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Show were killed or wounded. The word spread throughout the area that the Utes were on the warpath, killing and burning everything in sight. Finally, Utah Utes and soldiers from the newly established Ft. Duchesne^ went into Colorado and escorted Colorow's group back to Utah. Despite this incident, many Uncompahgres continued to make yearly hunting trips into their Colorado homeland. As in Colorado, it was the discovery of mineral deposits in Utah which forced the Utes to lose more land. The mineral was gilsonite. Although the presence of gilsonite was well known in the 1860- 1870s, it was not until the 1880s that two promoters, Sam Gilson and Bert Seaboldt, publicized the materials and found uses for it. In January 1886 Seaboldt filed the first recorded gilsonite claims- all of them in the Carbon Vein, which was located on the Uintah Indian Reservation. He organized a group to begin commercial mining. 61 The Utes protested the trespass of miners on their reservation. Agent T. A. Byrnes saw no reason not to remove the gilsonite lands from the reservation: "... such lands are not, nor have they been, used or occupied by the Indians, for the reason that they are not fit for agricultural or grazing purposes." 62 James Randlett, the commanding officer at Ft. Duchesne, agreed that the: ... detachment by sale will occasion no inconvenience to the tribes. If the Gilsonite enterprise proves a success, the Indians will see how profits are made from industry and will also to some extent find at the mines a market for their own products.... It will be very agreeable to the isolated garrison to have a settlement near it. 63 i On May 24, 1888, Congress removed a triangular " strip" of about 7,000 acres from the eastern end of the Uintah Reservation, providing a payment of $ 20 per acre to the Indians. 64 Approval of this loss of land by the adult male Indians was secured in September through " much proselyting." 65 Two hundred twenty- eight voted in favor; no one voted against. Because the strip was a part of federal lands, but off the Indian and military reserves, it was not controlled by officials at Whiterocks or Ft. Duchesne, nor by state, territorial, local, or country authorities. This seemingly lawless territory " became the location of a tough class of squatters- men and women without means of existing except gambling, selling whiskey to Indians, and prostitution." 66 Indian agents and military commanders came to regret strip's existence. It remained a wide- open area until it was sold by the government in May 1906 at $ 1.25 per acre. In 1888 a gilsonite vein, the Cowboy, was found just north of the White River and west of the Utah- Colorado border on the Uncompahgre Reservation. The cowboys who found it located claims on it. Between the summers of 1888 and 1890 other veins were discovered both north and south 15 |