time so remote that the mind becomes a mist, a
fog bank in its endeavor to locate the date, and then only as an age, it
being impossible to determine the century. The fossils of these
prehistoric creatures have been found in deposits over three thousand
feet in thickness, species until recently unknown to science. Here man
inhabited dwellings of unhewn stone cemented with mortar containing
volcanic ashes, at a period so long ago that the waters were supposed to
wash the face of the cliffs upon whose precipitous side these ancient
people lived, in evidence of which are the fossilized human bones.

"In this legacy is found the answer, 'Whence come my people?' And what
nation has ever disputed the title of land conveyed by the Indians? As
early as 1851, when Colorado was organized as a territory, a treaty was
made at Fort Laramie with several tribes of Indians, by which the latter
gave up all the lands east of the Rocky Mountains. West of the
continental divide were the great warlike tribes of Utes extending to
the Sierra Nevadas, 15,000 free-born American savages to whose necks the
galling yoke of civilization was to be adjusted.

"The Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Comanches and Kiowas, plains Indians, were
mild and tractable in comparison with the Utes. These latter were
fearless, indomitable warriors, who owned the forest, the river beds and
mountain crags by inheritance from Almighty God, and whose
disestablishment is written in letters of blood where the forest man was
the aggressor by retaliation. But the outrages of the new people, the
educated, civilized white man, must be forever unrecorded. Repudiation,
shameless duplicity, political and martial perfidy, local and national,
followed each other year after year until 1865, when the final treaties
effected the abandonment of Colorado by the plains Indians, who were
removed to the Indian Territory, where the government agreed to pay each
Indian $40 annually for forty years.

"My people, the White River Utes, had taken no part in the plains Indian
controversies with the white people, and, while the Utes' territory
bordered that of the Arapahoes and Cheyennes, the only courtesies were
the exchanging of scalps and horses whenever they met. The time arrived
when agents were appointed by the government to reside with each Indian
tribe. These agents were generally respected and settled many jealousies
which sprang up between the various bands of the tribe.

"Nevava, the great