Chief Posey's War

Calling it a war dignifies what was closer to a roundup. In 1923, after two young Ute men escaped custody in Blanding, the town deputized an armed posse and imprisoned eighty Ute and Paiute people — over half a community — in a barbed-wire stockade for a month, their children later shipped to a boarding school. Posey, a Paiute leader who had protested the theft of Native grazing land, fought a delaying action to cover the others' flight. Shot and driven into the canyons, he died of the wound. Newspapers called it an uprising; it was a dispossession.

What the plaque says

This location marks the second encounter of one of the last Indian uprisings in the United States. Posey and his Piute followers helped 2 young braves escape from the Blanding jail. At this site the pursuing posse closed in, Posey opened fire and shot Sheriff John Rogers' horse out from under him, narrowly missing several others. The next day the battle shifted to the Comb Ridge area where Chief Posey was shot and one of the escaped braves killed. Over the next several days all the braves were captured and eventually brought to trial.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum — 5.7 mi
  An Ancestral Puebloan ruin you can climb down into
• Valley of the Gods — 30 mi
  A free, uncrowded alternative to Monument Valley
• Moki Dugway — 31 mi
  A heart-pounding series of switchbacks carved into a cliff face

More markers nearby

• Settlement of Blanding — 5.5 mi
• ZCMI Co-Op Building — 5.7 mi
• Blanding Veterans Memorial — 5.9 mi
• The San Juan Mission — 18 mi