1879-80 Mill Creek to Forced Removal

The Brunot Agreement did not end tensions between Utes and white settlers. For the White River Utes, the situation worsened when a newly appointed Indian Agent, Nathan Meeker, arrived at the White River Agency and, along with the assistance of military troops, began a cruel and forceful enforcement of assimilation. As tensions grew, the White River Utes reached a breaking point in the fall of 1879. On September 29, 1879, Utes opened fire on Major Thomas Thornburgh and his men, who were traveling from Fort Steele to protect the White River Agency. The attack, which took place at Milk Creek near the northern boundary of the reservation, was part of a synchronized effort on the part of the Utes. At the same time, Utes at the White River agency set fire to the buildings, killed Meeker and several other employees, and took women and children hostage. (© and Courtesy of Ute Ethnographic and Ethnobotanical Research in the Bonita Peak Mining District, in-text citations removed)

The battle at Milk Creek and the Meeker Incident led to immediate retaliation by the US Army. The State of Colorado began a campaign dubbed “The Utes Must Go.” The governor of Colorado, Fred Pitkin, called for the removal of all Utes from the state, and the Colorado Legislature nearly passed a bill that would offer a 25-dollar bounty on Ute scalps. In 1879, the US Department of the Interior secretary convened a Peace Commission to facilitate negotiations between Ute leaders and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. After the Meeker Incident, the US government wanted to consolidate all of the Ute bands. The idea was that the Utes would be served exclusively by the White River agency and they would cede the southern part of their reservation. (© and Courtesy of Ute Ethnographic and Ethnobotanical Research in the Bonita Peak Mining District, in-text citations removed)

After several rounds of negotiations, the Weenuche, Mouache, and Kapuuta bands proposed that they would exchange the land desired by the US government for lands on the headwaters of the Piedra, San Juan, Navajo, Blanco, and Chama rivers. All parties agreed to this arrangement, and the Utes ceded 1,920,000 acres in exchange for lands around those rivers. The Kapuuta, Mouache, and Weenuche Utes subsequently moved to a 728,320-acre reservation in southwestern Colorado and were served by the Southern Ute agency in Ignacio. After the death of Chief Ouray in 1880, in 1881 the Tabeguache were forced to move to a new, much smaller reservation in Utah, along with the White River Utes. The experience of removal from Colorado remains a painful memory among people of the Ute Indian Tribe and Betsy Chapoose noted that the gravity of loss of their homeland left the Utes in a total state of bereavement, with people wailing and cutting their own hair as they left Colorado. (© and Courtesy of Ute Ethnographic and Ethnobotanical Research in the Bonita Peak Mining District, in-text citations removed)

A review of archaeological features and historical newspapers show that despite the “removal” of Utes from most of their Colorado homelands in the nineteenth century, Utes continued to return to their aboriginal lands “well into the twentieth century.” The Colorado Wickiup Project has documented aboriginal wooden features reliably dated as late as 1914 and 1915/1916. Historical newspaper accounts report almost annual Ute hunting forays into northwestern Colorado from 1881 to 1912, and a group of 800 Utes camped near Rangely, Colorado, in 1914. “Not only did a significant number of the people apparently never abandon their traditional home and remained off-reservation in western Colorado after the 1881 expulsion, but large numbers of [Ute Indian tribal members] returned to the area from the [Utah] reservations, either as temporary hunting parties or with intentions for a more permanent homecoming.” (© and Courtesy of Ute Ethnographic and Ethnobotanical Research in the Bonita Peak Mining District, in-text citations removed)