(calming music) - [Regina] For many, many centuries, the Ute people called what is currently, the state of Colorado and many of the surrounding states...home.

- [Chairman Heart] The Ute people roamed, all over the mountains.

Where is the history of the Ute people, the original inhabitants, people that have been here for 10,000 years or more.

- [Catherine] The history here at Twin Lakes, spans from thousands of years ago, with the indigenous people to very close, to our modern history with mining and recreation.

[Regina] This is the playground of those that can't afford to ski and do a lot of really expensive recreational activities.

A lot of these people don't understand, that this is a cultural and hereditary homeland, of the Ute people.

- [Nicki] There is a long indigenous history, that goes centuries back.

A place like Twin Lakes that is written in the landscape, in ways that most people don't ever recognize or notice.

We really need to seek out those oral histories, that are with the tribes themselves.

And only then only, when we start to understand those stories, will we have a more complete understanding, of the history of Colorado.

- [Female Narrator] This program was made possible, by the history Colorado State Historical Fund, supporting projects throughout the state, to preserve, protect and interpret Colorado's architectural and archeological treasures.

History Colorado State Historical Fund, create the future, honor the past with additional funding, provided in memory of Deanna E.La Camera, by Hassel and Marianne Ledbetter and by members like you, thank you.

With special thanks to the Denver Public Library, History Colorado and to these organizations.

(calming instrumental music) (cheerful upbeat music) (calming music) - [Kelly] Twin Lakes is between Aspen and Leadville.

Twin Lakes are actually glacial lakes and they have been here for many, many, many years, after the glaciers receded from the area and it has always been two lakes, hence the name Twin lakes.

- [Catherine] The mountains just rise up suddenly from the lake.

They're absolutely awesome.

- [Judy] Well, this was the Ute homeland primarily.

There were other tribes that came through, like the the Cheyenne and Arapahoe, but the Ute would move with the seasons and they would come to hunt and fish.

And the hot springs of course, were also a great gift for them.

- [Kurt] The lakes are immediately below Mount Elbert.

The history of this area is very important, to the people who live here, but it's also very important, to the culture of the county and the state and the nation.

The Utes were here and they were and they were until the 1870s, were actively using Twin Lakes.

It was a traditional area for them.

Understanding the Native American history and appreciating it is an opportunity, to reflect on the interaction of white Americans and what happened with most of the tribes.

- [Chairman Heart] So the Utes in general are the mountain people, Tabeguache, Uncompahgre, White River, Uintah, Weenuche, Mouache and Capote, there used to be at one time 12 bands.

Our original aboriginal lands is two thirds, the state of Colorado all the way over to Salt Lake and all the way down to northern New Mexico.

We roamed all over the place based on game.

So before the Europeans came, these mountains were our livelihood.

- [Regina] My grandparents have given us, the guidance and information about what to look for, when you are out on the land.

Being observant of what's available and what will be available for that season.

And watching the different things sprout and seeing the abundance.

- [Catherine] There's a little hill just to the west of us, that has some peel trees on it and it does have some flake stone chips and this is where the indigenous people, would peel the bark on primarily ponderosas, to get to the inner layers which were very high in calcium, but they also used them for other purposes, such as cradle boards.

The trees provided a multitude of uses.

- [Chairman Heart] The European came westward.

Pioneers started exploring more and more.

We really started seeing a lot more miners coming in, a "gold rush" in the state of Colorado, they started seeing minerals, gold, silver, other ores.

And that's why a lot of these mining towns, are in the mountains here in Colorado and they looked at this ore as profit, as money.

We as Ute people valued the land.

We didn't own it, it's the creator's land and these lands are so valuable, to the non-Indians, the non-Ute people, that they started creating this legislation to reduce us and take away what we once roamed and we lost all these lands, in a period of 40 to 50 years through legislation.

- [Nicki] You have a series of U.S. treaties being drawn up, through very deceptive means.

So if you look very closely, at how these treaties are constructed, US government is being very manipulative.

They are appointing their own leaders within these tribes, to sign with, promises that the American government would make and not fulfill, promises to uphold the tribal sovereignty and the tribal claims to certain territories in the West, that would time and again be violated.

- [Chairman Heart] So treaties first started in the 1840s.

Peace treaties they call them.

As long as we stay peaceful with the settlers, then things would be okay.

