Hey, I know you ladies have worked hard on this proposal.

But.

Please Mr.

Sewell No buts.

We will not be put off.

We aim to see that the new Constitution of Colorado include a provision for the right of women to vote.

We have petitions signed in every section of the territory.

10,000 signatures, Mr.

Sewell.

We aim to make you and the other delegates aware that what women think and believe is important and should be acknowledged in a provision for women's suffrage.

Mrs.

Abernathy, let me assure you, the delegates are aware of your newly formed Colorado Women's Suffrage Association.

Goodness knows I hear enough about it every morning and evening from my wife.

However, be that as it may, the right for women to vote is still a very controversial issue in this... I remind you, Mr.

Sewell, that we have come a long way out here in the West since Julia Holmes was the first woman to climb Pike's Peak in 1858.

And have you forgotten the fact that the territory to the north of us has provided women their full voting rights since 1869?

I'm well aware of that, Mrs.

Abernathy.

Wyoming, however, is not a state yet.

Not one of the 37 states in our nation give women the right to vote.

I fear that if we include such a provision, the male voters in this territory will turn down our Constitution.

We need statehood first.

Women's suffrage will have to come later.

What does it take to convince you, men?

I'm not sure that you can.

In spite of the pressure by Colorado women, Mr.

Sewell and the other delegates put the issue of women's suffrage aside in favor of gaining support for statehood.

Male voters approved the Constitution on July 1st, 1876.

The following day, William in Byers, in his Rocky Mountain News, editorialized what it meant for the people.

After weary years of waiting, we at last are to govern ourselves.

No longer will the appointing power of our chief officers be located 2000 miles away, but the people will choose their own rulers and be governed by their own laws.

Colorado had now met all the conditions for statehood.

It was now only a matter of time before the president of the United States would issue the proclamation that would make the 15 year old territory the 38th state of the Union.

Territorial Governor John L Routt quickly designated July 4th as the appropriate day for festival in celebration down in Pueblo along the Arkansas River.

Cattleman Charles Goodnight speculated on Colorado's future, as did General Palmer from his home in Colorado Springs.

Oral city, high in the central Rockies, had little to celebrate.

A general storekeeper by the name of Horace Tabor closed his business for the day, wondering where all the silver might be That people said was the coming thing.

In less than a month.

A copy of the presidential proclamation arrived here in Denver, where even today its kept safe.

Here in the state archives.

In part, it reads.

Now, therefore, I, Ulysses Grant, president of the United States of America, do in accordance with the provisions of the Act of Congress aforesaid, declare and proclaim the fact that the fundamental conditions imposed by Congress on the State of Colorado to entitle that state to admission to the Union, have been ratified the date August 1st, 1876.

By pure coincidence, 100 years after the founding of this country, it's a little wonder that we quickly acquired a nickname the Centennial State.

Politically, however, historians agree that the timing of Colorado statehood was conveniently helpful to the national Republican Party, especially in a presidential election year when Colorado's three new electoral votes helped elect Rutherford B Hayes as president by a single vote.

In any regard, the provisions of the new Constitution of Colorado, surprisingly lengthier than our own constitution, were quickly put into effect.

John Root was elected our first governor.

Henry Teller, on the left, along with Jerome Chaffee, became our first United States Senators here in Washington, D.C.. For 15 years as a territory, Colorado at long last had representation and voting rights in the federal government.

Some Americans, however, scoffed at such privileges for Coloradans and even at the Centennial State itself, a New York newspaperman wrote, there is something repulsive in the idea that a few handfuls of miners and reckless bushwhackers should have the same representation in the United States Senate as Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.

A Pennsylvania editor added.

Colorado consists of Denver, the Kansas Pacific Railway, and scenery.

Whatever uncomplimentary things could be said, few people could deny that Colorado did indeed have scenery, especially in its rocky Mountains.

Following statehood, this fact became the strength of a growing tourism and settlement.

As more and more people back east and even in Europe, learned of the Switzerland of the West.

This man in particular became one of Colorado's most important boosters.

His name William H. Jackson.

He was a photographer, working for many years with the expeditions of Doctor Ferdinand Hayden as they made their Scientific and Geological Survey's of United States territories.

Pictured here with his mule, Ole Mag Jackson brought the West alive through his photographs of Yellowstone Park, the land of the cliff dwellers Chief Ouray and his Ute Indians.

And of course, perhaps his most famous picture, the mountain of the Holy Cross in the Central Rockies.

Such beauty was indeed luring thousands of tourists westward each year to see for themselves what this new state was like.

By the mid 1880s, over 200,000 people were visiting Colorado each year.

Doctor Hayden also did his part in making people aware of Colorado.

In 1877, he published his Colorado Atlas, copies of which are kept here in the Denver Public Library.

