However, for the Indians it was not a war and never was intended to be such. A desperate flight through the canyons, a few shots fired as a delaying action, and a very rapid surrender do not justify elevating an exodus to a war. For the whites, however, it was an opportunity to release pent-up fear and frustration that had accumulated for over forty years. They mobilized quickly and combined frontier know-how with World War I warfare techniques. Talk of electrified fences and aircraft armed with machine guns and bombs, the use of a prisoner stockade, and the dissemination of volatile propaganda in the yellow press, combined with using automobiles to track Indians, horse-mounted posses, and old-fashioned gunfights made this event dramatic if not unique. Even today, Posey looms large as a symbol of an attitude and a time when vestiges of the old West were manifest in rural Utah.

See: Robert S. McPherson, "Paiute Posey and the Last White Uprising," Utah Historical Quarterly 53 (Summer 1985); San Juan County Historical Commission, Blue Mountain Shadows 4 (Spring 1989).

Robert S. McPherson