But we didn't break the treaties.

They came in mining, they came in fur hunters.

Our homelands started to get reduced smaller and smaller.

- [Judy] The first treaty that the Ute had, with the United States was in 1849.

And that treaty was also for the United States, to have the Ute as their friend and not their enemy because they were moving west and coming in.

They didn't want hostilities.

Gold was discovered in Denver, 10 years later in 1859, that brought additional people into Colorado, where they began to move into the mountains, where there was no agreement between the United States and the Ute people to allow them to do that.

So that as you might imagine, was not a happy incident for the Utes and they began to object.

- [Chairman Heart] And they saw this as an invasion.

The Ute people did.

So these people were trespassing, but through the many people that were coming, it was inevitable, how could we fight that and how could we fight legislation?

The minors also started to say, I want land.

I want land, I want to be able to claim this, so I can mine it as my own property.

But there was no say for the Ute peoples.

- [Kurt] By 1860, there were tens of thousands, of prospectors in Colorado.

By 1863 or 1864 the area was already recognized, as a hub for prospecting.

There was a very good prospects found in gold, silver and some other minerals.

So what became the Twin Lakes village, was kind of the choke point for anybody going up the canyon.

And so it was the natural place for a village to develop.

- [Nicki Gonzales] The miners might have arrived at a time, when it was not occupied by the Ute and so they would just move right on in.

And so that landscape would be almost instantly changed.

- [Judy] In 1868, the United States, entered into a treaty with the Utes and that treaty diminished the land base, that the Utes had as their homeland to about one third, of the western part of Colorado.

The Utes gave the United States the right to come in and cover their miners in effect who were already there.

Ouray was a fairly well known leader, in this time period of the 19th century.

And he as well as others who began the process, of trying to get the miners removed, when they were moving into territory, that the United States had said would be protected.

And so the United States at that point said, okay, we will send the Army in and we will remove the trespassing miners.

But that isn't what happened.

- Ouray went back to Washington DC, to negotiate on behalf of the tribe, on behalf of the Ute people and he was promised but not written, a verbal promise, yes, we'll get the miners out of there.

- Ouray asked them to enforce the promises they had made, in the 1868 treaty.

Then in 1873, Ouray kept pushing and pushing and saying, they're coming in, they're not stopping.

The United States put out an order to the Army.

So the Department of Defense was sending troops in, to remove the trespassing miners.

Well, the minors that organized too and they were pretty belligerent about this, very aggressive.

And so you could see that this is a setup, right?

The miners versus the troops.

And so this was in 1873.

Well that was the spring, Ulysses S. Grant was the president and he came to Denver and stayed with the territorial Governor Elbert in his home and they met and talked about the mining issue, of course it was huge because here come the troops, the miners are organized, that's gonna blow up.

But what happened was, the President withdrew the order from General Pope, he sent in Brunot, who was working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the time and he negotiated in 1873 an agreement that took his name.

The US was pretty clear I'm sure, seed the land you're gonna give us title.

What the Utes understood at the time, was that they were going to allow the miners to come in and when they finished they would leave.

And the miners in Twin Lakes, were among those celebrating this great victory and they saw Elbert their territorial governor, as their hero.

So they took a tin plate and they inscribed it.

It said something to the effect of, we're grateful to Elbert and we are naming this mountain for him.

So the mountain took the name Elbert.

The land was taken and they never got it back.

(country music) - [Kurt] By 1868, Twin Lakes actually had begun to decline.

The easily obtained gold had already been taken.

- [Nicki Gonzales] And with the natural beauty of the area, it became very attractive for upper class white Americans, to vacation there.

This is a time in American history, a back to nature movement, when people are really embracing nature, in a very romantic way and in a very exclusive way.

- [Kurt Schweigert] Lakeside was a a small hotel and there was another one across the the lake.

What became Interlaken, was a purchase of one of those little hotels, on the south side at one time was probably, the premier tourist attraction in Colorado, even above Estes Park and numerous other places, many, many accounts in newspapers, of parties coming to the Twin Lakes, for the fishing primarily and the beauty or staying at one of those hotels.

- Interlaken Hotel Complex is another historic district, that is on the other side of Twin Lakes, from Twin Lakes Village that had a dairy barn, a horse barn, a laundry, a guest house and many other facilities and then the owners built the Dexter cabin, which was in the design of very nautical design, which is quite unusual.

