Land Acknowledgement and Native history of Middle Park

We acknowledge that Snow Mountain Ranch and the Rowley Homeland are located on the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary homelands of the Hinono’ei (Arapaho), Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) and Núuchi (Ute) Nations. These are the homelands and traditional hunting grounds of these Native nations prior to their forced removal. We honor and appreciate these Indigenous communities, their elders, both past and present, and all future generations. We make this acknowledgement to respect and affirm the sovereignty of the Núuchi, Tsistsistas, and Hinono’ei people, ancestors, and descendants, and to respect the land itself.

According to the archaeological record, the earliest evidence of humans in Middle Park, where Snow Mountain Ranch is located, currently dates to 13,000 years ago. People crossed the Continental Divide in both directions following the seasons to hunt and gather, and likely used the mountain passes in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park. Sites with archaeological evidence for human occupation include: Windy Ridge, Yarmony, and Barger Gulch, which is located between what is now Hot Sulphur Springs and Kremmling.

These early inhabitants are considered the ancestors of the Núuchi (Ute). The Ute people do not have a migration story to this land— their creation story includes the Rocky Mountains. Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes started their westward migration history in the 1600s and increasingly so in in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Encroachment of settlers onto their land and other factors, such as trading between other Indigenous peoples and the settlers, forced the Cheyenne and Arapaho westwards.

Ute territory includes all of present-day Colorado and extends into the Great Basin, north into what is now Wyoming, and south towards what is today New Mexico. They likely participated in the continent-wide trade networks that existed for thousands of years prior to European contact and colonization. These trade networks took off with the arrival of horses from Spanish colonizers. The Utes were one of the first Native nations to adopt horse riding using horses to expand their trade networks and haul long sticks for teepee building.

Timeline

1803 – Louisiana Purchase secured the western part of the continent for the U.S.

1849 – The Ute Nation signed the Treaty of Abiquiu. It forced the Ute people to recognize U.S. sovereignty and set a border between the United States and Ute Nation. It is the first treaty between the U.S. federal government and the Utes. This treaty established a precedent of treaty-making between the U.S. and Ute nations which would last until 1871 (when the United States ceased all treaty making with Native nations).

1851 – Treaty of Fort Laramie was made between the U.S., Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota nations to protect the growing masses of white settlers trying to move West. The treaty created boundaries and designated just a portion of their traditional hunting grounds as land for the tribes. Unfortunately, the Colorado Gold Rush in 1858-9 made this treaty ineffective because white settlers flooded onto Cheyenne and Arapaho land.

1862 – The U.S. passed the Homestead Act, which led to the decimation of Native land bases and encouraged “free farming” as opposed to agriculture centered on enslavement. Settlers flooded west to take advantage of the cheap land. The Justs and Rowleys established their homesteads using this legislation. The Homestead Act was not repealed until 1976 in the continental U.S. and 1986 in Alaska.

1863 – The Conejos Treaty ceded all remaining Ute land east of the Continental Divide as well as Middle Park to the U.S. From this moment on, Chief Ouray the leader of the Taberguache Tribe spoke for the Utes in negotiations with the U.S.

1864 - Sand Creek Massacre, Nov. 29. Hundreds of peaceful Arapaho and Cheyenne camping and flying the white flag, were attacked and brutally massacred by the 1st Colorado Inventory Regiment of Volunteers (U.S.) and the 3rd Regiment of Colorado Cavalry Volunteers (U.S.), both led by Col. John Chivington. Many women, children, and elders were murdered, including important Chiefs of both Tribes. The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes had been ordered by the Governor of the Territory, John Evans, to report to Fort Lyon to receive supplies and to find safety.

1868 – Another treaty between the U.S. and the Ute nations ceded more land and established a reservation for the Ute Nation on the Western Slope— a third of their ancestral homelands— and implemented “civilizing” tactics such as forced farming.

1879 – Nathan Meeker was appointed Indian Agent at the White River Agency. He knew nothing about the Ute people or Native people in general beyond the racist stereotypes in dime novels and newspapers. Meeker was committed to “civilizing” the Utes. His controversial approach included plowing horse pastures, withholding annuities and rations, and ordering troops to prevent the Utes from leaving the reservation to hunt. Due to continuing tensions between Meeker and Ute leaders, Meeker called in the federal troops. Ute leaders told Meeker that any incursion by federal troops onto their reservation was an act of war. The federal troops reached the reservation boundary, and Ute warriors ambushed them to defend their land. When Ute people at the reservation learned of the fighting, they set fire to the Indian Agency buildings, killed Meeker and his staff, and captured his wife and daughter (who were eventually released alive, through negotiations led by Chief Ouray). This sequence of events is known today as the Meeker Incident.

1881 – The federal government passed the Ute Removal Act which forcibly removed and marched the Ute Nation from the western side of Colorado to a reservation in Utah where they live today. This act also took the rest of the Ute homelands in Colorado, except for two small portions in the southern part of the state— today the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain reservations.

It is in this context that the Just, Lehman, and Rowley families traveled to Middle Park and established homesteads. Both the Justs and Lehmans arrived only a year or two after the forced removal of the Utes from Colorado. As you walk around the homestead we encourage you to consider this history alongside that of the homesteaders.

L. D. Burnett et al., “The New World,” in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Native Land Digital. Accessed August 20th, 2022. https://native-land.ca/.

Horn, Jonathan C.. Brunot Agreeement, Colorado Encyclopedia. May 16th, 2016. Accessed August 20th, 2022. https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/brunot-agreement.

"Treaty with the Utah-Tabeguache Band, 1863," in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Volume II, ed. Charles James Kappler. J. Willard Marriot Library, University of Utah. Government Printing Office: 1904. https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6zp72n3/363521.

Encyclopedia Staff. Ute Treaty of 1868, Colorado Encyclopedia. January 22nd, 2022. Accessed August 20th, 2022. https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ute-treaty-1868.

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Park Staff. History and Culture: Sand Creek Massacre, NPS.Gov. Accessed September 2nd, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/sand/learn/historyculture/index.htm.