Back Pay for the Utes

The Colorado Ute Indians (pop. 3,000) are not exactly hostile to the Government of the U.S.: they accept it as stolidly as Chicago accepted the Capone gang. But since 1868, when the U.S. signed a treaty guaranteeing them a 15 million acre reservation in western Colorado, they have put little faith in the Great White Father in Washington. They have reasons: after the Indians agreed to drop other claims in return for the land, the white man grabbed the reservation back and herded most of the tribesmen into an arid corner of Utah.

The grabbing was a catch-as-catch-can business at first: gold seekers and homesteaders just moved in and made themselves at home. In 1880, after the angry Utes killed twelve whites, the Government officially took away all their land.

The impounded reservation made a rich haul. Today it includes shale oil beds, vanadium and uranium deposits, 500,000 acres of coalfields, and a big chunk of the Wilson Creek and Rangely oilfields (Rangely's 1949 production: 20 million barrels). The Government promised to pay for all of the Utes' lands, but never got around to it.

Money in the Bank. This injustice has prompted many a white man to argue the case for the dispossessed Indians. None has been more diligent than a Washington lawyer named Ernest Leroy Wilkinson; he took the Utes' case over in 1935, toiled at it for 15 years. Seven weeks ago, he was finally able to go to Utah with big news:* the day of reckoning was at hand.

The Indians postponed their annual spring Bear Dance for a day, poured across the reservation in battered cars, in wagons and on horseback to meet the attorney in a dilapidated school at Fort Duchesne. After they had filled the folding chairs, and squatted in impassive lines along the walls, Lawyer Wilkinson rose, took off his coat, and launched into a recital of his triumphs.

Finally, he delivered his punch line: if the Utes agreed to the terms he had worked out, the U.S. court of claims would award them between $31 million and $32 million--bigger judgments than the court has ever awarded against the Government. He paused, faced his audience with a look of pardonable expectancy. Not an Indian flickered an eyelid. An interpreter repeated the statement. Dead silence still reigned.

Beer in the Belly. After a few minutes, a long-haired Ute ancient named John Powwinnee rose majestically, costumed in dark sunglasses, yellow shirt and dress pants. "We won't be able to decide until after the Bear Dance," he said. The audience shouted approvingly, "Hou! Hou!" Said another old man: "The land is worth more . . ." Then, after a pause, "Of course, I have some beer in my belly." The Indians retired to a grove of cottonwood trees to powwow. It was not until sundown, three days later, that the rest of the tribesmen outvoted the old men.

Last week the court of claims awarded the Utes their record-breaking judgments --$31,700,000, or about $10,000 for every man, woman & child (though probably the tribe, and not its members, would get the money). Grunted a long-haired old Ute, still dissatisfied with the bargain: "It is better than buffalo soldiers,* but the Colorado land is richer than this money."

The Utes were not the only Indian tribe that was getting some back pay, long overdue. The Indian Claims Commission ruled last week that the Government owes the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians $3,489,843.58 for Oklahoma lands taken by treaty at the end of the Civil War. The Navajos hired an archaeologist to help document their claim of approximately $10 million for 20,000 square miles in the Southwest.

* For more usual Indian news, see PEOPLE.

* Negro troops used against the Utes in the '70s.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.