The hotel is a log cabin.

It's a two story log cabin, and during the late 1800s, people would get off the train and come in their horse and buggies to the hotel and there was also a ballroom, so they put on balls, all kinds of events, for people to enjoy and it was a big recreation area.

In addition to being founded on mining, the Twin Lakes area was also founded on recreation, of people coming out to enjoy themselves.

- [Kurt Schweigert] Fishing and sight seeing, were the two major attraction, then boating.

Even by the 1870s, there were boats for rent.

It attracted tourists from all over the country.

- Euro-American culture and tradition, was very foreign to the tribes.

They did not understand why it was so important to own land, to write things down, to fence and farm and have libraries and have buildings for government, it didn't make any sense and of course from the Euro-American position, it looked like the tribes were just wasting, all this beautiful land because they weren't farming.

It was a whole clash of cultures.

And there was a lot of misunderstanding, a lot.

And a lot of it led to some of the incidents that happened.

Like the Meeker incident in 1879.

Nathan Meeker was not a very good agent, for the United States because he didn't understand the tribes at all and he insisted that they fence farmed, number of people died.

That was the impetus, for the United States to negotiate another agreement, in 1880 to move the tribes one more time, all of them because they didn't distinguish between the bands, they didn't try to understand it.

And so we've gotta just get rid of the Indians, is basically what happened.

The pressure was on the negotiators, from the United States to just get them somewhere else, get 'em outta Colorado.

So the negotiation ended with the Southern Utes and the Ute Mountain Utes down, in the southwest corner of Colorado and the rest of the Utes over in Utah.

- [Chairman Heart] Then reservations were identified and the United States government had this control on us, to tell us we couldn't do this or do that.

So what has happened over time, there's a lot of broken treaties, there's been a lot of impacts, over the centuries and decades.

We've lost these lands and today a lot of these treaties, with tribes across this country have been broken.

So today we fight and educate Congress and state law, lawmakers to realize, that treaties were in place.

- [Regina] When a treaty was broken, it is very difficult to unbreak.

You cannot unbreak something, you cannot unsay something.

You have the only means to move forward.

I think we just have to be more conscious, about what we do today being very present and conscious about right now and then looking at how that may affect the future.

That's the only way we can do it.

You can't apologize for what your ancestors may have done, but you can take care of self and allow for that change to occur, right with the individual one's self, the chain will radiate out.

- [Judy] We have much to learn from, the over 500 federally recognized tribes.

It's really critical to understand their story, as part of our story.

- [Catherine] My job is to help identify cultural resources, which are historic places, all the way from the indigenous places, where people thousands of years ago, to places like this which are late 1800s, early 1900s, mining towns.

- Twin Lakes, the Village has been, on the National Register of Historic places since 1974.

It's not a very big area, but it does encompass, almost all of the historic town.

And that came about because, the Fryingpan-Arkansas project was being planned.

- When the lake level was raised, some of the buildings that in Interlaken and were moved back from the shoreline.

The hotel was moved back, the Dexter house was moved back and the granaries were moved to next door, to the barn in order to preserve them, from being inundated from the lake level rising.

Currently, we are working to stabilize the buildings, over at Interlaken and long term we wanna do more stabilization and we would like to have them more open to the public, to enjoy, the Dexter cabin, we do keep open in the summer for people, to take a look at what late 1800s house looked like.

The Forest Service is committed, to preserving our heritage for future generations.

And here in Twin Lakes we have a great support community.

We have volunteers in friends of Twin Lakes, who come and put in thousands of hours.

We also have a lot of recreation that happens here.

So we have folks coming to the Visitor Center, to find out more about places they can recreate and places they can go.

Old buildings tend to succumb to the elements and if we do not keep them stabilized, then they will fall down.

We work closely with History Colorado, to have plans to mitigate and avoid potential damage, to historic sites when we're doing projects or when we're restoring places.

- [Kelly] The Friends of Twin Lakes is a nonprofit, that is devoted to improving life, for residents and visitors in Southern Lake County.

We do a lot of work with governmental entities, particularly the Forest Service.

Friends of Twin Lakes is in charge of maintaining, most of the trails that are, on the southern side of the lake.

