Who was here first? More than fifty Tribal nations have ancestral ties to the land we call Colorado today. Ute people have called the place we know as Denver—and most of Colorado—home since time immemorial. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Arapaho and Cheyenne Tribes also moved into the area, hunting and living along the South Platte and Cherry Creek. Today, as a result of often-violent dispossession of their homelands by European and American settlers, only the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes maintain lands in Colorado on reservations in the state’s southwest corner. However, many Native people continue to call Denver home today.
- Courtesy of “Dr. Colorado” Tom Noel
Photo Caption: Utes camped on the site of Denver. (Credit: William Henry Jackson, History Colorado, 84.54.1)
