Great Basin Indians: An Encyclopedic History

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245 R Red Cap (Northern Ute, 1870?–1950?). Red Cap was also known as Andrew Frank and Captain Perank. He led the protest of between 345 and 600 fellow Northern Ute off the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in 1906 against the privatization of their land (see Allotments). The pressure to accept this federal policy can be indicated by a statement made by Inspector James McLaughlin at the time: “My friends, I have listened patiently to what your speakers have said [in opposition]. . . . This is for your best interests. If your consent is not obtained, the land will be allotted nevertheless” (C. Wright and Wright 1948, 334). Two additional issues prompted the protest: the expropriation of 1.1 million acres of reservation land by President Grover Cleveland for the Uinta National Forest in 1897 and the 1906 Uintah Irrigation Project, which, along with the discovery of the mineral gilsonite on their land, attracted additional whites (Lewis 1994). But as Red Cap and his followers were to discover, the land parceled out to them in severalty following passage of the Dawes Act was alkaline, hence making farming impossible. They, consequently, literally and figuratively “danced with their feet,” that is, voted to leave the Uintah-Ouray Reservation around the time of an annual spring ceremony (see Bear Dance). Under the pretense of a collective hunt in Wyoming as well as their need to pasture their cattle, Red Cap, who had already traveled with fellow Utes the previous year to Washington, DC, to protest the anticipated “opening” of the reservation, led between three and six hundred followers east from Bridgeland, Utah, toward Lakota country in 1906. Along with their herd of fifty cattle, pack horses, and wagons loaded with supplies, these protesters rode out with eight hundred ponies, stopping first in former hunting grounds in northwestern Colorado, where they split up into smaller groups. En route to the bighorn country in Wyoming, though, when one of these camp grounds paused to purchase ammunition and flour at a local store, rumors about an Indian uprising began to circulate among whites. In Wyoming they ran out of food, and they began killing white-owned cattle. Six companies of US Cavalry of further consequence were dispatched to round up Red Cap’s group. They led those who had not taken up residence at Fort Meade, South Dakota, onto the Pine Ridge Reservation. Eight months later, however, in 1907, the followers of Red Cap voted in council to move onto the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation also in South Dakota, where five townships were ultimately rented for them by the federal government from former enemies for $1.50 per acre. Meanwhile, to earn their daily keep, some of Red Cap’s followers worked on the railroad, while others accepted sundry forms of employment in Rapid City, South Dakota. In the winter of 1907–8, however, Red Cap’s followers voted to return home. Federal troops were once again put on alert, and this time 225 of these desperately starving , pitiable Great Basin Indians, who had received humanitarian aid from South Dakota citizens, were gathered up and escorted by the military to Rapid City, where 246 r e l o c a t i o n they met up with 369 additional tribesmen who had also voted to return home (Simmons 2000, 226). Not unrelated to their change of heart, according to Northern Ute tribal historian Clifford Duncan, was the fact that the “federal government withheld rations and payments from them to induce them to return to their reservation” (2000, 206). In any event, once they had finally returned home onto the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in northern Utah, Red Cap and followers received largesse from fellow Northern Ute (see Wash, William). A descendant of Red Cap characterizes this dismal chapter in Northern Ute postcontact history as Red Cap’s “anguished odyssey” (see Duncan, Clifford H.). Quoting his ancestor, this contemporary Northern Ute historian and painter additionally writes, “The white people have robbed us of our cattle, our pony grass, and our hunting grounds” (ibid., 205–6). Another source poetically quotes Red Cap’s reasoning for having originally protested the allotment of Northern Ute lands: “This reservation is heavy. The Indians have grown here and their bones are under the ground, covered over with earth. That is the reason it is so heavy” (Lewis 1994, 55). Relocation. A central component of federal policy toward Native Americans in the 1950s was its goal of resettling indigenous people living on federal reservations to urban...