And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 23:36:24 EDT Subject: Utes in billion-dollar battle v. Amoco et al >From Victor's pechanga.net Utes in billion-dollar battle By Electa Draper Denver Post Staff Writer April 11 - As the Southern Ute Tribe and the non-Indian residents of southwestern Colorado attempt to reap the wealth of the region's vast energy resources, they find the harvest blighted by 100-year-old conflicts. "Whether (the Utes) fought with the madness of desperation or in dense ignorance of the power of the United States government, it does not matter. Nothing but certain overthrow and extinction awaited them,'' The New York Times editorialized Oct. 9, 1879, shortly after the Meeker Massacre. It was this Ute attack on an Indian agent that made it politically possible for the U.S. government to strip the tribe of millions of acres. Yet the Utes would survive, divided into three Indian nations in Colorado and Utah. The spoils of modern victories, to be won in courts, lie below ground. The lawyer for the 1,300 Southern Utes prepares to go to the U.S. Supreme Court April 19 to fight Amoco Production Co. and several thousand non-Indians for valuable natural gas found within tribal coal beds. The coal lies under 200,000 acres of farms and ranches, many still owned by descendants of the homesteaders who succeeded in dislodging Utes from their ancestral lands and early reservations. These landowners believe they own the natural gas, whether it is extracted from coal or other rock formations. For many hundreds of years, seven bands of Utes roamed all of what is now Colorado, from the San Luis Valley to the western edges of the San Juan mountains, throughout the valleys of the Gunnison, Uncompahgre, Yampa, Grand and San Juan rivers. They traveled in circuits through northern New Mexico, almost as far south as Santa Fe, and, they ranged into the Uintah Basin in northern Utah. Into the 1600 and 1700s, Utes hunted and traded with little interference from the Spanish explorers and settlers. Indeed, the Spanish introduction of the horse transformed the Utes into fierce hunters. "The Utes became raiders, moving out of their mountain fortresses to raid other Indian groups or ... villages to the south,'' reads "The Southern Utes,'' a thin volume published in 1972 by the University of Utah with the cooperation of the tribe. The Mexican War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo that ended it in 1848 gave the United States New Mexico and part of future Colorado territory. In the treaty, the United States agreed to honor the massive land grants, millions of acres, made by the Spanish and Mexican governments to their citizens. Ute raids on these growing settlements had begun in the 1830s and continued unabated as the United States took over. On Dec. 30, 1849, Indian agent James S. Calhoun arranged the first treaty between the United States government and the Utes at Abiquiu, a town on the Chama River north of Espa�ola, N.M. "The Utes recognized the sovereignty of the United States and agreed not to depart from their accustomed territory without permission,'' the history says. "The Utes also agreed to perpetual peace and friendship with the United States, to abide by U.S. law, and to permit citizens of the U.S. government to establish military posts and agencies in their country.'' This treaty did not define the boundaries of "accustomed'' Ute territory. Encroachment by the beneficiaries of Spanish and Mexican land grants continued to provoke Ute raids, followed by punitive U.S. expeditions. To protect settlers from Ute raids, Fort Massachusetts, later renamed Fort Garland, rose along Ute Creek near the base of Mount Blanca. U.S. Indian agencies, which operated to provide the Utes rations in exchange for their land concessions, often ran out of money and supplies because of mismanagement. Resentment over such failures and the stronger military presence in Ute territory flared into the Ute War of 1854-55. The Utes attacked Fort Pueblo on the Arkansas River and killed all its inhabitants on Christmas Day 1854. The Utes then attacked settlements in the San Luis Valley. Over the next few months the Ute warriors, who numbered in the low hundreds, conceded victory to the U.S. Army and asked for peace. A treaty was signed months later in the fall of 1855. However, exploding numbers of settlers in the territory brought Utes and whites into repeated conflict. The U.S. government became determined to solve "the Ute problem'' by removing them from the San Luis Valley and confining all bands to a single reservation. Representatives of the seven bands of Utes met in Washington, D.C., in March 1868 with Gov. A.C. Hunt of the Territory of Colorado, Kit Carson and N.G. Taylor. They negotiated a treaty that created a single reservation for all the Utes that encompassed roughly the western third of Colorado. Many U.S. officials did not believe the mountainous lands west of the San Luis Valley were worth fighting over. The U.S. government told the Utes that the reservation would be theirs forever, protected from white