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Show 184 Byrnes finally forced the cattle off Indian land or compelled the owners to pay one dollar per head per year for pasturage. It was this fee the cattlemen were attempting to avoid. One of the herds belonging to Thomas J. Schofield numbered 1,500 head. Byrnes estimated that about 6,000 head were illegally pastured in 1887 alone. Two years later Byrnes was able to report that the lease money had risen to $10,000 per annum but that the agent was still struggling with the "Heber pool." He said in his annual report to the Commissioner, "I do not propose to tolerate trespassers."^1 By 1890, a pattern had emerged at Uintah-Ouray that was similar to other Indian reservations in the trans-Mississippi West. The pressure of white settlers had caused the federal government to act on their behalf to cancel Indian rights to lands and place them on smaller and yet smaller reservations. By 1887, with the passage of the Dawes Severalty Act, the drive to break up reservation holdings was already well underway. The Utes were particularly anxious about the status of their land rights. Their fears were well founded, for by 1905 the process had gone full cycle; first the trader-trappers, then the settlers, then displacement and expulsion, then reservation life, then loss of the reservation lands and the assigning of individual allotments. If a 21Ibid. |