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Show 34 The Intruders, 1550-1882 They did not understand that they were the victims of a depression in a complex economic system. Part of their frustration at this turn of events was expressed in their burning the trading forts in and around the Uinta Basin in 1844. Explorers Fur traders, such as Peter Skene Ogden, Jedediah Smith, and Kit Carson, traveled through and then reported about the Ute country. Other people were sent by the United States government to explore the region. Captain Zebulon Pike was sent in 1806 to explore the Colorado Rockies. While camped in the San Luis Valley, he and his men were arrested by Spanish soldiers and put in jail. In 1820 Major Stephen H. Long led an army expedition, which included scientists and artists, up the South Platte River to the Colorado Front Range. In his report, Long labeled the region of eastern Colorado "the great American desert." It was a label which people came to apply to the West as a whole â€" a label which discouraged many from settling there. To counteract this image and to encourage American settlement in Ute country and elsewhere in the West, an expedition was again sent to the Colorado Rockies in 1843 under Lieutenant John Charles Fremont. In 1844 Fremont traveled through Utah Ute country, leading the first official exploring and survey party sent to gather scientific information about the area. His reports (edited and published by his wife Jessie) encouraged hundreds of settlers to make the trip, most notably the Mormon pioneers. In the following years other government explorers and surveyors followed Fremont into Ute country. Captain Howard Stansbury of the U.S. Topographical Engineers was sent in 1849 to begin a survey for a military post on the edge of the desert. One of his assistants John W. Gunnison later returned to the Great Basin to work on a survey for the Pacific Railroad. In the 1860s Major John Wesley Powell began surveys of Ute country which would become part of the U. S. Geological Survey. In 1869 he explored the Green and Colorado Rivers. In 1871-72 he made an official survey of the Colorado River. He observed and studied the languages and customs of the Ute and Paiute Peoples of |