Dallin lived among the Utes while Utah was being settled by the Mormons and the Pacific Railroad was being completed. After extended periods of conflict, the Utes (Paiutes and Shoshone) were forced onto reservations. In this bronze, Dallin looked back to that period and reconstructed a sympathetic tribute to the memory of the ignoble treatment of a proud people. The composition won a medal in 1909 at the Paris Salon.