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Show Unfulfilled Promises: Negotiations with the Intruders, 1849-1882 55 the graves of their fathers."18 Sanpitch also spoke against the treaty. However, advised by Brigham Young, the leaders signed. The treaty provided that the Ute People give up their lands in central Utah, including the Corn Creek, Spanish Fork, and San Pete Reservations. Only the Uintah Valley Reservation remained. They were to move into it within one year, and be paid $25,000 a year for ten years, $20,000 for the next twenty years and $15,000 for the last thirty years. (This was payment of sixty-two and one half cents per acre for all land in Utah and San Pete counties.) However, the United States Congress did not ratify the treaty. Therefore, the government did not pay the promised annuity. Nevertheless, in succeeding years most of the Utah Ute People were removed to the Uintah Valley Reservation. Some moved willingly to fulfill the promises they had made in treaty. Others were forced to move. All moved without compensation for their loss of land and independence. (See Map p. 53) Unratified Middle Park Treaty, 1866 Negotiations to acquire Ute lands also continued in Colorado. Central Colorado had been reserved for the Ute People in 1863. But when minerals were discovered there in 1865, miners poured into the area, followed by farmers and ranchers. To ease transportation of all these people and their goods, the Overland Stage Company began to survey a road from Denver to Salt Lake City. The road went through Ute land. In the summer of 1866 a council of Ute leaders of the Uinta-ats, Yamparika, and Parianuche was assembled at the Hot Sulphur Springs Agency in Middle Park. A commission of federal officials met with them to negotiate a treaty in which the People would give up the lands through which the road was to be built. The Ute People wanted the work on the road stopped. But, they were informed that the Taviwach had formerly owned the land and had sold it to the government. This angered the People even further: They [Ute leaders] said the country they were now occupying was their own hunting ground; that it was the only locality in which they could find game and no power on earth should disturb them in their possession of it.19 |