We help maintain the Dexter matter house and the properties over at Interlaken and we supply all of the volunteers, to work the Visitor Center.

The Forest Service is here for our forest, they're not really used to maintaining and displaying, heritage assets such as the buildings that we have here.

So we work with them to try to come up, with acceptable plans.

We have between 20 and 37 people that come in and spend a whole day just cleaning the Heritage Park.

- [Judy] Friends of Twin Lakes set up a series of seminars, about Native Nations.

A representative from the Southern Ute Tribe, Hanley Frost, came to give a seminar and share his story with us about the southern Utes.

He spoke from his heart.

It was an excellent opportunity for us as a community, to understand from a native perspective.

- We're working a lot with the descendants of the tribes.

They come out with us and they talk about the places and describe them.

So we're learning a lot right now, with our listening to the ancestral history, that they've learned from their grandmas, their grandpas, about what was here and how they lived.

- Now as a society, we're beginning to reckon with that past and seek out those voices and to complete the puzzle with those missing pieces, to really gain a fuller understanding of Colorado history.

So what does reckoning with that history mean?

You have to recognize that those stories, are a part of our history, right?

That those indigenous pieces, are part of this larger story of Colorado.

And once we know the history and honor that history, then the next step is what do we do about it?

A lot of people are talking about reconciliation or reckoning with our past.

So we really have to have conversations as a society, about what does that mean?

What does reckoning with a past of conquest and displacement and genocide mean?

I think in this moment of reckoning with our past, we can take a place like Twin Lakes for example and recognize that there were five treaties signed, with the Ute and none of them were upheld and then they were removed and relegated to reservations.

Twin Lakes was part of the Ute territory.

What what does that mean?

When we put all of those pieces together, the broken treaties, the removal to reservations and the fact that Twin Lakes is this gorgeous place, right?

Very close to Aspen, since white settlement been a refuge for wealthy whites.

What does that mean?

- [Chairman Heart] All these lands used to be ours anyway, but yet they took it away through legislation.

So if there's any legislation down the road, that would give back land, I whole heartedly of support it, because these were our original lands.

Give it back to us would be great.

But if there's a little money to go with it, then we can put that into some kind of investment, to help us down the road, 'cause that's what it's about, is really setting up the future for the right direction, of where we're heading as as a tribe, as a sovereign nation.

- [Nicki] The fact that this is for service land gives us an opportunity for the government, to consult with the tribe, consult with the Ute elders and leaders to create understanding, for the public of that history.

And so what a tremendous opportunity, to educate people about that indigenous history and to thus be this larger understanding and this time of land acknowledgements, what does that really mean?

Is it beyond education?

Is it giving back?

Perhaps giving that land back, especially the land surrounding Mount Bump, where all of these archeological evidence and treasures of Ute presence exist.

- Just because you don't see evidence of where we were, back when our families and elders and ancestors, roamed this land freely, doesn't mean we weren't there.

We've left evidence in very unique places, like written on the canyon walls, on the barks of trees.

This is not entirely a story of dislocation, but it also has been a story of how we can be resilient and it truly demonstrates we can work together.

And one of the things that we need to move forward, within a conversation like this, something experience taught me is moving forward, in light of collaboratively managing land space, utilizing traditional ecological knowledge, braided in science.

We can put all these together and pave way for a better tomorrow.

One should never be elevated higher than the other, but rather all be braided or woven together.

- How do we heal minds?

How do we heal what happened in the past?

That's what we need to do is reeducate people, about the history way before that, non-Indians.

But it takes people with strong voices, strong vision and goals of who we were even before, United States was even a country.

- Nature has with your whatever cultures, have occupied a certain area, nature has always been a source of inspiration, a source of consolation, a source of respite.

Perhaps it's that theme that can unite us all and also impose on us a certain responsibility, take care of that.

- I just wanna say thank you, towaoc in Ute it means thank you.

How do we start to work together?

It's about partnerships.

It's about putting things out on the table and explaining things so people can understand.

Too often we get too busy in life, that we don't really stop and think and have that empathy, that equity of what we share today.

We share a land, we share air, we share common things and we need to be able to just stop and breathe.

Sometimes trust is not there based on the past, but based on the future it can be developed.

That's what the future holds and have an ultimate peace around this world.

That's where we need to go.

With that, towaoc.

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