OCR Text |
Show was added to the Uintah Forest Reserve; furthermore a number of track of land were set apart and reserved as reservoir sites to con-serve and protect the water supply for the Indians and for general agricultural development. Previous legislation required the allotment of the Uintah and White River Utes and permitted the allotment of the Uncompahgres. Au-thority was also vested in the Secretary of the Interior to reserve 250,000 acres of nonirrigable grazing land for the use of the Indians in common. A commission was appointed on April 3 to allot the Indians and to select the lands to be reserved for use in connection with the Indian Service. It was composed of Cap&. C. G. Hall, U. S. Army, acting Indian agent of the Uintah Agency; W. H. Code, chief engineer of the Indian irrigation service, and Mr. Charles S. Carter, a citizen of Utah, long familiar with local conditions a6d the needs of the Indians. The instructions issued to the commission on April 7 directed it to schedule the allotments made to the Uncompahgre Utes on the Uintah Reservation in 1897 and 1898, and if the allottees were willing to relinquish their old selections, to give them allotments under the law then controlling, since the old allotments will be diffi-cult to irrigate; also to allot the unallotted Uncompahgres and the Uitah and White River Utes so as to give to each head of a family SO acres and to each other person 40 acres of land that can be irrigated. The commission proceeded to carry out its instructions with all pos-sible dispatch, but was delayed in many ways. Complete returns of surveys had not been received; indeed, the Indian Office has not yet hem provided with accepted plats of the new surveys, and it is fair to presume that they are not yet accepted by the Commissioner of the General Land Office. However, unofficial copies of plats covering the recent work in the field were procured, some of them incorrect, and with this imperfect information the commission was forced to pro-ceed. The land suitable for irrigation was not easily located, and because of the peculiar statutes of Utah great care had to be exercised in order to secure the water necessary. All the obstacles have been overcome, and it is confidently believed that these Indians have received good land which can be irrigated and on which they can raise enough for their needs. The Tincom-pahgre Utes, numbering 672 persons, were allotted 63,915.51 acres on the Uintah Reservation and somewhat more than 8,000 acres off the reservation. Their allotments include 83 approved by the act of March 1,1899 (30 Stat. L., 924), some of which are wholly or in part unsurveyed. Some are on the Uintah and some on the former Un-compahgre Reservation, and some are on both. The total number of allottees is 591. |