Little remains of the first residents of the Crystal River Valley – the Ute Indians. However, many individuals have discovered arrowheads and other Ute items on property up and down the valley. Old timers say a stone barricade on the crest of Red Hill, just north of Carbondale, for example, was a Ute fortification during a battle with marauding Arapahos.

There is evidence that the first contact between the Ute Indians and white Europeans occurred early in the 1700s when the Utes traded captive slaves with the Spaniards in New Mexico.

In 1776, Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante, sent by the Spanish government in New Mexico to seek a new route to the California coast, became the first recorded Europeans to see the Upper Grand valley of the Colorado and encountered their first Ute Indians. They travelled more than 1,000 miles on their incredible journey. The Spaniards were followed by fur trappers and mountain men, prospectors and traders. Utes often served as guides and became friendly with such men as Jim Bridger, Uncle Dick Wootton and Kit Carson.

The Utes acquired horses in the 1600s and expanded their hunting territories while enlarging their tribal groups and pitting them in wars against invading Arapahos, Cheyennes and Kiowa. They reached the peak of their power when they achieved a population of around 8,000 by 1750.

With increasing pressure from white settlement in the 1860s and70s, the U.S. government recognized Ouray, translated “The Arrow,” as Chief of the Ute Nation, as the many bands of Utes were collectively called. The Utes themselves did not recognize a central leader who could speak for all,each group having its own leader. Ouray’s Father was an Uncompahgre, his mother a Jicarilla Apache. He learned the languages and customs of the Americans and when time came for a diplomatic Ute to deal with the whites, Ouray seemed well-suited.