Endurance

Endurance. Even as the Ute opposed efforts at removal, they endured on the land. For nearly six weeks they endured imprisonment in horrid conditions. The narrative details those conditions which included a forced separation from their children. After imprisonment, the Allen Canyon Utes endured the loss of their homelands, increased federal oversight, painful boarding school experiences, and continued white settler efforts to move them to Colorado.

Blanding, March 20-April 29, 1923

No sooner had “excitement” ensued following the trial and shots on March 20 than the sheriff deputized white settlers, sealed off Blanding, rounded up all Utes in the area, and detained their prisoners in the school’s basement where the trial had been held only hours earlier. A military-style barbed-wire stockade was constructed in a town square. There the Ute prisoners remained for nearly six weeks until their release on April 29. Within days of their imprisonment over a dozen Ute children were shipped to the boarding school in Towaoc. That was a forced and painful separation.