In 1954 the Bureau of Indian Affairs attempted to implement policies that would halt federal supervision and trust responsibilities over several tribes of American Indians. These new policies, collectively known by the rather ominous sounding name “termination,” followed the will of Congress as expressed in House Concurrent Resolution 108. Passed in the preceding year, this document succinctly stated the determination of Congress to make Indians subject to the same laws and privileges as other U.S. citizens and to “end their status as wards of the United States, and to grant them all of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship.” The resolution further declared that all of this was to be accomplished “as rapidly as possible.”1
In due course, more than a hundred tribal groups would be subjected to the termination process. The question of how the mixed-blood Utes of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation of Utah came...
