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• their sights on western Colorado. However, this territory lead been fife domain of the Ute far centuries, and was not simply "up for grabs." A Ute-Euro-American struggle was inevitable--it promised farms and ranches and prosperity for the winners, unimaginable defeat and tragedy for the losers. Ute--Euro-American ConFlict Population figures in 1821 showed 30,000 "gcnte de razon" (Spaniards, Spanislt- Indian, and Clvistian Indians) in New tvlexico (Dunham 197G:44); by IS46, this number Itad grown to 80,000. Tlris rapid increase in population generated a need for new agricultural lands in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Early attempts at settlement had been violently resisted by the Utes of the area, and it was not until 1851 that the construction ofa U.S. military fort allowed settlers (from Taus) to establish a permanent com-munity on the Culebra River. Now the town of San Luis, this is the oldest permanent settlement in Colorado. Other Ffispanic settlements in the San Luis Valley soon followed. On 30 December 1349, the first ofTicial treaty between fife Utes and the United States was negotiated at Abiquiu, New Mexico (Rockwell 1956:64). Under terms of the treaty, fife Utes acknowledged the sovereignty of the United States and agreed not to depart from their "accustomed habitat" without permission (no boundaries were defined). Despite the treaty, • tensions between Utes and whites continued to grow. In 1355, Moache attacks on settlements along the upper Red River in northern New Mexico provoked the first major American army campaign against diem (Scluoeder 1965:67). In March of that year Col. Thomas T. Fauntleroy, leading 500 men, cau~;lit up with the Utes and their Apache allies and fought with them near Cochetopa Pass, and again on the upper Arkansas near Pancho (Poncha) Pass. The Utes and Apaches lost both skirmishes and asked for peace (ibid). In July oC 1859, mineral discoveries in the Central City area prompted a burst of activity along the Front Range and in the mountain parks of the Colorado Rockies. The white influx was so great that only two years later, in 1861, the Territory of Colorado was created. Pressure on the Utes' eastern borders led to a second treaty with the United States in IS63. Field in Conejos, the treaty conference attracted only the Tabeguaches in sufficient numbers for negotiations. Tliis tivas fife first treaty to formally specify Ute boundaries, creating in effect the first Ute Reservation. The area agreed upon was bounded roughly by fife Uncompahgre River on fife west, the Colorado and Roaring Fork Rivers on the north, the Sawatch and Sangre de Cristo Mountains on fife east, and the Rio Grande and the Continental Divide on the south (Hall 1895:60). Tlie reservation was to be home for the Tabeguaches and the Moachc. The 1363 treaty failed to remove fife Utes from many desirable areas, however, and in 1363 representatives ofall fife Colorado Utc bands met in Washington, D.C., to discuss yet another agreement with the United States. The resultant 1865 Treaty placed the entire 14