and ideas of right and wrong, according to a strictly Christian code.  He was bold, and an uncompromising protector of the rights of his tribe, and equally as earnest in his endeavours to impress upon the minds of the Indians that the whites were their friends.  He was renowned for his wisdom rather than for his bravery, which is the test of greatness among savages.  He was brave, too, but that did not, in his own conception, complete the qualities which a leader should possess.  His tribe during the period of his chieftainship had five battles with the Arapahoes and several with the Sioux and Cheyennes.  It was a bloody war between the Indians of the plains and the mountains, between highlanders and lowlanders, and in these struggles Ouray became a renowned warrior.

During some of these battles with the Arapahoes, Ouray led as many as seven hundred warriors into the field.  At one time he had but thirty braves with him, while the enemy numbered nearly eight hundred.  The Arapahoes came upon the Utes one morning just about daylight, surprising them completely.  Ouray rallied his small force, however, formed them into a square, and after retreating a short distance, fighting continuously for fourteen hours, succeeded in repulsing his foes.

The story of his life is an interesting one.  He says that he was born in Taos Valley in New Mexico, near the Pueblo village of that name, in 1839.  The band to which he belonged spent a great deal of its time in the Taos Valley, San Luis Park, and along the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  In that region they were accustomed to meet the Apaches, who came from the south.  It was a common thing for a tribe of Indians to marry out of their own.  Ouray’s father married an Apache woman, hence the epithet so often sneeringly applied to the chief, by those who did not like him, of “He’s an Apache pappoose.”

His band became so accustomed to association with the Mexicans that some of them began to adopt the customs of that people, and when Ouray’s father and mother decided to wed, they were married in the little adobe church on a hill in the village at the Red River Crossing.  A priest performed the ceremony according to the Catholic ritual.  When Ouray was born, he was taken to the same building and baptized into the Catholic faith.[58]

Ouray was not head chief at first; but his influence increased so fast with the other bands of the tribe, that, in the year of President Lincoln’s death, he was declared head chief of the whole Ute Nation.

Ouray resided in a neatly built adobe house erected for him by the government; it was nicely carpeted and furnished in modern style.  He owned a farm of three hundred acres, a real garden spot.  Of these he cultivated a hundred, owned a large number of horses, cattle, and sheep, and rode in a carriage presented to him by Governor McCook of Colorado.  He hired labourers from among the Mexicans and Indians.