Signed in October 1863 at Conejos in the San Luis Valley, the Conejos Treaty was an agreement between the US government and the Tabeguache band of Nuche (Ute people). It granted the United States the rights to all land in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains east…

Passed by Congress in 1887, the Dawes Act—formally known as the General Allotment Act—authorized the US government to survey and divide federal Indigenous reservations into private lots for individual tribal members. The Dawes Act’s central idea of …

Newly introduced diseases originating in Europe, Africa, and Asia swept what is now Colorado in the aftermath of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage. While sparse historical and archaeological records make the effects of the earliest epidemics hard to…

The Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 declared that American Indians were no longer considered members of “sovereign nations” and that the US government could no longer establish treaties with them. The act effectively made Indians wards of the US…

The Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 declared that Indigenous people were no longer considered members of “sovereign nations” and that the US government could no longer establish treaties with them. The act effectively made Native Americans wards of the…

Although the Ute Indian Tribe (Uintah and Ouray reservation) is the official designation of the tribe today, its members are frequently referred to as Northern Utes to distinguish them from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe…

Considered to be the first official treaty between the United States and the Ute people of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, the Treaty of Abiquiú was made in 1849 with the intention of establishing peaceful relations between the two groups…

The Ute Treaty of 1868, also known as the “Kit Carson Treaty,” was negotiated between agents of the US government, including Kit Carson, and leaders of seven bands of Nuche (Ute people) living in Colorado and Utah. The treaty created for the Utes a…