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Show 134 Uncompahgre, when informed of the fighting, dispatched a group of men, one a white employee, to tell the Indians to stop fighting. His message was timely, because Merritt was approaching and another pitched battle might have taken place had he not intervened. A former agent of the White River Utes, General Charles Adams, was sent to the camp. To get to the camp required the assistance of Ouray; once there, the Utes were angry and indignant and they felt betrayed by those who were supposedly sent there to guard their interests. In spite of their hostility, Adams was able to persuade the Indians to give up their captives and to allow the army to move in. The incident provided a faction of the political forces in the new State of Colorado the opportunity they had been waiting for. The Utes had been able to cling to more of their original homeland than almost any other tribe in the West. Even though treaties in 1863, 1868 and 1873 had decreased the amount of their territory, they still held a grand domain, (see map) When the new state of Colorado was formed, they found about one-third of their area a gigantic Indian reservation. Certain figures in the state had benefited from alienated Ute Indian land. Pitkin, a Yankee, had grown rich from the mines of the San Juan mountains in southwestern Colorado which opened on Ute lands. Those lands had been taken from the Utes by the Brunot Agreement of 1873. Pitkin, and a leading cohort, William Vickers, were leading protagonists in a very public effort to expel the Utes from their |