Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1879.djvu/21

Rh be found in any just complaint on the part of the Utes. While two years ago they were for a short time insufficiently supplied in consequence of the delinquency of a transportation contractor, who subsequently has been prosecuted by this department and tried and convicted for grave offenses, the White River Utes have since then been amply supplied with all they needed. Their hunting parties are known to have left the carcasses of the game killed in large quantities on the ground, taking merely the skins for trading. Such things are not done by hungry people. Agent Meeker was known as a man of unimpeachable integrity. When he endeavored to plow land for agricultural purposes, which furnished the immediate occasion for the first assault on him, he did it for the benefit of the Indians, and not for himself. The same thing has been done at a large number of agencies without the least opposition from the Indians, and with great success. The real cause of the trouble is, in my opinion, to be found in the fondness of the mountain Indians for their old wild habits, stimulated by the abundance of game in that part of the country, their disinclination to submit to any civilizing restraint, the apprehensions produced among them by the rapid advance of settlements and mining camps encroaching upon their hunting-grounds, the evil influence exercised upon them by whites living upon the borders of the reservation, and the advantage taken of a temporary excitement by the mischievous characters among them upon the approach of a military force.

It is expected that the occurrence of this trouble and the transactions following thereupon will result in such arrangements as will be calculated to prevent, for the future, hostile contact between the white inhabitants and the Indians in that part of the country. Every proper effort will be made by this department to that end.

I beg leave to invite attention to the statement made by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs concerning an agreement made in 1878 by a commission appointed in pursuance of law with three bands of Utes living on the southern strip of the Ute reservation. By that agreement a large tract of land was ceded by the Indians to be sold, and the proceeds thereof, after deducting the expenses of survey and sale, to be invested for the benefit of the Indians; the Indians then to have a new agency on the headwaters of the Piedra, San Juan, Blanco, Navajo, and Chama Rivers. The agreement was submitted to Congress and no action taken thereon. Part of this agreement provided in particular for the sale of an exceptionally valuable tract of four miles square for the sum of $10,000. Congress at its last session was asked to make appropriation therefor, but failed to do so. Inasmuch as this tract has in the mean time, in great part, been occupied by white settlers, without the government performing its part of the bargain by the payment of the stipulated sum of money, the failure of the appropriation constitutes a