The Atlas not only detailed important geographical information in that period of history, but contained as well one obvious fact that many Colorado ones had somehow forgotten a fact that would lead to yet another confrontation between white men and Native Americans.

Almost half of western Colorado didn't belong to the government of Colorado, but rather to six bands of the Ute Indian tribe.

It was an area larger than the combined states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

The land had been given through treaty to the Utes, supposedly forever, to avoid the kind of conflict that took place earlier on Colorado's Eastern Plains.

For many Coloradans, such treaty rights were to be ignored.

After all, they said, it wasn't fair that so few Indians had the right to so much land.

They got no interest in mining or making money.

All they care about are their horses and hunting.

We got to get the Utes out of Colorado some way.

Yeah.

You're right.

The Utes have got to go.

It was part of a growing resentment festering among land speculators, miners and businessmen.

The biggest obstacle, however, was this man.

Chief Ouray of the Uncompahgre band of Ute Indians Chief Ouray had for many years tried to bring peace between the white men and his people.

He thought the way of treaty and compromise was a better way than the path of war.

A spokesman and leader of the tribe, he knew well the diplomacy of the six bands of Utes.

Through negotiations, he preserved most of the tribal lands and their practices.

By late 1878, however, many who.

Ray's own people became furious with the repeated intrusions of white men on their hunting grounds, looking not for gold, but rather for the silver medal.

It really began here on April 20th, 1878, in a new mining settlement called Leadville.

This town, situated at an elevation of over 10,000ft, with some three miles from the old and almost abandoned Oral city, the Ute Indian Reservation began over the Continental Divide in this direction.

Early on that April morning.

Two German prospectors, August Ritchie and George Hook, had entered Horace Tabors general store, needing food and provisions and coffee.

And those are the hardware, implements and utensils you'll be needing.

Oh, yes.

There's that jug whiskey I promised you.

Now let's see.

This comes to $17.35 That's what I figure you owe c m All right.

Yeah, that is right, Mr.

Tabor.

That is what we have to pay back to you.

And of course, there's the usual grub stake agreement.

Now, since they're the two of you, I'm to get a third of whatever you find.That agreeable with the two of you?

Oh, sure, Mr.

Tabor.

That is what we have agreed to.

You will share equally in what we find.

Good.

Handshake will seal the bargain.

Hopefully, you two boys will strike it rich incredibly, within eight days time.

The two prospectors did strike it rich here on Friar's Hill, uncovering a load of silver carbonate or at a depth of 27ft.

Their discovery location became known as the Little Pittsburg Mine.

In less than a year.

Horace Tabor became a millionaire in time, buying out both partners and reinvesting his money in mine property like this.

The famous matchless mine, which brought him even more wealth.

Such silver discoveries rekindled another rush to the Rockies.

By 1880, Leadville not only boasted of an opera house built with Tabors money, but was Colorado's number two city as well.

Booming from 500 to 15,000 people in the two year period, as Tabor had proved, money could be made without having to dig out the ore yourself.

Not far to the south and west, a small but energetic man, Otto Mirrors proved it yet another way.

He quickly acquired the title King of Southwestern Colorado Road Builders.

His toll roads covered some 300 miles.

Brought the first freighting by wagon into many of the new mining camps, as well as considerable wealth to himself, and with each new mineral discovery came more miners spreading out into the new mountainous areas.

Many of the prospectors ignoring reservation boundaries, continuing to trespass on Indian land.

The two cultures would finally clash violently outside what today is Meeker, Colorado.

Ironically, it wouldnt involve miners or trespassing by miners.

Rather, it centered upon this man, Nathan Meeker, the former president of the Union colony at Greeley, and in 1878, the appointed Indian agent for the white River or Northern Utes.

The well-meaning agent had tried unsuccessfully for months to change the Indians way of life, from horses and hunting to that of farming and schooling.

His continued attempts finally brought the Utes around his agency to open rebellion, forcing Meeker as a last resort to request military protection.

It came too late, on September 29th, 1879.

Meeker and 11 of his male employees were murdered by white River Indians.

Three women and two children were taken captive, and most of the agency's buildings were pillaged and burned.

The Utes had even ambushed the advancing U.S.

cavalry, killing Major Thornburgh in 13 of his men.

Once again, it was this man who was called upon to bring an end to the fighting and to negotiate the release of the captives.

He even went to Washington, D.C., to work out a treaty with the government, and would place the Utes on new reservations in Utah and along the southern Colorado border.

The cry of the white men was heard.

The Utes would go.

Chief Ouray struggled for over 20 years, resisting the invasions of his Ute Indian lands by the white men, particularly miners eager to find gold and silver.

He died at age 47 from Bright's disease and perhaps a broken heart.

Soon after the removal bill passed the United States Senate.

We honor his memory today by giving his name to a mountain peak, a town in the central Rockies, and his portrait in stained glass here in the Capitol Dome in Denver.