WSP03059

• File Number: 8064.100
• Description: Section "D" General Federal Issues/Policies, Ute Indians
• State: CO
• Water Division: 7
• Date: 1/1/3000
• Author: Thomas L Iden
• Title: A History of the Ute Cessions of Colorado
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

0172 statement of the miners, and led them to believe that the

government would take no action in regard to their presence

upon the reservation if the Indians persisted in their re-

fusal to sell. The fact that for two years the presence

of miners upon the reservation in considerable numbers was

well known, and that the frequent complaints of the Indians

were disregarded, led them to distrust the promises of the

government.

The southern boundary line of the reservation was also

considerable distance north of the natural boundary line

which the Indians asserted was given to them at the time
7
of the treaty of 1868. The annuity goods which the com-

mission had hoped to have distributed during the council

and which had been shipped from New York June 1st, had not

yet arrived. $10,000 worth of presents bought for dis-

tribution by the commission of 1842 and which had failed

to reach the agency until after that commission had left,

had all been given away some time before the arrival of

the second commission.

The only advantages the commission had in the negotia-

tion were the friendship of the utes for the whites

and their earnest desire to do all that would, in their

7. Ibid. p. 462. The survey had located in New Mexico,
some distance below the northern boundary line, tours
that had been, prior to the survey, claimed as being in
Colorado. consequently, the Indians were probably not
to be blamed for believing the southern boundary of
Colorado Territory farther south than it actually was.

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