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Show Intertribal Relations 59 with these tribes. The Ute language is closely related to Shoshone and Paiute; these three are of the same Uto-Aztecan linguistic stock. From 1600 to 1879, Ute intertribal relations became a complex problem, especially after direct contact with white men. Before this, the Indian tribes and bands usually dealt with each other according to traditional relationships; they knew who were their traditional enemies and who were their friends. But the white man became a third party and was hard to define as clearly friend or enemy. To the Utes, the white man was unpredictable. He extended friendship or he did not, or he opened fire on them. He came in large or small groups, or he traveled alone. He was Spanish, French, or American and he had many interests such as hunting, trapping, or exploring. In any event, the Utes most likely judged him by his relationships with the surrounding tribes and with the Utes themselves. When the white man extended gifts and friendship to an enemy tribe and was accepted by them, he would be considered an enemy too. A white man who tried to be friends with both the Utes and an enemy tribe could not always be trusted. When he fought the enemy of the Utes, the Utes could easily accept him as a friend or even adopt him into the tribe. During the period of early European exploration, Ute intertribal relationships were affected very little by the coming of the Spanish and later the French. The Utes still fought Plains tribes, and provided a kind of guardianship over the Jicarilla Apaches, a relationship which was considered unjust by the Jicarillas. Between 1707-1746, the Utes and Comanches, united under a rather weak alliance, first attacked the Jicarilla Apache, then turned on each other to wage a war of extermination, the Comanche-Ute War, which continued through the rest of the eighteenth century. The Utes, who had entered into treaties with the Spanish as early as the 1670's, and had become their allies, joined the Spanish in 1779 to fight the Comanches. During the war the Utes served as guides for Spanish punitive expeditions and paid in territory for their Spanish protection. The conclusion of this war came when: The execution of the royal policy in New Mexico was placed in the hands of Governor Juan Bautista de Anza, who successfully established in 1786 a peace with the Utes, Navajo, and Comanches and used these Indians, now reconciled with one aother, against the Apaches. As traders, at first Spanish, then Mexican, French, and American, began coming into their lands around 1770, the Utes found a new way |