Southern Ute Indian Tribe history

1804 Utes and Jicarilla Apaches joined the Spanish in a campaign against the Navajos.

1809 About 600 Mouache Utes and some Jicarilla Apaches were attacked on the Arkansas River by the Comanche, Cuampe, and Kiowa.

The horse allowed the Utes to travel farther and more quickly, and the Utes began to adopt many aspects of Plains Indian culture, living in mobile tipis and hunting buffalo, elk, and deer over long distances. As a result of the slave trade, violence between the Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos became frequent, particularly after the 1829 opening of the Old Spanish Trail, a trade route that connected New Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and traversed Ute lands.

1833 Ouray is born near Taos

On December 30, 1849 a peace treaty was signed between the United States and the Utes at Abiquiu, New Mexico.

1850 An agency was opened for the Utes at Taos.

1851 Mouache Utes were attacked near Red River by Kiowas and Arapahos.

1852 The United States Government established Fort Massachusetts near Mount Blanca to protect and control the Utes.

The so-called Walker War (1853–54) resulted in some Mormon and many more Ute casualties and began the process of Ute displacement.

1854 Ute War started by an attack by Utes on Fort Pueblo.

On August 8, 1855, the governor of the New Mexico Territory negotiated a treaty with the Capote Utes in New Mexico.

1856 Mouache Chief Cany Attle claims the San Luis Valley.

1857 Officials recommend that the Caputa and Jicarilla Apache be removed to the San Juan River and assisted in becoming self-sufficient.

Ute reservation boundaries were repeatedly reduced during the period, especially after the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59.

1860 Utes join United States troops in campaigns against the Navajos.

In 1861, at the request of the Mormons, Abraham Lincoln established the Uintah Valley Reservation by executive order.

Treaty with the Utah-Tabeguache Band, 1863, in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, vol.

Congress confirmed this order in 1864, but, at least initially, the government made few efforts to force the Utes onto the reservation.

In 1868 the United States government began another treaty to terminate the rights of the Confederated Ute Indians to other lands; however this effort failed as the Utes refused to relinquish their rights to the lands in question.

1870 The Weeminuche object to removal to reservation in Colorado.

1871 Denver’s Indian Agency is established and maintained for Utes who continue to hunt buffalo on the plains.

In 1873 the government began new efforts to negotiate for these lands and a new commission was appointed by the Interior in 1873 to enter into negotiations for a new agreement.

The Brunot Treaty was ratified by the United States in 1874, and is most often remembered by Utes as the agreement when their land was fraudulently taken away.

1877 Establishment of the Southern Ute Agency at Ignacio to serve the Caputa, Mouache, and Weeminuche Ute bands.

1878 Fort Lewis established at Pagosa Springs to protect and control the Southern Utes.

1879 Meeker’s attempt to change the lifestyle of the Utes failed.

Following the Meeker Incident in northwest Colorado, 665 Utes from the White River Agency were forcibly relocated to the Uintah Reservation in 1880.

In 1881 the federal government forcibly removed the Yamparka and Parianuc (White River) Utes from Colorado to the Uintah Reservation.

In 1882 the federal government established the Uncompahgre (later renamed Ouray) Reservation adjacent to the Uintah Reservation and moved the peaceful Taviwac (Uncompahgre) Utes to this remote, dry area.

The two reservations were consolidated in 1886.

The federal government passed the Dawes Act in 1887, which divided reservation lands into allotments that belonged to individual tribal members.

In 1895 the Hunter Act was passed opening up the Ute strip to homesteading and sale to non-Indians.

By 1896 371 Muache and Capote adults and minors had received allotments of land totaling approximately 73,000 acres, with the much larger portion of the eastern Consolidated Ute Reservation (523,079 acres) becoming public domain open to homesteaders.

Charles J. Kappler (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1904).

1905 Buckskin Charley and Antonio Buck (son) travel to Washington, DC, to meet with President Roosevelt.

In 1906, as an act of protest and defiance to land loss and bad government administration, a group of between four hundred and six hundred Utes left their reservation and trekked to South Dakota, hoping that the Sioux would join them in their defiance.

The federal government acquired more than 52,000 acres of land for the park in 1911, in exchange for some acreage on the northern boundary of the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation.

1912 Buckskin Charley dedicates the ancient Ute Trail near Manitou Springs in a celebration known as Shan Kive.

1920 First Southern Ute Tribal Fair held.

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 facilitated major changes by allowing the Utes to organize their own tribal government.

In 1936, well before Nixon’s proclamation of Indian self-determination, the Southern Ute Tribe adopted a constitution and established a tribal council.

In 1938, the Utes filed a lawsuit against the United States government claiming of forty million dollars in losses from the dispossession of their land.

On September 24, 1939, the Ute Chieftains Memorial Monument was dedicated in honor of four Ute Chiefs, Ouray, Buckskin Charley, Severo and Ignacio.

Charles J. Kappler (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1941).

1966 Southern Ute Community Action Program started on reservation

Until 1970 tribal constitutions and bylaws required the approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), federal money provided to tribes was managed by the BIA, and tribal budgets were subject to approval by the secretary of the interior.

1977 Buckskin Charley stained window glass dedication in Denver, Colorado.

1984 Tribal Council declares Education as a top priority of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.

Charles Marsh, People of the Shining Mountains: The Utes of Colorado, the Pruett Series (Portland, OR: WestWinds Press, 1991).

1993 Southern Ute Tribe signs gaming compact with State of Colorado to open a Class lll Casino on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation.

David B. Madsen and David Rhode, eds., Across the West: Human Population Movement and the Expansion of the Numa (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994).

2001 On June 8, the Southern Ute Tribe was awarded a Triple AAA general-obligation bond rating, the highest credit rating possible.

2003 On December 1, the Leonard C. Burch ribbon cutting ceremony for the Leonard C. Burch Tribal Administration Building was held.

Sam Burns, “The Ute Relationships to the Lands of West Central Colorado: An Ethnographic Overview Prepared for the US Forest Service” (Durango, CO: Office of Community Services, Fort Lewis College, 2004).

2005 Southern Ute Tribal Growth Fund Building opens.

2008 Southern Ute Alternative Energy established to manage alternative and renewable energy investments.

2009 Southern Ute Indian Tribe approves hunting and fishing in the off-reservation Brunot area, including rare game species.

2010 Multi-Purpose building and Memorial Chapel open.

Robert Silbernagel, Troubled Trails: The Meeker Affair and the Expulsion of Utes from Colorado (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011).