we are also willing to give 160 acres of land as their own, to keep as long as they live.”
The writer of this letter, quoting the statement from a previous article in The Tribune, that the White River Utes, in their attack on Major Thornburgh’s command, fought “to defend their own lands—lands bought, owned, and paid for,” asks:
“Bought of whom, pray? Paid for by whom? To whom was payment made?”
“Bought” of the United States Government, thereby recognizing the United States Government's right to “the sovereignty of the soil” as superior to the Indians’ “right of occupancy.”
“Paid for” by the Ute Indians, by repeated “relinquishments” of said “right of occupancy” in large tracts of valuable lands; notably by the “relinquishment,” according to the Brunot Treaty of 1873, of 4,000,000 acres of valuable lands, “unquestionably rich in mineral deposits.”—Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior for 1873, p. 464.
“To whom was payment made?”
To the United States Government, which has accepted and ratified such exchanges of “right of occupancy” for “right of sovereignty,” and such sales of “right of occupancy” for large sums of money by repeated and reiterated treaties.
The Secretary of the Interior has incorporated in his Annual Report for 1879 (in the report on Indian Affairs, p. 36[1]) the following paragraphs:
“Let it be fully understood that the Ute Indians have a good and sufficient title to 12,000,000 acres of land in Colorado, and that these Indians did not thrust themselves in the way of the white people, but that they were originally and rightfully possessors of the soil, and that the land they occupy has been acknowledged to be theirs by solemn treaties made with them by the United States.
“It will not do to say that a treaty with an Indian means nothing. It means even more than the pledge of the Government to pay a bond. It is the most solemn declaration that any government of any people ever enters into. Neither will it do to say that treaties never ought to have been made with Indians. That question is now not in order, as the treaties have been made, and must be lived up to whether convenient or otherwise.
“By beginning at the outset with the full acknowledgment of the absolute and indefeasible right of these Indians to 12,000,000
- ↑ Wikisource Note: https://books.google.com/books?id=DNcRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR36
