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Show 90 The Uintah Ute People Conflicts between federal and Mormon Church authorities added to the confusion and disorder which plagued the administration of the agency. The Utah Ute People came, however, to have an advantage that most of the Colorado People did not. From 1871 to 1883, a long period of service, the agent at Uintah was an unusually capable and hard working man, John J. Critchlow. Prior to Critchlow there had been the typical rapid turnover of agents. Also the location of the agency for the Utah Ute People w7as moved several times before 1871. Through 1864 the main agency was located on the Spanish Fork Reservation. That year Agent F. Hatch reported that he served there six groups of Ute People â€" a group of Tumpanawach led by Kibe, Uinta-ats groups led by Sowiette, Antero, and Tabby, the San Pitch group led by Joe, and a Parianuche group led by White Eye.27 In the summer of 1865 Utah Superintendent O. H. Irish traveled to the Uintah Reservation to check on the progress which Agent L. B. Kinney was making in establishing the new Uintah Valley Agency. Irish found Kinney and his group camped near the center of the reservation and advised them to locate the agency in a valley there. Before much work could be done on the agency, Kinney was dismissed for "gross neglect." The next year Special Agent Thomas Carter established the agency and farm on the upper Duchesne River near present day Tabiona. Twenty-five acres of ground were cleared and planted. Six log cabins were built for the agency employees. In the spring of 1868 Agent Pardon Dodds moved the agency to Rock Creek. In the fall of that year he moved it to Whiterocks. This was a site suggested by Uinta-ats leader Antero because it was a center of Ute trade and hunting routes.28 In his first year at the Uintah Valley Agency, Critchlow quickly observed that his predecessors had done little to aid the Indians. "There seems never to have been anything more done for them than to keep them quiet and peaceable by partially feeding and clothing them and amusing them with trinkets."29 He noted that the People were hungry from lack of adequate food supplies at the reservation. They wanted to continue their traditional ways of life. They were unhappy with the treatment given them by the government. |