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 16 tribes of the 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.
When Chief Wah-Kara died unexpectedly in 1855, Chief Jake Arropeen (Yenewoods) became chief by succession. A botched attempt was made to reach an agreement between the Utes and the Mormons at Manti, when Arropeen was pulled from his horse by John Lowry, believed to be drunk at the time, and this started the war in 1865. Chief Yene-wood being dishonored before his people saw it as the final blow of a long endurance of insults and depredations over nearly 30 years that rallied the Utes under the leadership of Chief Black Hawk to declare war against the Mormons. This marked the beginning of what the whites later dubbed "The Black Hawk War. "Noonch "Black Hawk" then became chief by succession and 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, it was never ratified, 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".
1847 is the year the first Mormon pioneers arrived, and it was not until 1865 when the besieged Chief Black Hawk declared war. The white population had dramatically increased to about 50,000. At the same time the Ute population is estimated to have been 15,000 to 20,000. Measles, smallpox and tuberculosis were spreading epidemically among the Indians. The environment was drastically altered from Mormon farming of domesticated crops and animals, seriously interfering with the Utes' only source of food, as hundreds starved to death.
The Black Hawk War in itself was not a single incident. Over 150 deadly confrontations took place over a seven year period throughout Utah territory and spilled over into Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming as tens of thousands of Mormon Pioneers poured in at the rate of 3,000 a month. Official 1909 government census revealed a huge decline in the Indian population to just 2,400.
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
