Ute people

Ute

Chief Severo and family, ca. 1899
Total population
(4,800[1]–10,000[2])
Regions with significant populations
 United States (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah)[1]
Languages
English, Ute[1]
Religion
Native American Church, traditional tribal religion, and Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Chemehuevi and Southern Paiute people[1]

Ute people /ˈjuːt/ are in the Great Basin classification of Indigenous People, now living primarily in Utah and Colorado. There are three Ute tribal reservations: Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah (3,500 members); Southern Ute in Colorado (1,500 members); and Ute Mountain which primarily lies in Colorado, but extends to Utah and New Mexico (2,000 members). The name of the state of Utah was derived from the name Ute. The word Ute means "Land of the sun" in their language.[3] "Ute" possibly derived from the Western Apache word "yudah", meaning "high up". This has led to the misconception that "Ute" means people high up or mountain people.

Language

The people speak the Ute language, which is related to the Southern Paiute language and belong to the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. A dictionary and grammar have been written for the language, and the Bible has been translated into Ute. Several orthographies exist, but the language is written in the Latin script.

History

Further information: Ute Wars
Map dated 1838 showing the "Youta" people. From Britannica 7th edition.

Before Mexican settlers arrived, the Utes occupied significant portions of what are today eastern Utah, western Colorado,[4] including the San Luis Valley, and parts of New Mexico and Wyoming. The Utes were never a unified group within historic times; instead, they consisted of numerous nomadic bands that maintained close associations with other neighboring groups. The 7 largest known groups were the Capote, Moache, Moanumts, Parianuche, Taviwach, Weeminuche, and Yamperika, and Uintah. Uinta, Uncompahgre, White River,The original homeland of the Uto-Aztecan languages is generally considered to have existed along the border between the United States and Mexico, perhaps in the area of Arizona and New Mexico, as well as part of the Northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. From this area, speakers of Uto-Aztecan languages gradually diffused northward and southward, to include tribes such as the Shoshone and Comanche on the north and east, and the Aztecs in the south. Unlike many other tribal groups in this region, the Utes have no tradition or evidence of historic migration to the areas now known as Colorado and Utah—and ancestors of the Ute appear to have occupied this area or nearby areas for at least a thousand years. The last partial migration of the Utes within this area was in the year 1885.

Treaties between the United States and the Utes

Following acquisition of Ute territory from Mexico by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo the United States made a series of treaties with the Ute:

Enemies and Warrior Culture

Ledger drawing of a battle between a Ute warrior and mounted Cheyenne warrior. ca. 1880s

Like other Plains Indian tribes the Utes were skilled warriors who specialized in horse mounted combat. War with neighboring tribes was mostly fought for gaining prestige, stealing horses, and revenge. Prior to a raid warriors would organize themselves into war parties made up of warriors, medicine men, and a war chief which led the party. To prepare themselves for battle Ute warriors would often fast, participate in sweat lodge ceremonies, and paint their faces and horses for special symbolic meanings. The Utes were master horsemen and could execute daring maneuvers on horseback while in battle. Unlike other plains people the Ute did not have warrior societies with the exception of the Southern Utes which developed them late and were dissolved after they went onto reservations. Warriors were exclusively men but women often followed behind war parties to help gather loot and sing songs. Women also performed the Lame Dance to symbolize having to pull or carry heavy loads of loot after a raid.[7] The Utes used a variety of weapons including lances, bows, tomahawks, war clubs, and knives, as well as rifles, shotguns, and pistols which were obtained through raiding or trading.

The enemies of the Ute included the Cheyenne, Crow, Shoshone, Blackfoot, and Arapaho to the north of Ute territory. East and southeast of Ute territory they fought with the Sioux, Pawnee, Osage, Kiowa, Comanche, and Plains Apache. To the west and south they encountered Navajo, Paiute, and Western Shoshone. The Utes traded with various Puebloan peoples such as the Taos and were close allies with the Jicarilla who shared much of the same territory.

