He was very much attached to the white man’s manner of living, and received from the government a thousand dollars a year annuity.  From first to last, Ouray had been friendly to the whites, and always an advocate of peace.  The moment he heard of the attack on Thornburgh’s command, he sent runners to the spot and ordered the Indians to cease at once; so powerful was he that hostilities ended immediately.

The Pi-Utes have a rather poetical conceit in accounting for the movements of the celestial bodies.  Their theory is that the sun rules the heavens.  He is a big chief; the moon is his squaw, and the stars are his children.  The sun devours his children whenever he is able to catch them.  They are constantly afraid of him as he is passing through the sky.  He gets up very early in the morning; his children, the stars, fly out of sight, and go away into the blue; and they are not seen again until he goes to bed, which is deep down under the ground, in a great hole.  When he goes to his hole, he creeps and crawls, and sleeps there all night.  The hole is so little that he cannot turn around in it, so he is obliged, when he has had all the sleep he requires, to pass on through, and in the morning he is seen in the east again.  When he comes out of his hole, he begins to hunt through the sky to catch and eat any of the stars he can find.  All of the sun is not seen; his shape is like a snake or lizard.  It is not his head that is seen, but his stomach, which is stuffed with stars he has devoured.  His wife, the moon, goes into the same hole as her husband, to sleep also.  She has great fear of him, and when he comes into the hole to sleep, she does not remain there long, if he be cross.

The moon has great love for her children, the stars, and is ever happy to be travelling up where they are.  Her children feel perfectly safe, and smile as she passes along.  But she cannot help one of them being devoured every month.  It is ordered by Pah-ah, the Great Spirit, who dwells above all, that the sun must swallow one of his children each month.  Then the mother-moon feels very sorry, and she must mourn.  She paints her face black, for her child is gone.  But the dark will soon wear away from her face a little by little, night after night, and after a time her face becomes all bright again.  Soon the sun swallows another child, and the moon puts on her black paint again.

They account for the appearance of a comet by stating that the sun often snaps at one of the stars, his children, and does not get a good hold of it, he only tears a piece out; and the star, getting wild with pain, goes flying across the sky with a great spout of blood flowing from it.  It is then very much afraid, and as it flies it always keeps its head turned to watch the sun, its father, and never turns its face away from him until it is far out of his reach.

A few years ago, the Utes sold their lands to the United States government, and the various bands were removed to a reservation.