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Show The Creation of the Reservation: 1848-1900 41 and the Southern Utes didn't want to move. The second alternative was a suggestion by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, J. D. C. Atkins, to move the Indians to San Juan County, Utah. Bills were introduced into Congress in 1886 and 1887 asking for this removal but they failed to win support. In 1888 the removal bill again failed to pass either the House or the Senate. However, Commissioner Atkins added a clause embodying the proposed removal to a bill making an agreement with a group of Montana Indians. On May 1, 1888, the Montana Indian agreement with the Ute removal clause passed Congress and was signed by the President.8 On August 4th, a commission of three, J. Montgomery Smith, Thomas S. Childs, and R. D. Weaver, met with the Southern Ute bands at Ignacio. The negotiations took several months before three-fourths of the male population of the three bands agreed to relocate. By January, 1889, the agreement had been sent to Congress for its approval. Within one month the Senate had voted favorably for removal, but the House rejected the agreement. Those groups against removing the Utes from Colorado who applied enough pressure on the members of the House to vote down the bill included the citizens of Utah, who decided they had too many Indians in their territory already, the Indian Rights Association, a reform group located in Philadelphia who thought progress in civilizing the Utes would be destroyed because of increased isolation from whites, and the cattle companies which used the La Sal and Abajo mountains as grazing areas. The combined resistance of these groups against removal managed to defeat all removal bills introduced into Congress for the next five years. With each session of Congress, bills were announced that would relocate the Utes in San Juan County, Utah, but all failed. Not until 1894 was a bill presented that received the support of these groups. The 1895 Bill introduced into Congress by Andrew J. Hunter from Illinois asked that the Utes be located on their old reservation in southwestern Colorado. Individual allotments of land were to be distributed to the Ute families and when all of the families had been given land, then the special status of the reservation was to be removed and the land not taken by the Utes was to be opened to white settle- 8 Ibid., p. 90. |
