The Posey War: The Last Armed Conflict Between the United States and Native Americans
Near Bluff, Utah
In March of nineteen twenty-three, a conflict erupted near Bluff that historians sometimes call the last Indian War in American history. The event is known as the Posey War, named for a leader of mixed Paiute and Ute heritage whose band of roughly a hundred men, women, and children had long resisted confinement on reservations, living instead in the canyon country around Bluff and Blanding. The immediate trigger was minor: two young men from Posey's band robbed a sheep camp in the area, and the white community used the incident as pretext to round up all Native people living nearby.
When officers tried to arrest members of Posey's group at a Blanding courthouse, a fight broke out. Posey and his band fled into the canyons. A large armed posse pursued them across the slickrock country.
Posey was shot and seriously wounded during a skirmish near Comb Ridge. His band was eventually captured and confined in a barbed-wire enclosure in Blanding. Posey died of his wounds in the desert, reportedly alone.
When his death was confirmed, the prisoners were released and given land allotments. The conflict was small and its casualties were few, Posey and one other man on the Native side. But it ended something.
The independent life that Posey's band had maintained in the canyon country for decades was over. The families who survived were dispersed. The series of conflicts between the United States and the Ute people that began in eighteen forty-eight closed at Comb Ridge in nineteen twenty-three, in the red rock country outside Bluff.
