On-Site Drug Testing Polk, NE

Local Area Info: Bluff War

The Bluff War, also known as Posey War of 1915, or the Polk and Posse War, was one of the last armed conflicts between the United States and native Americans. It began in March 1914 and was the result of an incident between a Utah shepherd and Tse-ne-gat, the son of the Paiute Chief Narraguinnep ("Polk"). It was notable for involving Chief Posey and his band of renegades who helped Polk fight a small guerrilla war against local Mormon settlers and Navajo policemen. The conflict centered on the town of Bluff, Utah and ended in March 1915 when Polk and Posey surrendered to the United States Army.

Chief Posey played a prominent role in the war, as it was primarily his band who took up arms. Between 1881 and 1923, Posey led his braves in several skirmishes against the Navajo and the American settlers, killing several, including several at the "Pinhook Massacre" on the northwest slopes of the La Sal Mountains. His band, which included about 100 people, both Ute and Paiute, was feared and well-known. Unlike most native American tribes, Polk's and Posey's followers did not reside on a reservation, but rather they lived near Bluff, around Allen and Montezuma Canyons. Ultimately, Posey's struggle to keep Westward expansion away failed in 1905, when the town of Blanding, then known as Grayson, was founded in the center of the Ute's last prominent hunting grounds. For the next ten years, sporadic fighting occurred, until March 1914 when Tse-ne-gat, the son of Chief Polk, allegedly robbed and murdered an ethnic Mexican shepherd named Juan Chacon on the Ute Mountain Reservation in Colorado. Chacon had camped with a group of Utes and Paiutes from Polk's band, among them Tse-ne-gat, also known as Everett Hatch. A few days later Chacon was found dead and witnesses claimed that Tse-ne-gat was responsible. Chief Polk defended his son's actions, so when Navajo policemen attempted to arrest Tse-ne-gat, Polk drove them off with rifle fire. For the next six months, newspapers around the United States circulated reports of the incident. By that time, Polk had taken his band, about eighty-five people, to the Navajo Mountain area. Chief Posey and his warriors joined them, setting the stage for a battle. Local newspapers reported that "Hatch [Tse-ne-gat] has a notorious reputation as a bad man" and that his group was "terrorizing" the settlers in the Bluff area, they also said that Tsa-na-gat was "strongly entrenched with fifty braves who will stand by him to the last man."

Ten months after the murder of Chacon, Tsa-na-gat still had not surrendered so Marshal Aquila Nebeker organized a posse of twenty-six "cowboys" and three sheriffs from Montezuma County, Colorado to make arrests. The posse left Bluff and headed towards Navajo Mountain. Just after dawn, on the morning of February 25, 1915, Marshal Nebeker and the posse came across Chief Polk and fifty of his men encamped in Cottonwood Gulch. The weather was very cold and snow covered the ground. One of the natives in camp spotted the approaching possemen, so he alarmed the others with "woops of warning" before opening fire with a rifle. Other accounts say that the posse achieved a surprise attack and began firing into the camp without warning. Either way, the posse implemented a type of "Indian strategy of the kind that one is accustomed to read in the histories of early life in the West." Chief Posey and his band were camped not far from the area, along the San Juan River, and when they heard the sound of the gunfire, Posey led his warriors to Polk's rescue. Posey's men, numbering about forty, maneuvered to the rear of the posse's position and then he gave the order to engage. Shortly thereafter, Marshal Nebeker realized that he needed help, so he sent a message back to Bluff requesting reinforcements. Over the next several hours, about fifty volunteers from Bluff, Blanding, Cortez and Monticello arrived in the battle area. The fight continued all night and into the next day, when a truce was called. During the fighting, five of the possemen got separated from the rest and had to hold off the attacking natives from the top of a rocky hill. At least one American was killed, posseman Joseph C. Akin of Colorado, and several others were wounded, though some accounts say two possemen died.