“Lambs of Sacrifice: Termination, Mixed-blood Utes, and the Problem of Indian Identity” first appeared in this journal more that twenty-five years ago. It grew out of a dissertation that eventually became a monograph about the termination of roughly one-third of the Northern Ute Tribe on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. I knew from the start that this story had a tragic ending, one without many redeeming characters. Once I got beyond figuring out the basic details of what had transpired during this chaotic period of Ute history, I sought to understand why it was done and who was responsible for it. I thought then, and I still think now, that it was the product of many actors with conflicting agendas, all scrambling to respond to a crisis provoked by the one true ideologue in the story, Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah.
My interest in Watkins stemmed from the realization...