trespassers. U.S. officials selected Ute leader Ouray to represent the Indians. Almost immediately after the signing of the treaty, miners began swarming into the San Juan Mountains in search of gold and silver. The U.S. government, unable or unwilling to stem the tide of miners, called Ute leaders together to negotiate for the land under exploration. In 1873, the Utes signed the Brunot agreement, in which they gave up claim to the San Juan Mountains, a large rectangular cutout from the middle of the reservation. President Ulysses S. Grant signed it into law in 1874. New Mexican settlers pressured the U.S. government to force Utes still living in New Mexico to move to the reservation in Colorado, a move accomplished by 1878. Meanwhile, residents of the new state of Colorado began calling for the ouster of the Utes. In September 1879, the Meeker Massacre became the rallying cry. Indian agent Nathan Meeker at the Northern Ute agency in White River (near present-day Meeker) plowed prized horse-grazing lands to press the point that the U.S. government wanted the Utes to become farmers. Ute warriors killed Meeker and eight young men who worked for him. They took three women and two children, including Meeker's wife and daughter, captive for 23 days. The Utes trapped the U.S. troops sent to rescue the agency for six days before relief arrived. A national uproar ensued. In 1880, Ute leaders bowed to an angry nation and agreed to relinquish all claims to their reservation in Colorado. The New York Times estimated the Utes gave up 11 million acres of land. "We may probably conclude that one of the most serious Indian troubles of the year has been safely passed over or postponed,'' the Times wrote Aug. 6, 1880. "Yet, the most that can be said of this vaunted settlement of the Ute problem is that it has cunningly used the outbreak of a single band of Indians to despoil the whole tribe of its ancestral homes in the alleged interests of peace for the future. No man can pretend that Utes have not as good as legal title to their entire reservation as any house owner has to his dwelling place in New York.'' The bands of Northern Utes and the Tabeguache or Uncompahgre Utes moved to the Uintah Reservation in northeastern Utah within two years. Removal of the three Southern Ute bands did not proceed as planned. Designated lands were too poor for agriculture, which the Utes were supposed to pursue. Several proposals for small new reservations in Colorado and in southern Utah fell through, at times because white settlers or cattle companies demanded the lands for themselves. It was 1895 before a bill was passed that would locate Utes on a fragment of old reservation in southwestern Colorado, a strip 110 miles long and 15 miles wide north to south, but the special reservation status was removed from the land. Ute families were to apply for individual, limited allotments of land for farming, and any lands not allotted would be opened to white settlement. Almost half the Utes voted against the accepting the deal. By April 1896, the 371 Utes who cooperated received a total of 73,000 acres. The Utes who opposed the agreement, the Weminuche band led by Ignacio, established a camp in the southwestern corner of the old reservation. The U.S. government allowed the band to remain there and hold their lands in common. Three bands of Southern Utes were now divided into two groups. The home of the Weminuche band would later become the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation. The Muache and Ca pote bands would become known as the Southern Utes. The white settlers had 523,000 acres of Southern Ute lands they could lay claim to in 1899 when President William McKinley signed the proclamation opening the reservation. Under the Restoration Acts of 1937 and 1938, more than 220,000 acres ignored by homesteaders were restored to the Southern Ute Reservation. The Ute Mountain Utes gained 30,000 acres. The aftermath of the extended period of white settlement on Southern Ute lands is the infamous checkerboard reservation of almost 700,000 acres. In very rough terms, the Southern Ute Tribe controls more than 300,000 acres with both surface and mineral rights intact. Public lands managed by the federal government account for about 70,000 acres. Private non-Indian landowners own surface and mineral rights on perhaps more than 100,000 acres. But there are some 200,000 very troublesome acres, where non-Indians hold surface rights and most mineral rights. However, the tribe owns the coal and claims to own natural gas taken from the coal. The coal estate was split off from those 200,000 acres in the early 1900s. The federal government reserved the coal for itself in the Coal Land Acts instead of handing over all the mineral rights to homesteaders. Then, in 1938, in the spirit of restoration of Indian lands, the federal government conveyed its interest in coal to the tribe, sowing a seed that would ripen into the billion-dollar battle over coal-bed methane of 1999. Copyright 1999 The Denver Post. All rights reserved. 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