860's, U.S. officials recognized the Utes living in several groups in different parts of the territory. Officials reported that Weeminuche groups traveled from Tierraanarilla, New Mexico northward to the Las Animas and the Rio Grande. Some Weeminuche traveled with the Paiutes to Utah. And the group led by Cabegon and Seworicha farmed along the La Plats River. Other groups, which camped along the Las Animas and Mancos Rivers, were led by Sewormicha, Piwood, Ignacio, Chiwaten, and Tobats.

Reervations Set Aside for Utes

Map shows most of the land that the Indians had as reservation in 1889. The line north of La Sal marks where the reservation ends in San Juan County.

In 1861, president Lincoln set aside the Uintah as a reservation for the Utes.

The Utes as well as many other Indians did not have ownership of the land. The Utes hunted, farmed, and gathered from the lands as they protected their land from intruders. They allowed other people to cross their land if they did not intend to remain. As more non-Indians remained on the Ute lands, the Utes were forced to deal ownership of land.

In the 1863 treaty, the government was supposed to provide schools, churches, and agencies to the Indians. However, the government did not do this.

The reservation boundaries were to be drawn, but the treaty did not include any means for protecting these boundaries.

In order to avoid conflict with the intruders, the Ute groups had to decide that the land they used was to be given to some others. Their leaders had to negotiate with the government in order to protect what land they still had. These became the negotiations for the 1863 treaty. However, Weeminuche leaders did join other Ute leaders in signing the 1868 treaty.

Weeminuche who signed that treaty were: Pajachope (a claw), Panoar (broad brow), Subitoau (ugly man), Tesagarapouit (white eyes), Sapocuawa (big belly), and Querata (a bear). The treaties of 1864 and 1868 prohibited unauthorized people from access onto Ute lands. However, the greed for wealth brought prospectors into the mountains. The government refused to commit the necessary manpower to enforce the provisions of the treaties.

The Utes were first to occupy Colorado, after the Anasazi by the treaty of March 2, 1868 in Washington, D.C. The Utes were confirmed to the land in the territory of Colorado. Some Uintah Utes had already moved to the reservation in Utah.

A new treaty was signed in 1868 between the United States and the Colorado Ute tribe. The treaty further reduced the Ute lands. The Utes gave up one third of their land to the United States and in effect, claimed no land on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountain.

In the 1868 treaty, the leaders agreed that the Utes would give up their lands, except for one-third of Western Colorado. That land was reserved to the Utes. The U.S. government agreed to keep non-Ute members out of the territory but, it did little or nothing to keep them out.

In the treaty of 1868, the Utes were given 15,000,000 acres in the Colorado counties such as: Rio Blanco, Mesa, Garfield, Montrose, Delta, San Miguel, Montezuma, Gunnison, Eagle, Dolores, Ouray, Pitkin, and Moffat. The West grew and the Utes were pushed back until they had lost nearly all the land that was ceded to them.

It appeared that the treaty of 1868 would settle the "Ute problems" by putting them on reservation. The Ute Mountain Utes own 448,029.52 acres of tribal trust plus 29,820.92 acres of fee patent in ranches off the reservation, and in New Mexico 104, 978 acres of tribal trust land, and in Utah 4, 294.8 acres of tribal trust land, 8, 483.05 acres of individual trust land, and 1, 682.28 acres of fee patent land.

After Ouray's death in 1880, no other person became the chief spokesman for the Utes. By then the Utes were getting pushed from several directions. They were having problems from the non-Indians who were trespassing on the Ute lands. The Utes found their lands invaded by miners, farmers, and cattlemen.

In 1880 the Colorado Ute leaders signed another agreement with the Federal Government. The leader who signed it was Ignacio, Aiehandra of Weeminuche. With this agreement the Tabeguache, Yamparika Utes were moved to the Uintah and Uncompahgre reservation in Utah. These groups became known as the Northern Utes. More Utes were moved into the Southern Ute reservations in Colorado.

The other remaining Utes were removed to Utah from Colorado after the "Meeker Massacre." On February 20, 1895 Congress created a reservation for the Southern Utes in Colorado and the Ute Mountain Utes in Colorado and New Mexico.

