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Show CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION A s early as the sixteenth century, Spanish documents indicate that the Yutas, the Spanish word for Utes, occupied an extensive amount of territory in the Rockv Mountain and Great Basin area. • Their territory stretched from " . . . the area west of the Colorado River in southeastern California and northwestern Arizona, north of the Colorado and San Juan Rivers in Southern LItah, and on north of the headwaters of the Rio Grande in south and central Colorado." J Located within that domain were several small bands of the Yutas who later became known as the Southern LItes. They occupied that area described geographically as " north of the headwaters of the Rio Grande in south and central Colorado and north of the Colorado and San Juan rivers in southern Utah." ^ Three bands were involved: the Weeminuches, the Capotes and the Muaches. A Of this group the Weeminuches traditionally claimed land north and east of the Colorado River in LItah as well as part of the southwest coiner of Colorado. East of the Weeminuches were the Capotes who lived on either side of the continental divide in the San Juan Mountain Range and in the San Luis Valley. Farther east were located the Muache LItes. Their traditional homeland during this earlier period was probably the eastern slope of central Colorado. AH three groups were hunting and trading peoples; each moved across the land as the seasons of the year, food supplies and demand for trading goods dictated. This movement carried the Utes great distances from their traditional lands including penetrations into New Mexico and onto the Great Plains. These trading patterns brought two of the three bands into contact with the Spanish located in New Mexico. For short periods of time both the Muache and Capote bands traded with the Spanish. The third band, the Weeminuches, remained less affected by this trade because of their greater geographical isolation. Throughout this earlier period of European contact only a few attempts were made to establish permanent trading settlements within the country occupied by the nomadic tribes. The Spanish did send expeditions into the Lite territory to trade but most returned after completing their business. During the Mexican period of control ( 1821- 46) over the Southwest, several attempts, again mostly unsuccessful, were made to establish trading posts on the headwaters of the Rio Grande and in eastern Utah. The most successful of these was a trading post established in eastern Utah in early nineteenth century by Antoine Robidoux. 5 His action was in response to a number of trappers and traders who came to the Southern Lite lands during this time. Among the notables who came were the Roubidoux's, Ceran St. Vrain and Bent. However, these were the exception rather than the rule. European contact remained only an occasional experience for the Lite people. However, the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe- Hidalgo in 1848, which placed control of the Southwest under the LInited States Government, made this contact more than just occasional. It initiated an invasion of whites into the Lite lands. The number of Americans who had previously made contact with the LItes - a few trappers, traders and the dispossessed Mormons - was suddenly augmented by miners, railroaders, farmers and ranchers. They forced the Southern LItes to move off part of their domain and to alter their way of life. 1. S. Lyman Tyler, " The Yuta Indians Before 1680,' Western Humanities Review, Vol. 5 ( Spring, 1951), p. 157. 2. S. Lyman Tyler, " The Spaniard and the Ute," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXII ( October, 1954). p. 344. 3. Ibid., p. 344. 4. The Ute nation was a loosely structured confederation of several units called bands. A band consisted of a number of extended southernmost families grouped socially, economically and geographically. By the 1840s the three southernmost bands were called the Southern Ute bands and by the 1880' s they were officially called the Southern Ute Tribe. 5. Ibid., p. 361 _ 1 „ |