PERMFILE60256

• Permit No: C1981022
• IBM Index Class Name: Permit File
• Doc Date: 12/11/2001
• Section_Exhibit Name: Exhibit 2.04-E2 Part 1 thru 3
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

Meeker's insensitivity to the Ute pcoplc and the bclli~,crencc of the Utes toward him resulted
in violence in [he fall of 1879. Meeker and eleven other men were killed, the agency
buildings were tired, and the women and children were taken hostage. fleeing south to
escape the cavalry, the Utcs and their captives traveled over the hogback toward present-day
Rifle. After a brief stop at the Rille Creek-Colorado River confluence, they continued down
the Colorado, stopping at P;trachute and Roan Creeks, then taking a trail (now the route of
the De beque Cutotl) over the western flank of battlement Mesa to Plateau Valley.
Approximately seven miles up Mesa Creek, the captives were released to Charles Adams, a
former Indian agent appointed by President Flaycs to head the rescue party and a good friend
of Ouray (Newell 1982:15- I G).
The Meeker Massacre, as the event quickly became known, aroused not only the
(white) pcoplc of Colorado but the entire nation as well. A congressional investigation of
the violent outbreak Icd to the Treaty of 1 SSO, which secured the removal of the entire Ute
population I}om all desirable lands in western Colorado.
The I SSO Treaty stipulated the removal of the White River bands to the Uintah
Reservation in northeast Utah. The Uncompahgre band was to be given a small reservation
in the vicinity of the confluence of the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers. Aware of the value
of these agricultural lands, however, the conunission charged with enforcing the terms of the
• treaty, under the direction of Otto Nlcars, manipulated the location process using a loophole
to the treaty language, and the Uncotnpaltgrc were given lands in Utalt near the Uintah
Reservation. The Southern Utc bands were lelt on the small reservation in southwest
Colorado that had been given them by the Treaty of 1573. On I September 1531, the last of
the Utes were moved to their new reservations in Utah, and western Colorado was finally
opened to the whites.
Euro-.American Settlement
Interest in the potential agricultural lands of western Colorado (namely the
Uncompahgre, Gunnison, Culondo, Dolores, San Miguel, White, and La Plata River
valleys) had been growing for some time prior to the Utes' banishment, and by the spring of
1881 frontier towns closest to the Ute lands were "crowded with people, anxious to enter the
Reservation and take possession of the most desirable locations." (I laskcll I SS6:'_'). Only
days after the last oFthe Utcs had been expelled, settlers began rushing onto the reservation
lands. Settlement activity spread quickly--during the autumn months of 18S I land claims
were staked, town sites were chosen, and railroad routes were surveyed (llaskell ISS6;
Borland 1953; and Rait 1932). F[owcvcr, the lormer reservation lands were not ofTicially
declared public lands until 10 r\ugust IS32.
Although the recently ceded lands were technically open to settlement, applications
for land patents under the l~lomestead Act of 1862 (under which Cash Cntry patents were
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