CHAPTER 4
LAND RUSH IN THE UINTA BASIN
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.n 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the executive order creating the Uintah Indian Reservation in Uinta (Duchesne) Valley to house relocated Ute Indians, the reservation was part of a federal policy of separating Indians from whites. This formal ethnocentristic policy of the federal government was rooted in earlier English colonial policy set forth in the Proclamation of 1763, which distinguished Indian territory and white territory in the British colonies in N o r t h America. The policy also attempted to prevent individual whites as well as individual colonies from dealing with the Indians politically and economically. All relationships with the Indians were to be conducted through the British crown. A similar policy was adopted with the election of Andrew Jackson as president. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 attempted to remove all Indians east of the Mississippi River to the newly formed Indian Territory located west of the Mississippi. Over a span of several decades, Indian territory shrunk to much smaller areas and generally m o r e isolated reservations. The p u r p o s e of these policies—formal or informal—remained the same, however: remove 92
