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Show Years of Loss, Years of Adjustment, 1882-1933 135 In 1916 she headed a petition to have water brought to the Uncompahgre allotments. Instead of the water, Indian Commissioner Cato Sells sent her a gaudy shawl. She in turn sent Commissioner Sells a saddle blanket. This seemed to be all the government was willing to do in appreciation for her help as Ouray's wife in keeping the peace. On 17 August 1924 she died at her camp on Bitter Creek and was buried there. By 1925 her death became generally known. There began an effort by citizens of Montrose, Colorado, to have her body brought to Montrose and placed in a memorial mausoleum on her old home site. A Chipeta Memorial Fund was established to collect the money necessary for the project. School children, businessmen, and organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Elks contributed.46 The body of Chipeta was exhumed and sent to Montrose. A funeral service was held 15 March at the newly established Ouray Memorial Park, with over five thousand people in attendance. The publicity, the elaborate ceremony, the flowery tributes were comforting only to the whites. They did nothing for the impoverished People. Thus, over forty years after the Colorado People had been pushed out of their homeland, the intruders could ease their guilt by fussing over the dead, without having to care about the living. That the living were neglected is evident in the continuing declining population on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation. In 1890 there were 1,854 full bloods; in 1900 1,660; in 1920 1,005; and in 1930 only 917.47 The land base also continued to decline. Leasing and purchasing of Indian lands continued, particularly during an alfalfa seed boom which occurred in the 1920s. By 1933 ninety-one percent of the reservation lands of the Uintah, White Rivers, and Uncompahgre People had been lost from their ownership. From nearly four million acres in 1882, the People now owned only three hundred sixty thousand acres.48 |