Contact with Spanish explorers

The Utes' first contact with Europeans was with early Spanish explorers in the 1630s. They adopted the horse, obtaining mounts through trading with the Spanish colonists in New Mexico or theft from those settlements. As a result of the new mobility, Ute culture changed dramatically in ways that paralleled the Plains Indian cultures of the Great Plains. The social upheaval resulted in various degrees of consolidation, political realignment and tension between the various Ute groups. The Utes were for the most part enemies of the Spanish and the conquered Pueblo towns. They engaged in a long series of wars, in some cases three-sided, with the Navajo, various other Apache tribes, and the Comanche, especially in the plains of eastern Colorado and northeastern New Mexico.

Contact with other European settlers

Delegation of Ute Indians in Washington, D.C. in 1880. Background: Woretsiz and general Charles Adams (Colorado) are standing. Front from left to right: Chief Ignatio of the Southern Utes; Carl Schurz US Secretary of the Interior; Chief Ouray and his wife Chipeta

The Ute experience with European-American settlers is similar to that of many other Native American groups: competition, confrontation and eventual coerced relocation to reservations. Of particular interest are the Walker War (1853–54) and Black Hawk War (1865–72) in Utah.

Over the years, friction between recently arrived white settlers and goldseekers in Utah and Colorado and local Ute groups resulted in several skirmishes and incidents. In the same period, the Ute sometimes allied with the United States in its wars with the Navajo, for example in 1863, and with the Apache.

A series of treaties established a small reservation in 1864 in northeast Utah, and a reservation in 1868, which included the western third of modern Colorado. The latter included land claimed by other tribes. Their lands were whittled away until only the modern reservations were left: a large cession of land in 1873 transferred the gold-rich San Juan area, which was followed in 1879 by the loss of most of the remaining land after the "Meeker Massacre".[8]

Eventually, the various bands of Utes were consolidated onto three reservations. Several of these bands maintain separate identities as part of the Ute tribal organizations. Although initially large and located in areas that white settlers deemed undesirable (occupying parts of Utah and most of western Colorado), the territory of the reservations was repeatedly reduced by various government actions, and encroachment by white settlers and mining interests. In the 20th century, several U.S. federal court decisions restored portions of the original reservation land to the Ute Tribes' jurisdiction and awarded monetary compensations for losses.

Northern Ute culture

An Uncompaghre Ute Shaved Beaver Hide Painting. The Northern Ute would trap beavers, shave images into the animals' stretched and cured hides, and use them to decorate their personal and ceremonial dwellings.

The Northern Utes, consisting of the Whiteriver, Uintah, and Uncompahgre bands, are exceptional artists and produced extraordinary examples of religious and ceremonial beadwork, unusual art forms, and designed and decorated weapons of war in their traditional culture. The Ute obtained glass beads and other trade items from early trading contact with Europeans and rapidly incorporated their use into religious, ceremonial, and spartan objects.

A Northern Ute Beaded Pipebag. This pipebag is made from brain-tanned mule-deer hide, more than glass trade beads, and eagle bone. This pipebag incorporates the sacred symbols of the Ute, the blue fire, the yellow fire, the green of the earth and the hail of the thunder beings, motifs of the turtle (earth) and moccasin (home), and the symbol of the red fire and the bear, sacred animal of the Ute.

Like their southern neighbors, the Diné (Navajo), today a large percentage of Northern Ute are members of the Native American Church and participate in sacred ceremonies that use peyote, a small spineless cactus. Traditional Ute healers use peyote to treat infections, and a variety of other plants, including Elk Root, Bear Root (Ligusticum porteri), and tobacco sage. The Ute have integrated peyote religion into their culture; its artistic and expressive influences pervade their art and rich cultural and ceremonial objects. There is evidence the Ute have used peyote obtained through trade and other potent ceremonial plants used as entheogens since ancient times, such as the dried leaves of Larb (a species of Manzanita), tobacco sage collected from the Escalante area (a mild hallucinogen when smoked), and the potent and narcotic White Uinta water lily. Tobacco Sage was also brewed into a tea with Elk Root and the root of the Yellow Uinta water lily, and used to treat tumors and cancer. (While the root of the Yellow Uinta water lily is toxic in large amounts, small amounts can be used to strengthen the heart muscle in people with heart ailments.).

