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Show In 1897 the Utes agreed to a lease of abut 640 acres north of the Strawberry River to Utah citizens, Hathenbruck and Rhoades, but the Secretary of the Interior did not approve it. Hathenbruck, and Rhoades later assigned their interest in the lease to the Rhoades Mining and Milling Company of Utah, which attempted to renegotiate. Also competing for the lease was a New Jersey Company, the Florence Mining Company. In 1901 the latter Company signed an agreement with the Uintah Reservation Utes to lease the lands. 98 The Raven Mining Company of Illinois secured an agreement with the Utes in 1898 to lease for ten years that part of the reservation lying south of the Strawberry River. In 1902 this company was granted by act of Congress the privilege of locating 100 claims on the Uintah Reservation. " In addition to mining interests, there were also farmers and ranchers who had trespassed for many years on the Uintah Reservation and who had worked to control and take over the Ute lands. Whites had begun settling in the Uintah Basin a few years before the White River and Uncompahgre Utes were moved onto the Uintah Reservation. Mormons had been sent by their church to the Ashley Valley just east of the Uintah Reservation in 1877.100 Contemporaneous with the establishment of villages and farms in the Ashley Valley ( 1877- 79), had been the formation of large cattle ranches in Ashley and the Strawberry River area. For many years cattlemen from Heber and Provo had annually brought their cattle into the western end of the Uintah Basin to graze upon Indian lands. 101 In July 1881 Agent Critchlow reported to the Indian Commission that he had consulted with the Indians regarding their complaints of stock crossing the western area of the Uintah Reservation: "... they are willing to allow these herds to pass unmolested provided a moderate tax per head be imposed." Critchlow recommended the tax be ten cents per head and that someone be assigned the job of policing the boundaries and collecting the tax., 02 The JOD was not created, and for the next several years there was continued trespass and continued Indian protest. Agent Kinney reported in 1886 that " for years past, the whites ( Mormons) have herded their cattle upon this land, and I learn, in the number of several hundred head.... To keep these white people off would require some diligent person constantly upon the land." 103 A council was held with the Indians in May of that year, and Special Agent Williams Parsons, who had been sent to investigate the situation at Uintah, reported the statements made. That by Big Tom was typical: The whole watershed belongs to us... we are different tribes, but we stay here together; we think it best, but we don't want white men on our land. White people try to take our lands - Mormons try to get it... but we want our reservation just the same as we were first told from Washington. Strangers have their cattle ranging on our lands; we don't like this. It makes trouble to let strangers feed their sheep and cattle on our lands - I refer to the head of deep 22 |
