History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

INDIAN RESERVATIONS. 635
property must be returned, or its value deducted
from their annuities. 85 Under these stipulations,
though the treaty was not formally ratified, many of
the U talis, among whom was the chief Blackhawk,
were gathered and dwelt in peace on the reservation.
In 1864 a memorial had been presented by the
Utah legislature, asking that the Indians be removed
from their smaller reservations, 86 and in the same year
acts were passed by congress authorizing the appointment
of a surveyor-general for Utah, providing that
the Indian title to agricultural and mineral lands be
extinguished, and the lands laid open to settlement,
ordering the superintendent of Indian affairs to collect
as many of the tribes as possible in the Uintah
Valley, and appropriating for agricultural improvements
the sum of $30,000. 87 The site was well
selected, being remote from routes and settlements,
and enclosed by mountain ranges, which were impassable
for loaded teams during nine or ten months
in the year. It contained at least two millions of
acres, 88 portions of it being well adapted for agriculture
and grazing, and was well supplied with timber
and water-power. In the summer of 1868 about
130 acres were under cultivation, and it was estimated
that the value of the produce would reach $15,000;
but on the 1st of July swarms of grasshoppers settled
85 A synopsis of the provisions of this treaty, which was negotiated by 0.
H. Irish, superintendent of Indian affairs in 1865, will be found in Id.,
150-1. See also Deseret News, June 14, 1865.
» Utah Acts, 1863-4, pp. 7-10, 13.
87 U. S. Acts, 38th Cong. 1st Sess., 67-8; 38th Cong. 2d Sess., 16-17;
77ow.se Ex. Doc, 46 Cong. 3d Sess., xxvi. 971-3. The salary of the surveyorgeneral
was to be $3,000 a year, and his powers and duties similar to those
of the surveyor-general of Oregon. The usual school reservations were made.
By act of July 16, 1868, it was ordered that the public lands of the territory
should constitute a new land district, to be named the Utah district, and
that the preemption, homestead, and other laws of the U. S. should be extended
over it. Id., 973-4. In 1862 this district was merged with that of
Colorado. U. S. Acts, 37th Cong. 2d Sess., 51, 100-1. In Ind. Aff. Rept
1864, p. 16, Commissioner Wm P. Dole states that the Uintah Valley had
been' set apart for an Indian reservation as early as Oct. 1861, but that on
account of the imperfect geographical knowledge of the country its exact
limits could not then be defined.
88 Id., 17. The tract enclosed the whole region drained by the Uintah
River and its upper branches, a3 far as its junction with the Green River.