The largest portion of the reservation lies in Montezuma County, Colorado. More Utes also live in the La Plata county, and San Juan County, New Mexico. A small number of Ute Mountain Ute Tribal members (about 250) live in Southeastern Utah on allotted trust land and fee patent land in Allen Canyon and White Mesa near Blanding, Utah.

The county is high and dry cut by deep rough canyons. Towaoc is on the left side of the Sleeping Ute Mountain which is about 5880 feet above sea level.

The period of greatest change was the half century between 1860 and 1910. Utes were restricted to reservation life which was but a small part of their original lands their ancestors used. The population of the Weeminuche declined to about 454 on the tribe's roll in 1905.

There had always been pressure on the Utes to control their lands. They had to hold competing tribes at bay and force them to recognize Ute territorial claims. Members of other tribes could cross lands which were considered Ute, but they were expected to do so without undue delay.

The first agency was Taos. Then it was at Abiquin and later Maxwell's Ranch and Conejos, Colorado. The forts which were built were too far east to Weeminuche interest. The Weeminuche continued to have very little to do with the United States government.

In an agreement on May 10, 1911, the Ute Mountain Utes ceded lands to be included in Mesa Verde National Park and were compensated with other lands. This produced the regular shape of the reservation.

In Colorado the reservation measured between 15 and 24.5 miles from North to South Ute reservation. This was the beginning of the United States Government's major involvement.

Expanding the West Creates More Land Problems

There is a special relationship between Indian Tribes and the Federal Government. That relationship is based on trust and responsibility. The federal government that's under the Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) carries out responsibilities to the tribes.

In the 1920s the government attempted to force the Allen Canyon Utes of San Juan County, Utah to send their children to the boarding school at Ignacio, Colorado. Some Ute parents refused to give up their children, but they were taken by force and loaded onto a cattle truck. They were bathed and clothed and sent to the Towaoc school. "This incident has continued a bitter memory in Ute Mountain Ute History."

Ute Indian police were sent to round up the people. The people were kept in a barbed wire fence compound in Blanding, Utah. They were denied food and water until they consented to send their children to school.

Charley Ute, during the time of Posey, would ride to Blanding every day from White Mesa, and his stirrups were too long. He never shortened them. (San Juan Historical Commission photo.)

The Ute Mountain Ute headquarters are in Towaoc, Colorado, the only reservation community located near Cortez, Colorado.

In 1934, the Indian Reorganized Act passed. The Weeminuche of the Ute Mountain Reservation organized a tribal government and enacted a tribal constitution. From that time on they were known as the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. The tribal government and constitution took six years of consideration.

Ute Tribal government did not begin in 1938. Uintah-Ouray residents accepted a constitution and established a Tribal Business committee. The Ute Systems of government and leadership has undergone changes in a comparatively short time but, the roots of the earlier ways are still there.

,u> Utes Seek U.S. Government

In 1938 the Ute Mountain Utes along with other Utes sued the government in the Court of Claims. The Ute Indian tribes of Colorado and Utah were awarded $31,550,000 by the U.S. court of claims. This is a payment that was past due. It is from some of the richest minerals and oil lands in Western Colorado. This includes the Wilson Creek oil fields which have paid the government more than 10 million in royalties.

Some of the money goes to the education facilities, established stock, or other businesses that will make them self sustaining. This made the Ute Indians one of the richest of the Indian tribes. The settlement paid the Utes for the lands which had been taken from them by treaties, and for which the government had promised to pay them as the lands were sold.

The Indians who were involved in the negotiations of the treaty did not understand what it all meant. Their signatures gave the government proof of their agreement. This treaty later was used to give the United States the right to try and enter Ute lands.

The non-Indians sought to have more precise treaties so the Utes would be more restricted and the intruders could gain Ute lands. Non-Indians who wanted the Ute lands did not care about the Utes' rights.

The Indians demanded that the trespassers be evicted according to the terms of the treaties. And the non-Indians or the miners demanded protection from the Indians and access to their lands.

Of course the government eventually decided it would be easier to remove the Utes from the area than try to remove and keep out miners.

The United States government wanted the Ute Indians to live according to its idea of "civilized," that meant adopting the non-Indian culture and becoming farmers, miners, and businessmen.