Antonga Black Hawk
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Antonga Black Hawk was a famous leader of the Ute Tribe born in Spring Lake, Utah around 1830. He died on September 26, 1870 from tuberculosis.
The Black Hawk War in Utah began in 1865 and ended in 1872. It was a triangle that involved the U.S. Federal Government, the Mormons and the Utes. The Federal Government sought to remove the Mormon Church from the political system in Utah. The Mormon settlers aggressively fought for control over a place they called "Zion", which was the Ute's ancestral lands. The Utes and other Native Americans in Utah had been forced off their land and were starving by 1865.
It is said that Black Hawk was pulled from his horse by a drunk settler and this started the war in 1865. The young chief was able to rally other tribes who had also been pushed off their lands to join him. The Mormons received no help from the U.S. Government, so they formed militias and quickly built forts. Similar to Kit Carson and the New Mexican Militias, the Mormon militia had a hard time catching the raiders but did kill women and children and destroyed any Ute property they could find. The settlers lost thousands of livestock by raids and nearly 100 settlers lost their lives. While Black Hawk signed a treaty in 1867, raids continued until the U.S. Government sent in 200 troops in 1872.
Historian John Alton Peterson describes Chief Black Hawk as having "remarkable vision and capacity. Given the circumstances under which he operated, he put together an imposing war machine and masterminded a sophisticated strategy that suggest he had a keen grasp of the economic, political, and geographic contexts in which he operated. Comparable to Cochise, Sitting Bull and Geronimo, Black Hawk fostered an extraordinary pan-regional movement that enabled him to operate in an enormous section of country and establish a three-face war. Black Hawk worked to establish a barrier to white expansion and actually succeeded in collapsing the line of Mormon settlement, causing scores of villages in over a half dozen counties to be abandoned. For almost a decade the tide of white expansion in Utah came to a dead stop and in most of the territory actually receded. Like other defenders of Indian rights, though, Black Hawk found he could not hold his position, and his efforts eventually crumbled".
Ute history notes that Black Hawk tried to make peace with the "pale-faces" before he died. He visited every village from Cedar City to Payson to plead with the whites to forgive him for the suffering that he and his people had caused them. His dream was that everyone could coexist in peace.
[edit] See also
- Utah War for more about Mormon and federal government battles
