The Battle of Milk Creek was the major military engagement during the Meeker Incident, a revolt by a Nuche (Ute people) community in northwest Colorado in September 1879. The battle began on September 29, when Utes opened fire from the heights above Milk…

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…

Indian Grove consists of seventy-two ponderosa pines in Great Sand Dunes National Park that were peeled by Indigenous people in the 1800s to get bark for food, medicine, and other uses. First recorded in the 1970s by archaeologist Marilyn Martorano,…

Josephine Meeker (1857–82) was the daughter of Nathan Meeker, the Indian agent who oversaw the White River Indian Agency during the Meeker Incident, a Ute uprising in 1879. After the revolt, Utes took Josephine, her mother, another woman, and her two…

The Meeker Incident (September 29–October 5, 1879) was a Ute uprising at the White River Indian Agency on the Ute Reservation in present-day Rio Blanco County. Tension had been building on the reservation for months as Indian Agent Nathan Meeker…

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…

Covering nearly 8,000 square miles in southern Colorado, the San Luis Valley is the largest valley in the state and the largest high-altitude desert in North America. Known as “the Valley” by locals and other Coloradans, the San Luis Valley is bordered…

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…