The Aztecs only reached the Mexican valley in the 13th century A.D. Historians of language tell us that they must have split off from the tribe we now know as Ute not very long before that. The vagaries of fate decreed that when first encountered by Europeans the Aztecs were wealthy and lived in what amounts to city states, whereas the Ute were amongst the poorer of Indian tribes. In fact, unlike most Great Basin tribes who lived in wickiups and subsisted mainly on roots, berries and the occasional jackrabbit, the Ute, moved onto the plains in winter and constructed primitive tipis, hunting bison and deer.

The seven bands of Ute had seen immigrants drive the Cheyenne out of Colorado not without some satisfaction. However, increasing numbers of newcomers resulted in a treaty of 1863, the indians exchanging all their lands east of the rockies watershed, and all mineral rights of all their territory for ten thousand dollars’ worth of goods and ten thousand dollars’ worth of provisions to be distributed annually for ten tears.

After five years, the white men of Colorado decided they had let the Indians keep too much land. What they demanded was that they should be restricted to reservations with well defined boundaries, preferably in Utah. At talks in Washington Ouray held out for 16 million acres of western slope forests and meadows, a much leeser amount than they officially had but much more than the white population intended them to keep.

The white population, of course, did not adhere to the treaty signed and prospectors and later settlers continued to trespass. After many skirmishes and a vile newspaper campaign in Denver claiming the Utes were all communists, most of the tribes were dispatched to a reservation 350 miles away in Utah on land that the Mormons did not want. Apart from a tiny strip of land in south west Colorado, all the Indians of Colorado had gone; Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, Jicarilla and Ute.

The army conquered the Sioux. You can order them around. But we Utes have never disturbed you whites. So you must wait until we come to your ways of doing things.

Ouray.

I told the officer that this was a very bad business; that it was very bad for the commissioner to give such an order. I said it was very bad; that we ought not to fight, because we were brothers, and the officer said that that didn’t make any difference; that Americans would fight even though they were born of the same mother.

Nicaagat.

The agreement an indian makes to a United States treaty is like the agreement a buffalo makes with his hunters when pierced with arrows. All he can do is lie down and give in.

Ouray.