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Show After their surveys the commissioners decided that the area was available for Ute relocation. The commissioners thought that the area did not include the surveyed land in San Juan County. 47 They felt that the Mormon squatters would relocate after being reimbursed for their improvements on the land. They anticipated greater resistance from the cattlemen, especially with the English- owned Carlisle Cattle Company whose claims, made under the Desert Land Act, were pronounced valid after an inspection of the records in the Salt Lake City Land Office. But the commissioners felt that the claims of the cattle companies could be quieted. What the commissioners did not anticipate were the mining claims along the San Juan River. It was these claims that obstructed Ute relocation. A report of the commission with the signed agreement was presented to Congress on January 11, 1889. Accompanying the report was the opinion of the acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John J. Enright. He favored ratifying the agreement because: . . . it will open to white settlement a very considerable area of country hereto completely locked up, the free and unrestricted possession of which is absolutely necessary to the development of the vast mineral and agricultural resources of that region, as is manifest from a mere glance at the map to the Indians, ( it will be favorable) because they have found by experience that they cannot live in peace where they are, under the conditions as now existing; that it would be next to impossible to close up the numerous through-fares already established across the reservation or to prevent the opening of others to meet the natural wants of the large and constantly increasing population on either side of the reservation with the inevitable result of crowding them to the wall, by so circumscribing their limits as to render their chief occupation, cattle and sheep raising, utterly impossible, and by keeping them in a constant state of turmoil and conflict with the whites. 48 The bill, Senate Bill Number 3894, was introduced into the Senate by Senator Bowen on February 1.49 By the 26th of that month it had passed the Senate and was waiting for the approval of the House. The House, however, failed to report the bill out of committee. 50 The forces opposing removal managed to hold it in its committee until there was no longer time for the House's Committee of the Whole to consider it. The Ute removal bill suffered defeat in that session. Those people wanting removal were disappointed, for they had pushed hard to gain Congressional support for their cause. Their arguments were a repeat of those used during the negotiations of 1878 and 1880. It was felt that the removal of the Indians from their reservation was vital to the commercial and industrial interests of the people of southwest Colorado and to the state as a whole. 51 Although a survey revealed that only about 600 acres were under cultivation by the Indians these lands were assumed valuable - only needing the more capable farming techniques of whites. 52 The people also explained that the Ute people were natural herdsmen, and not farmers; thus, land should be given to them which would allow such acti- 47. RCIA, 1889, op. cit, p. 73. 48. Morgan to Secretary, op. cit., p. 18. 49. U. S., Congress, Senate, " Bills Introduced," Congressional Record, Vol. XX, Part 2, 50th Cong., 2d Sess.. February 1. 1889. p. 1390. 50. Morgan to Secretary, op. cit., p. 18. 51. Ibid.; C. C. Painter, Removal of the Southern Utes, ( Phil.: Indian Rights Association, January, 1890), pp. 7- 8. 52. Morgan to Secretary, op. cit., p. 18; Report to the Secretary of the Interior, 1890, op. cit., p. 127. - 43- |