Indian domain carved into reservations

By Mike Anton

Before Colorado, before the prospectors and the pioneers, before the French and the Spanish, there were the Utes.

For centuries, the tribe roamed Colorado virtually alone - hunting game and gathering food across some 79 million acres that stretched into present day Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.

By 1881, they would be left with a mere fraction of that.

The story of how the Utes were herded onto reservations exemplifies how Indians throughout the West were stripped of ancestral lands during the 19th century.

It's a story replete with good intentions gone bad, treaties made and broken, ignorance and fear, a story of a people who tried and failed to sidestep the juggernaut of American expansion.

``It's a classic story of cultural misunderstandings and bigotry and racism,'' said Duane Smith, a history professor at Fort Lewis College in Durango.

For decades, the Utes avoided conflict with most white settlers. Their territory lay west of Colorado's booming Front Range, in the rugged mountains and dry plateaus of the largely unexplored frontier.

Early on, as the first wave of miners staked out gold and silver camps, the Utes sought peace. In 1863, as territorial Gov. John Evans battled raiding Indians on the plains, he signed a treaty with the Utes. Led by Chief Ouray, the tribe ceded the San Luis Valley in exchange for most of Colorado's Western Slope.

It didn't last.

Just five years later, Ouray traveled to Washington, D.C., met with the president and gave up more territory in exchange for peace. The new treaty left the Utes with 16 million acres, the western third of Colorado, land the whites didn't want.

And then they did.

In the early 1870s, miners began pouring across the Continental Divide, flooding one new mining district after another - Silverton and Lake City, Red Mountain and Rico, Telluride and Ophir.

The profits were huge, and the Utes were in the way.

``It was suddenly the promised land,'' Smith said. ``And the Utes were doomed.''

The miners were illegally trespassing on the tribe's land. But the Utes were powerless to enforce the treaties, and the federal government either couldn't - or wouldn't - evict the newcomers.

In 1872, just four years after the last treaty was signed, Ouray again went to Washington. This time, the tribe gave up 4 million acres in exchange for more promises and an annual payment of $25,000.

``We had no choice whether or not to sign these treaties,'' Ute historian Alden Naranjo said. ``It was either they did it and hoped for the best, or they became landless. It was the best deal they could get.

``So we started with all of Colorado, then half, then a third. Then not even that. This was inevitable.''

In 1876, Colorado became a state and ``Utes Must Go'' became a political slogan across the Western Slope.

Tensions rose. Ouray, the multilingual peace-making chief chosen by the U.S. government to speak for all the Utes, couldn't, in fact, speak for the diverse bands of the tribe.

Some believed things would be best if the Utes just quit roaming, settled down and became ``civilized'' by adopting Christianity and farming.

Nathan Meeker was among them. The Indian agent quickly became the embodiment of everything the Utes feared and hated about the white settlers. Their rules and fences. Their schools and lectures. Their desire to turn warrior-hunters into plow-pushers.

``Meeker was having the men do things that only women had done,'' Smith said.

It all came to a head in the summer of 1879 when Meeker ordered an Indian horse-racing track plowed for crops. Meeker was attacked near the modern town in northwestern Colorado that bears his name. Worried, he called for Army troops to back him up.

When the soldiers from Wyoming reached the reservation boundary, they were ambushed and pinned down by Utes. Thirteen were killed, including the group's commanding officer.

By the time the survivors were rescued by reinforcements, Meeker and 11 other men at his White River agency were dead - some mutilated. Meeker's wife and daughter were among a group of women taken hostage. In the weeks to come, Ouray would secure their release.

The fate of the Utes, however, had been sealed.

``Either they or we must go, and we are not going,'' the Denver Times wrote. ``Western Empire is an inexorable fact. He who gets in the way of it will be crushed.''

In 1880, Chief Ouray made one final trip to Washington and signed one final treaty. The Utes would be left with three reservations - two in southwestern Colorado, one in Utah.

A few months later, Ouray, 47, died. He had spent half his life trading land for peace. He was hailed a hero by whites and Indians alike.

Only now, there was little left to trade.

``Here was the last defeat of the red man,'' one observer wrote at the time as the Indians moved, under the eye of soldiers, to their new homes. ``Here the frontiers of the white man met, crushing the Utes in its mighty embrace.''

June 1, 1999

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