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Show 136 My idea is that, unless removed by the government, they must necessarily be exterminated. I could raise 25,000 men to protect the settlers in twenty-four hours. The state would be willing to settle the Indian trouble at its own expense. The advantages that would accrue from the throwing open of 12,000,000 acres of land to miners and settlers would more than compensate all the expenses incurred.5 The result was a re-play on the familiar theme in the history of the American Indian. Marshall Sprague reviews the situation neatly: The punishment of the alleged guilty was all the landgrabbers could have asked. The two White River bands were branded as criminals en masse by a political commission without any judicial powers whatever. Though only twenty White River Utes had staged the massacre, all 700 were penalized in that money owed to them by the government was paid instead to relatives of the victims. Chief Ouray's Uncompahgre Utes, who had nothing to do with the massacre or the "ambush," were held equally responsible. The 1868 treaty rights of all three bands were cancelled. Their rights to be Americans as set forth in the Fourteenth Amendment were ignored. Title to their ancient Colorado homeland WHS extinguished and they were moved at gun point to barren lands in Utah. By these means the last and largest chunk of desirable Indian real estate was thrown open to white settlement." 'Ibid., p. 366 6Marshall Sprague, "The Bloody End of Meeker's Utopia," American Heritage, Vol. VIII, No. 6, (October, 1957), p. 94. |