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Show CHAPTER VII THE SOUTHERN UTE LANDS IN PERSPECTIVE n r h e Southern Ute experience from 1848 to 1899 was dictated by the land hunger •*• which was so much a force in the history of the American West. As with most Indian tribal lands west of the Mississippi, the Ute lands were greatly reduced by Anglo seizures for mineral and agricultural wealth. In the short period of fifty- one years the Ute domain was reduced from many millions of acres extending over four states to less than one million acres contained within one state. The area occupied by the Southern Ute people changed from an isolated, unsurveyed expanse to an area of mining, farming and supportive activities. This wholesale land grab by the Anglos was propelled by physical and psychological forces. The 1849 gold rush in California brought immigrants into the Ute lands who were on their way to the California gold fields. Some stayed. The 1859 Colorado gold rush, and later rushes for gold and silver there, brought even more people into the area. Post- Civil War industrialization intensified the demand for these minerals. The miners rationalized that the Indians were not exploiting their lands, and that they, not the Indians, deserved possession of that wealth. The farmers and ranchers who moved into the area thought they too could better use the Indian lands. Coupled with this rationalization was the concept of Manifest Destiny. The whites felt it was their God- given right to claim the Lite lands and requested that the Government extend sovereignty over both the land and the people. Southwestern Colorado was an area in which these forces operated to disrupt the Utes. Miners came to search for the minerals of the San Juan Mountains. Farmers came to exploit the small areas of rich soil of the Animas, Mancos and Dolores river valleys. Railroad builders, merchants, and politicians came to provide supportive services in communities like Durango and Pagosa Springs. These people occupied Ute lands. The Utes, once a semi- isolated group of Indians, accustomed only to occasional contact with the Spanish and Mexicans, found themselves nearly surrounded by Anglos. These Anglos began demanding that the LItes be removed from the area. Their demands became more effective when Colorado was granted statehood in 1876. The citizens were then represented in Congress by voting delegates who could influence Government policy. This gave the Colorado citizens power supported by money and political acumen. This power belies the typical image of the West as being politically impotent. The Utes were never able to equal this power. Thus they were unable to retain more than a fraction of their land base, an inability wrought with profound consequences. The massive land reduction altered the basic lifestyle of the Utes. Hunting, fishing and trading had been the mainstays of their economic and social existence. But these were not " civilized" activities, so the whites encouraged the Indians to abandon these skills and become farmers. Their few attempts at farming and ranching were inadequate substitutes for their traditional life- style. By 1880 the Government was the principal source of food, clothing and needed wares. The Southern LJtes were no longer self- sufficient. Agents' reports and the Indians' own testimonies indicate that their self- confidence in dealing with the life around them was greatly altered, perhaps even shattered. It was not until well into the twentieth century that they began to adapt to the change of life- style by the dramatic reduction of their land base. The greed of the land- hungry whites created in the Utes what it had created in the other western Indian tribes- distrust. Time and again the whites entered the Ute lands to mine, farm and build. The Ute people soon learned they could not rely on the invaders to respect the Government's treaties and agreements, to say nothing of the rights of the Indians. Where there was valuable land there came the whites, and - 57- |