On road trips through western Colorado, Ute leader Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk’s family would stop to pay their respects to a cottonwood believed to be more than 200 years old. Their ancestors once gathered in its shade to discuss tribal business.

So when Lopez-Whiteskunk heard the Ute Council Tree had been deemed dangerously weakened by age, she made the drive of more than three hours from Towaoc, tribal seat of the Ute Mountain Ute near Four Corners, to Delta on Friday for what she feared would be a last pilgrimage.

She was worried the 90-foot tree with a base seven feet in diameter would be cut down entirely. When she found Delta officials planned to leave a stump of at least 12 feet, she was philosophical.

“It is a sad day,” she said. “But at the same time, in the circle of life these are things that happen and it needs to be acknowledged and honored. With age, we weaken. I believe it’s a great life, great experiences it has lived.”

Jim Wetzel, director of the Delta County Museum, said the decision to take down the tree came after the last main limb fell Aug. 1. The Delta County Historical Society board brought in a tree expert.

“We decided at that point the tree was too dangerous to leave standing” on a well-trafficked road near several homes, he said.

Wetzel estimated the tree was between 215 and 240 years old, adding that was extraordinary for a cottonwood.

Cutting it down to a stump, expected to take hours, began after a brief ceremony Friday morning. Thursday was the 137th anniversary of the death of a revered chief, so Utes who might have already planned a visit to Ouray’s grave in nearby Montrose may have joined Lopez-Whiteskunk and others for the ceremony.

Shortly before his death Ouray traveled to Washington to sign a treaty that led to the forced removal of members of the White River and his own Uncompahgre Ute bands from Colorado to Utah. The Utah reservations and the Ute Mountain Ute tract that stretches across southwest Colorado, southeast Utah and northern New Mexico are the last holdings of a people who were indigenous to large parts of what is now Colorado, Utah, Nevada and New Mexico.

Lopez-Whiteskunk, who recently accepted the position of education coordinator at the state-run Ute Indian Museum in Montrose, said the Delta tree is a symbol of unification. It was a place where now scattered bands came together to discuss their future and relations with the U.S. federal government.

“If the tree could talk, oh my God, can you imagine all the guidance and wisdom it could impart?” she said.

Friday, she noted saplings nearby that may have sprung from the tree.

“The spirit of the tree is still very much alive,” she said. “The root system, I believe, is still very strong.”

She said she planned to keep visiting the stump, on which Wetzel said a historic marker would be placed.

Another site important to Utes also was on Lopez-Whiteskunk’s mind Friday. She had testified before the House Natural Resources Committee in support of national monument status for Bears Ears, a vast tract in Utah to which several tribes have ancestral ties. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended Thursday that President Trump reduce the size of Bears Ears and other national monuments.

Lopez-Whiteskunk said it was frustrating that few details of Zinke’s proposal have emerged. But she said Utes and others who want to protect Bears Ears would be as resilient as the Council Tree.

“At the end of the day the sun will still rise in the east and set in the west and we will still honor the presence of our ancestors,” she said.