Carson believed that most of the Indian troubles in the West were caused, as he once flatly put it, “by aggressions on the part of whites.” Most of the raids, by Utes and other tribes, were visited upon the settlements only out of desperation—“committed,” he argued, “from absolute necessity when in a starving condition.” White settlers were increasingly encroaching on Indian hunting grounds. Describing the situation among the Utes and Jicarilla Apache, Carson wrote in a dictated report that “their game is becoming scarce, much of it having been killed by the settlers, and a great deal of it
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