Local whites were irate, especially when the Indian Rights Association from back East sprang to the Indians' defense. More brush fire conflicts arose in 1917, 1919, and 1921, until finally, in 1923, local whites reached a final "solution." The main force behind this achievement was rooted in an insignificant affair involving two young Utes who robbed a sheep camp, killed a calf and burned a bridge. The culprits voluntarily turned themselves in, stood trial, but then escaped from the sheriff's grasp. The people of Blanding moved quickly to get not only the two boys, but Posey as well, who by this time had become synonymous with all of the ill-will felt between the two cultures. To the towns people, he was the living metaphor of all the troublesome Indians.

In spite of what the newspapers reported then, and what has since been billed as the "Posey War" or the "last Indian uprising in the United States," the events that followed moved little beyond a mass exodus of Utes and Paiutes fleeing their homes to escape the white men. Posey fought a rear-guard action to prevent capture, was eventually wounded, watched his people get carted off to a barbed wire compound in the middle of Blanding, and died a painful death from his gunshot wound a month later. Only one other Ute died during the incident.

The government too the opportunity to settle both the Allen Canyon Utes involved in the fracas, as well as the Montezuma Canyon Ute band, on individual parcels of land. Twenty-three allotments went to those in Montezuma and neighboring Cross Canyon, and thirty went to those in Allen Canyon, thus removing the Indians from long disputed range lands.