Product Description

An indictment of Manifest Destiny and America’s Indian Policy

Tracing three centuries of Ute Indian history, "The Utes Must Go!" chronicles the policies and incidents that led to the involuntary removal of the Ute Indians from Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Historian Peter Decker unveils new critical information on figures such as U.S. Army Maj. Thomas Thornburgh, Interior Secretary Carl Schurz, famed newspaperman Horace Greeley, and Indian Agent Nathan Meeker whose relentless mission to turn Indian hunters into farmers led to the tragedy at Milk Creek in 1879. Decker’s research brings to light the complete drama of a proud Indian people swept away by the nineteenth-century tide of pioneer settlement, racism, and greed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1050875 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781555914653
• Condition: USED - ACCEPTABLE
• Notes:
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Review
a powerful story, told with craft and gripping narrative -- Syd Nathans, Associate Professor of History, Duke University

About the Author
Peter R. Decker was a professor of history and public policy at Duke University before becoming a prominent western rancher, with holdings in Ridgway, Colorado, and Lewellen, Nebraska. He is the director of the renowned National Western Stock Show in Denver and serves as the chair of the board of trustees for Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. He is also the author of Old Fences, New Neighbors, a book about the San Juan Mountain region of Colorado.

Customer Reviews

A shimmering work of narrative history
Peter R. Decker has written a magisterial, riveting work about the removal of the Ute Indians from Colorado. He paints the American West of the mid-to late-19th century with such colorful, vivid strokes that one can't help but be transported to the "scene of the crime."

This is truly an impressive and important accomplishment of documentation and narrative. Decker's biographical sketches of the key players in the drama -- from Ute leaders Ouray and Captain Jack to hapless Indian agent Nathan Meeker, to Interior Secretary Carl Schurtz, are masterly in themselves. For sheer energy and artistry, nothing I've read on the subject approaches it.

Well-researched, fact-filled, undeniably attention-gripping
Written by Peter R. Decker (Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University), "The Utes Must Go!": American Expansion And The Removal Of A People encompasses three centuries of Ute Indian history, as it chronicles the involuntary removal of the Ute Indians from Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Its title drawn from a newspaper advertisement championing the removal of Utes in the Denver Tribune, "The Utes Must Go!" is a powerful true drama of a proud people who suffered from pioneer settlement and racisim, and who also experienced tragedy from misguided intentions, such as Indian Agent Nathan Meeker's ill-fated attempt to turn Indian hunters into farmers, which brought about tragedy at Milk Creek in 1879. A colorful and detailed account, offering glimpses into figure thats made their mark on history such as Colorado Governor Frederick Pitkin, General William T. Sherman, newspaperman Horace Greeley, and much more. A well-researched, fact-filled, and undeniably attention-gripping in its depiction of raw territorial and colonial greed.

Mandatory Reading for Every Awake American
A searing indictment of white racial hatred, gross stupidity, avarice, and a cultural superiority complex bordering on madness, which forced Colorado's Ute people, like other Native people, off their ancestral homelands. White American history has too often had a grandiose view of its origins, conveniently omitting or minimizing duplicitous government policies and the general mood of the populace, with a few exceptions, calling for the extermination of the Utes and other tribes to make Western expansion and wealth possible. This book reveals these omissions in gripping detail and sets the historical record straight. Our children need to know that having fought and won freedom from the British and for black slaves, the US fell flat on its face and became the very tyrants they despised when dealing with Native people. This book should be mandatory reading for every high school student.
We all live on both forcefully taken and sacred ground long inhabited and revered before any white man set foot on these shores. We know where the Utes and Lakota are, but where are the Agawam & Nipmuc (MA), the Ponca & Kansa, the Chinook (WA)? Native people today have yet to fully recover from the sordid beginnings of the US. We owe an immeasurable debt to them, not only financially for treaty funds mismanaged but spiritually as we belatedly see the wisdom in their deep respect for the land that guided them to live in harmony with it and the greater circle of life, of which humans are but one member. I pray we wake up as a people before the initial and unabated greed for short-term profits fouls our nest irreversibly.