CHIEF OURAY HOPED TO ACHIEVE PEACE WITH WHITE PEOPLE W. Paul Reeve History Blazer, January 1995 The western Ute bands originally occupied about 23.5 million acres or around 45 percent of the present state of Utah. By the 1870s, however, Utah’s Utes were confined to less than 10 percent of that area, slightly over 2 million acres on the Uintah …