Denver Special Indian Agency

The Denver Special Agency was established to provide goods and services to the Ute Indians visiting the plains of Colorado between 1871 and 1875. The agency served Utes who were accustomed to collecting supplies from Denver’s Middle Park Agency during the 1860s but had been reassigned to a different agency in 1868. The Denver Special Agency was an unusual accommodation of Native American habits by the US government, one that not only benefited the Utes but also Denver merchants and settlers on the Colorado plains.

Background

Prior to 1868, the Utes attached to the Middle Park Agency were not subject to any treaty and became accustomed to obtaining supplies from the Middle Park Agency in Denver. A treaty was negotiated with the Utes in 1868 that established a reservation for them on the west side of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. In 1869, after the Treaty of 1868 had been negotiated, Indian agent Daniel C. Oakes continued to issue supplies to Utes who came to Denver. As a result of the Treaty of 1868, North Park and Middle Park were not within the reservation. Not understanding this, some of the Utes threatened—but were not openly hostile toward—miners there, hoping they would leave. The Utes continued to use these areas for hunting in the summer months. Large numbers of Utes, sometimes referring to themselves as the Nevava Utes—descendants of Nevava, the leader of the Grand River, Yampa, and Uintah Utes who died in 1868—made it a practice to venture onto the plains for an annual late summer buffalo hunt and to fight the Lakota, Comanche, and Arapaho. They often stopped in Denver to obtain supplies and then spent the winter nearby. Other bands of Utes attached to the Los Piños Agency also stopped in Denver on their way to and from the plains.

Need for a Denver Agency

In Denver the Utes sold their buffalo hides and deer skins at the best prices and bought a wide variety of goods from merchants. Relations between the Utes and whites were quite good, with merchants benefiting from trade with the Utes and settlers on the plains benefiting from the Utes chasing off hostile Plains Indians. Unfortunately, the Utes were also sometimes the victims of unscrupulous whites who harassed and robbed them, sold them liquor, or attempted to cheat them in transactions.

To deal with the large number of Utes off the reservation, the Board of Indian Commissioners appointed Robert Campbell and Felix R. Brunot to a committee to meet with Colorado governor Edward M. McCook in 1870. They concluded that the best solution was to establish a special agency in Denver rather than create a conflict by forcing the Utes onto the reservation. These off-reservation Utes received their annuity goods—items promised to them by treaty in return for their land—at the Denver Agency. McCook’s brother-in-law, James B. Thompson, began serving the Utes in Denver in 1869, when he arrived in Colorado as McCook’s private secretary. On January 17, 1871, Thompson was officially appointed the special agent for the Denver Agency; he also took over the administration of Indian affairs in Colorado from the governor.

Decline and Reestablishment

Depletion of buffalo on the plains and growing tension between the Utes and citizens of Denver resulted in the Ute leader Piah finally agreeing in 1874 to move onto the reservation, where his people would be served by the White River Agency. With this, the need for the Denver Agency was considerably lessened, and it was decommissioned in November 1874. Closing the agency did not prevent Utes from spending the winter in the Denver area. They still came to Denver expecting provisions, and local residents still benefited from the Ute keeping the Lakota at bay, so the agency was reestablished and operational through 1875.