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agriculture and grazing purposes than many portions of this reservation" (Vickers • 1881:34), although Hayden, Powell, Fremont, and others had bemoaned the country's desolation. In commenting about Ute character, Pitkin continues, "From some personal knowledge of the subject, I believe that one able-bodied white settler would cultivate more land than a whole tribe of Utes" (ibid.:35). W. B. Vickers, Pitkin's secretary, wrote an article entitled "Lo, The Poor Indian" which became widely circulated and was published in several sources, including Vickers' own History of the Arkansas Valley, Colorado (1881). He paints a grim picture of coexistence: Though not particularly quarrelsome or dangerous, the Utes are extremely disagreeable neighbors. Even if They would be content To live on Their princely reservation, it would not be so bad, but they have a disgusting habit of ranging all over the state, stealing horses, killing off the game, and carelessly firing the forests in the dry summer season, whereby thousands of acres of fine timber are totally ruined. The Utes are actual, practical Communists, and the government should be ashamed To encourage them in their idleness and wanton waste of property. But for the fact that they are arrant cowards as well as arrant knaves, the western • slope of Colorado would be untenanted by The White race...The degeneration of the Utes has been very rapid since the first settlement of the country. Formerly, they were a warlike tribe, and held their own with the fierce Arapahoes of the east and the savage Cheyennes of the north, whether upon the mountains or the plains....the Government might, with almost, if not quite equal propriety, plant a colony of Communists upon the public domain, maintaining them in idleness at the public expense, as to leave The Colorado Utes in possession of their present heritage and present privileges (Vickers 1881:35). Obviously, sentiments like these did not bode well for continued Ute presence in Colorado. The white citizens of Colorado were being incited to remove the Indians, in order that men like Pitkin (who had sizable investments in mining concerns whose development was inhibited by Ute presence) could profit. The trouble with the While River Utes represents one of the most shameless crimes any culture has inflicted upon another -- The denial to the Colorado Ute of their homeland, their forced removal to Utah, and their subsequent degeneration -- and resulted in the White River Uprising. The inevitable happened, of course. The animosity between The Coloradans and • the Utes accelerated to such an extent that the Utes rose up against Agent Meeker 2.8- 12