Ute Petroglyphs at Arches National Park

Ute religious beliefs borrowed much from the Plains Indians after the arrival of the horse. The Northern and Uncompahgre Ute were the only group of Indians known to create ceremonial pipes out of salmon alabaster, as well as a rare black pipestone found only in the creeks that border the southeastern slopes of the Uinta Mountains in Utah and Colorado. Although Ute pipe styles are unique, they resemble more closely the styles of their eastern neighbors from the Great Plains. The black pipestone is also used to make lethal war clubs that warriors used to great effect from the back of a horse. The Ute have a religious aversion to handling thunderwood (wood from a tree struck by lightning) and believe that the thunder beings would strike down any Ute Indian that touched or handled such wood. This is also a Diné (Navajo) belief. There is extensive evidence that contact between the two groups existed since ancient times.

Each spring the Utes (Northern and Southern) hold their traditional Bear Dances. Origin of the Bear Dance can be traced back several centuries. Each year, a mid-summer fasting ceremony known as the Sun Dance is held; this ceremony has important spiritual significance to the Ute.

An Uncompaghre Ute Buffalo rawhide ceremonial rattle filled with quartz crystals. The rattle produces flashes of light (mechanoluminescence) created when quartz crystals are subjected to mechanical stress when the rattle is shaken in darkness.
An early 1900s Uncompahgre Ute Beaded Horse Bag. This bag is made from brain-tanned mule-deer hide, 30,000+ glass trade beads, and tobacco balls stitched into the rim and sides of the bag for protection. These bags were used to hold sacred religious totems, pipes, and carvings, sometimes an effigy of a medicine horse or medicine buffalo, or some other totem of power. The bags were not opened to view the contents except during ceremonies or in private. The objects were associated and used in private prayer and family rituals.

The Uncompahgre Ute Indians from central Colorado are one of the first documented groups of people in the world known to utilize the effect of mechanoluminescence through the use of quartz crystals to generate light, likely hundreds of years before the modern world recognized the phenomenon. The Ute constructed special ceremonial rattles made from buffalo rawhide which they filled with clear quartz crystals collected from the mountains of Colorado and Utah. When the rattles were shaken at night during ceremonies, the friction and mechanical stress of the quartz crystals impacting together produced flashes of light which partly shone through the translucent buffalo hide. These rattles were believed to call spirits into Ute Ceremonies, and were considered extremely powerful religious objects.

Historic Ute bands

The Ute were divided into several larger and smaller bands, which today mostly are organized as the Northern Ute Tribe, Southern Ute Tribe and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe:

Northern Ute Tribe (Uinta Utes)

Southern Ute Tribe

Ute Mountain Ute Tribe

Contemporary times

A Northern Ute dancer performs the Gourd Dance. The Gourd dance originates from the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma.

Present-day Utes occupy a small fraction of their former territories.

Northern Ute Tribe

The largest tribes are the Northern Ute, which live on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in northeastern Utah. It is the largest of several groups of Ute and Shoshone Indians that were relocated to the Northern Ute Indian Reservation during the late 19th and early 20th century, including the Northern Shoshone, Uintah, Uncompahgre, White River, and Southern Ute.

