Ute Indians are Southern Numic speakers of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Utes (from the Spanish "Yutas") call themselves Nuciu or Nuche, the People. When they first came in contact with Europeans, the Utes inhabited over 130,000 square miles of eastern Utah and western Colorado—environments ranging from the arid valleys and mountains of the Great Basin, to the eroded Colorado Plateau, to the alpine Rocky Mountains, to the high Plains of eastern Colorado. Eleven Ute bands included the Tumpanuwacs, Uinta-ats, San Pitches, Pahvants, and Sheberetches in Utah, and the Yamparkas, Parianucs, Taviwacs, Weeminuches, Moaches, and Kapotas in Colorado. These bands shared a common language and customs, traded and intermarried, but maintained no larger tribal organization. Members traveled in local residence groups of from 50 to 100 people, with seasonal band gatherings for annual rituals like the spring Bear Dance, a world renewal ceremony (performed to ensure the continuation or rebirth of the world as they knew it). Leadership was chosen by proven ability and group consensus, with distinctions between civil, war, and hunt leaders emerging in the nineteenth century. Women maintained an informal but notable voice in local group decision making as a consequence of their subsistence contributions.
Ute subsistence systems were remarkably flexible and adapted to their varied environments. Families and bands moved through known territories taking advantage of the seasonal abundance of food and material resources. Men hunted deer, elk, buffalo, mountain sheep, rabbits, small mammals, and migratory waterfowl with bows and arrows, spears, snares, and nets. Women gathered seed grasses, piñon nuts, berries, yampa roots, and greens, and prepared foods for consumption or storage in parfleche bags or woven baskets. Colorado Utes focused more on large mammals, while Utah bands took advantage of spawning fish in Utah Lake and of grasshoppers and crickets, drying and storing both for trade and winter use. Ute families lived in brush shelters and hide tepees, wore both leather and woven fiber clothing, and used implements of bone, horn, stone, and wood.
Ute contact with Spanish colonists in New Mexico began in the 1610s and the Utes acquired horses by 1680. Especially among the Colorado Utes, horses increased their mobility, enabling them to focus on hunting buffalo and using their meat and hides. This reliance on buffalo led to incorporation of traits and material culture of the Plains Indians, whose society had traditionally relied on buffalo. By the nineteenth century, the Utes were respected raiders and middlemen in the southwestern horse and slave trade. Few Spaniards ventured into their territory so the Utes were able to remain free from colonial rule. Between 1810 and 1840, a growing number of fur trappers passed through Ute lands, but the full impact of Euro-American contact came with the arrival of Mormon settlers in 1847 and the Colorado gold rush of 1859.
As Mormon settlers took up residence in Utah, they disrupted Ute subsistence rounds and interfered with their slave trade. Two Ute uprisings—the Walker War (1853–1854) and the Black Hawk War (1863–1868)—were responses to this subsistence displacement, violence, and plans to remove Utah Utes to the two million acre Uintah Valley Reservation, established in eastern Utah in 1861. Between 1868 and 1877, battered Utah Utes moved to the reservation. During the same period, Colorado Ute bands confronted encroaching miners. Treaties in 1863 and 1868, and an 1873 agreement reduced their homelands to 11.5 million acres and established reservation agencies at Los Pinos (later Uncompahgre) and White River. In 1882, following a Ute uprising at White River Agency, the government forcibly removed White River Utes to the Uintah Reservation and Uncompahgre Utes to the adjoining two million-acre Ouray Reservation. In 1883, the government combined administration of the Uintah-Ouray Reservation. The Weeminuche Utes managed to avoid removal and retain the small Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, while the Moache and Kapota bands kept the Southern Ute Reservation in Colorado.
Between 1887 and 1934, Utes on the three reservations lost another 80 percent of their reservation lands through allotment and the sale of allotments, leaving them with 873,600 acres. Attempts to create a viable agricultural economy were largely unsuccessful. At the same time, Ute populations tumbled from approximately 11,300 in 1868, to 3,975 in 1880, to 1,771 Utes in 1930. Utes adopted the sun dance and peyotism to bolster their tribal identities, but internal tensions and conflicts with neighboring whites continued. Southern Ute factionalism led to settlement of the Allen Canyon and later White Mesa Ute communities in southern Utah, while Northern Utes at Uintah-Ouray terminated mixed-blood Utes in 1954 in an attempt to consolidate their cultural identity.
Since 1940, the Northern Ute, Southern Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute tribes have organized tribal governments and programs to protect their land and people. They have used settlements from successful court cases to repurchase alienated lands and establish tribal enterprises. Oil and gas exploration, mining, timber, livestock, and tourism have become their chief sources of income, but poverty, unemployment, and alcoholism are persistent problems. Enrolled Utes numbered 5,788 in 1995. Each tribe remains active in promoting Ute language, culture, and sovereignty.
Bibliography
Callaway, Donald, Joel Janetski, and Omer C. Stewart. "Ute." In Handbook of North American Indians, edited by William C. Sturtevant et al. Vol. 11: Great Basin, edited by Warren L. D'Azevedo. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1986.
Conetah, Fred A. A History of the Northern Ute People, edited by Kathryn L. MacKay and Floyd A. O'Neil. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Printing Services for the Uintah-Ouray Ute Tribe, 1982.
Delaney, Robert W. The Ute Mountain Utes. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.
Jefferson, James, Robert W. Delaney, and Gregory C. Thompson. The Southern Utes: A Tribal History. Ignacio, Colo.: Southern Ute Tribe, 1972.
Simmons, Virginia McConnell. The Ute Indians of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 2000.
