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Show Years of Loss, Years of Adjustment, 1882-1933 131 children to industrial schools outside of Utah. They refused, explaining: "Ute boy no understand white man house, mebbe so die."38 In 1883 the Ouray agent built a frame school house and hired a teacher. But the "experiment" was a failure and ended in two months. Not until 1892 was a boarding school built and opened. It was located at Leland, later called Randlett, south of Fort Duchesne. New buildings were constructed for the Uintah school in the summer of 1892. Attendance remained low. Parents explained "their children always died when they went to school."39 And so they did. In 1901 a measles epidemic at the Uintah school killed seventeen of sixty-five pupils. After 1910 conditions at the school improved and attendance increased. Students at the Ouray Boarding School had been transferred to Uintah with the 1898 opening of the Uncompahgre Reservation. The Ouray school and land was given to the state of Utah in 1912. The Uintah Boarding School was not closed until 30 June 1952. Thereafter, all schools on the reservation were administered by the public school system. Sun Dance During the grim years of loss and adjustment, Ute People sought refuge and strength in the Sun Dance. The Sun Dance had been created about 1700 by Plains Indians, perhaps the Cheyenne. The Dance spread to most of the plains tribes and became their major religious ceremony. It was used to insure successful hunts or battles, health, and power for individuals and for the group. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Dance had all but vanished from the Great Plains. These Indians were now defeated, living on reservations. Their traditional ceremonies were suppressed by agency officials. In the 1880s the Wind River Shoshone, who were also suffering under reservation conditions, revitalized the Sun Dance. They incorporated Christian symbols and ideas. The Dance was performed as a kind of renewel of spirit, of group togetherness. About 1890 General Grant, a Uintah who had learned the Sun Dance at Wind River, held a Dance at Whiterocks. In this time of |