Some believe that the Northern Ute disfranchised the other Ute groups when they reorganized during the mid-20th century and gained control of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation as a result. The people of the U & O reservation are well aware of their own ancestries. Lawsuits and litigation have been commonplace between mixed-blood Utes and the Northern Ute Tribe for rights to tribal enrollment and privileges. As a part of the federal Indian termination policy the US government partitioned the tribe in 1954 automatically classifying any tribal member with 1/2 or less blood quantum as a mixed-blood.[13] With the repudiation of the termination policy in 1970,[14] mixed-bloods hoped for restoration to the tribe. Since 2002, they have been seeking civil action to repeal the Ute Partition Act.[15] Mixed-blood Utes with a lower percentage of Ute ancestry have accused the tribe of disfranchisement in terms of rights to tribal lands and equal legal treatment.

Some affiliates, descendants of certain Northern Ute families who in earlier years decided against enrollment and federal recognition of their native ancestry, live on the reservation land holdings owned by particular families since the Federal government forced relocation in 1881. The Affiliate Utes have recently applied for federal recognition and are involved in litigation with the United States and the Northern Ute tribe. The Affiliates should not be confused with other mixed-blood Utes, which families did not choose to be unrecognized. Some Utes of partial descent are enrolled as Northern Utes, but are also active members of the Affiliates.

Northern Utes can be found all over the world. They have learned to adapt to various societies. A northern Ute is also called Nuchu. Various bands have more complex names and each name has a meaning. Over the years the Northern Ute language has changed extensively with the combinations of different dialects and English language influences.

The Northern Ute Tribe began repurchasing former tribal lands following the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. They gained return of the 726,000-acre (2,940 km2) Hill Creek Extension by the federal government in 1948. More recent court decisions of the 1980s have granted the Northern Utes "legal jurisdiction" over three million acres (12,000 km²) of alienated reservation lands. Discoveries of oil and gas on Ute land in Utah hold the promise of increased living standards for tribal members.

Uncompahgre Ute Salmon Alabaster Ceremonial Pipe. Ute pipe styles are similar to those of the Plains Indians, with notable differences. Ute pipes are thicker and use shorter pipestems than the Plains style, and more closely resemble the pipe styles of their Northern neighbors, the Shoshone.

In 1965, the Northern Tribe agreed to allow the US Bureau of Reclamation to divert a portion of its water from the Uinta Basin (part of the Colorado River Basin) to the Great Basin. The diversion would provide water supply for the Bonneville Unit of the Central Utah Project. In exchange, the Bureau of Reclamation agreed to plan and construct the Unitah, Upalco, and Ute Indian Units of the Central Utah Project to provide storage of the tribe's water. By 1992, the Bureau of Reclamation had made little or no progress on construction of these facilities. To compensate the Tribe for the Bureau of Reclamation's failure to meet its 1965 construction obligations, Title V of the Central Utah Project Completion Act contained the Ute Indian Rights Settlement. Under the settlement, the Northern Tribe received $49.0 million for agricultural development, $28.5 million for recreation and fish and wildlife enhancement, and $195 million for economic development.

Southern Ute Tribe

The Southern Ute Indian Reservation is located in southwestern Colorado, with its capital at Ignacio. The area around the Southern Ute Indian reservation are the hills of Bayfield and Ignacio, Colorado.

The Southern Ute are the wealthiest of the tribes and claim financial assets approaching $2 billion.[16] Gambling, tourism, oil & gas, and real estate leases, plus various off-reservation financial and business investments, have contributed to their success. The tribe owns the Red Cedar Gathering Company, which owns and operates natural gas pipelines in and near the reservation.[17] The tribe also owns the Red Willow Production Company, which began as a natural gas production company on the reservation. It has expanded to explore for and produce oil and natural gas in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Red Willow has offices in Ignacio, Colorado and Houston, Texas.[18] The Sky Ute Casino and its associated entertainment and tourist facilities, together with tribally operated Lake Capote, draw tourists. It hosts the Four Corners Motorcycle Rally[19] each year. The Ute operate KSUT,[20] the major public radio station serving southwestern Colorado and the Four Corners.

A Northern Ute ceremonial knife made from white quartz and Western cedar wood. These knives were used to cut the umbilical cord of a newborn infant or to harvest sweetgrass and other sacred herbs for ceremonies.

Ute Mountain Tribe

The Ute Mountain Ute are descendants of the Weminuche band, who moved to the western end of the Southern Ute Reservation in 1897. (They were led by Chief Ignacio, for whom the eastern capital is named). The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation is located near Towaoc, Colorado. It includes small sections of Utah and New Mexico. The Ute Mountain Tribal Park abuts Mesa Verde National Park and includes many Ancestral Pueblan ruins. The White Mesa Community of Utah (near Blanding) is part of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe but is largely autonomous.

Modern challenges

Gradual assimilation into American culture has presented both challenges and opportunities for the Utes. The current conditions of the Utes are similar to those of many Native Americans living on reservations. Cultural differences between the Utes and the rest of America have contributed to pockets of poverty, educational difficulties and societal marginalization, although the Southern Ute Tribe is financially successful.

Ethnobotany

The Ute use the roots and flowers of Abronia fragrans for stomach and bowel troubles.[21]

In popular culture

When the Legends Die (1963), a book by Hal Borland, is a story about a Ute boy growing up on a reservation after his parents die, and becoming a rodeo sensation. A film adaptation by the same name was released in 1972.

The state of Utah was named after the tribe. The University of Utah's athletic teams are known as the Utes and received explicit permission from the tribe to do so.[22]

Notable Utes

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Ute-Southern Paiute." Ethnologue. Retrieved 27 Feb 2014.
  2. ↑ American Indian, Alaska Native Tables from the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2004–2005, US Census Bureau, USA.
  3. ↑ "Ute Indian". uteindian.com. Archived from the original on 18 December 2014.
  4. ↑ "Colorado Indian Tribes and Languages". native-languages.org.
  5. ↑ "Treaty with The Ute March 2, 1868". Washington, D.C. March 2, 1868. Retrieved July 4, 2011.
  6. ↑ "Agreement with the Capote, Muache, and Weeminuche Utes" (PDF). Pagosa Springs, Colorado. November 8, 1878. Retrieved July 4, 2011.
  7. ↑ Simmons, Virginia McConnell. Ute Indians of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
  8. ↑ http://www.uintahbasin.usu.edu/johnbarton/files/chipeta.pdf[]
  9. ↑ It is discussed whether they were originally a Shoshone group, which later followed the Ute
  10. ↑ derived from tumpi - 'rock' and panogos - 'water mouth' or 'Canyon'
  11. 1 2 "Chapter Five - The Northern Utes of Utah". utah.gov.
  12. ↑ "Ute Memories". utefans.net.
  13. ↑ http://www.bia.gov/cs/groups/public/documents/text/idc016125.pdf
  14. ↑ "Richard Nixon: Special Message to the Congress on Indian Affairs.". ucsb.edu.
  15. ↑ http://www.narf.org/nill/bulletins/cta/documents/felter.pdf/
  16. ↑ GF Private Equity Group, LLC, Southern Ute Indian Tribe , USA.
  17. ↑ Red Cedar Gathering Company website, accessed 12 April 2009.
  18. ↑ Red Willow Production Company website, accessed 12 April 2009,
  19. ↑ "Four Corners Motorcycle Rally – Labor Day Weekend – Ignacio Colorado". fourcornersmotorcyclerally.com.
  20. ↑ KSUT.
  21. ↑ Chamberlin, Ralph V. 1909 Some Plant Names of the Ute Indians. American Anthropologist 11:27-40 (p. 32)
  22. ↑ Stephen Speckman. "U. Officially Files Appeal on Utes Nickname". Deseret News. Retrieved 2009-05-20.

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ute.
Wikisource has the text of the 1879 American Cyclopædia article Utahs.
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