The Timpanogos are a tribe of Ute Native Americans who inhabited a large part of central Utah, in particular the area from Utah Lake east to the Uinta Mountains and south into present-day Sanpete County.
Most Timpanogos live on the Uintah Valley Reservation. They are not enrolled in the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.
During the mid-19th century, when Mormon pioneers entered Utah territory, the Timpanogos were one of the principal tribes in the region based on population, area occupied, and influence.
Linguists have had difficulty identifying (or classifying) their language. Historically, most communication was carried out in Spanish or English, and many of their leaders spoke several dialects of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
Name In some accounts they were called the Timpiavat, Timpanogot, Timpanogotzi, Timpannah, Tempenny, and other names.
Precontact history
The Timpanogos probably entered Utah as part of the southern Numic expansion around 1000 CE (including the Ute) or in the subsequent central Numic Shoshonean expansion north and west from their Numic homelands in the Sierra Nevada. They were hunter-gatherers, living mostly on fish and wild game caught by the men and cooked and processed by the women and on the seeds and roots of wild plants gathered and prepared by the women.
As part of their religion, in the mornings they gathered together and greeted the morning with song to express gratitude to the Creator. They were divided into clans, each with its headman, spiritual leader and warrior. The clans would band together for specific purposes, such as hunting. There was no division of the land, and people were free to travel to different villages. They developed an extensive trading network.
The Timpanogos lived in the Wasatch Range around Mount Timpanogos (named after them), along the southern and eastern shores of Utah Lake of the Utah Valley and in Heber Valley, Uinta Basin and Sanpete Valley. The band around Utah Lake became dominant due to the area's food supply.
During the spring spawning season at Utah Lake, the tribes hosted an annual fish festival. Timpanogos, Ute and Shoshone bands would come from away to gather fish. At the festival there was dancing, singing, trading, horse races, gambling, and feasting. It was an opportunity for young people to find a mate from another clan, since exogamous marriage (outside their clan) was required.History of the Timpanogos Tribe The shores of Utah Lake became a sacred meeting place for the Timpanogos, Ute, and Shoshone tribes.
European and American contacts
The first known Europeans to enter this area were a Spanish expedition of Franciscan missionaries led by Father Silvestre Vélez de Escalante. The Dominguez–Escalante Expedition of 1776 was trying to find a land route from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Monterey, California. Two or three Timpanogos from the Utah Valley were guides for the party. On September 23, 1776, they traveled down Spanish Fork Canyon and entered the Utah Valley. Escalante documented the expedition in his journal, describing the people who lived around Utah Lake: Round about it are these Indians, who live on the abundant fish of the lake, for which reason the Yutas Sabuaganas call them Come Pescados [Fish Eaters]. Besides this, they gather in the plain grass seeds from which they make atole, which they supplement by hunting hares, rabbits, and fowl of which there is great abundance here.
The explorers named many geographic features in central Utah for the Timpanog tribe, who were then led by Turunianchi. The next recorded European visitor was Étienne Provost, a French-Canadian trapper who visited the Timpanog in October 1824; the city of Provo and the Provo River are named after him. In 1826, American mountain man Jedediah Smith visited a camp along the Spanish Fork (river) with 35 lodges and about 175 people.
Conflicts with the Mormons
By the time Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the Timpanogos were guided by Turunianchi's grandson, Walkara. Walkara led the tribe with a number of sub-chiefs, most of whom were his brothers: Chief Arapeen, Chief San-Pitch, Chief Kanosh, Chief Sowiette, Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah, Chief Grospean and Chief Amman. Brigham Young once called them a "royal line" of Indian chiefs, and they had hereditary leadership through their clan. Parley P. Pratt explored the Utah Valley and Utah Lake.
Battle Creek massacre The first battle between settlers and Indians, known by the Americans as the Battle Creek massacre, occurred in early March 1849 at present-day Pleasant Grove, Utah. A company of 40 Mormon men went to the Utah Valley to persuade the Timpanogos to stop stealing cattle from the Salt Lake Valley; both peoples were competing for resources. Brigham Young ordered the Mormons "to take such measures as would put a final end to their depredations in future".He did not however tell the men to attack unless attacked. "Open Hand and Mailed Fist: Mormon-Indian Relations in Utah, 1847–52" by Howard A. Christy, Utah Historical Quarterly Volume XLVIHose a Stout Diary, 8 vols., 4:48, typescript, Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. A renegade band of Ute Indians had raided herds and taken stock from Tooele Valley and southern Great Salt Lake Valley; the men had earlier declared their opposition to the white settlers. The band was led by three brothers, "Roman Nose," "Blueshirt," and possibly "Cone". Reportedly their chief had driven them out of Utah Valley because they refused to stop stealing cattle from the Mormons. See Oliver B. Huntington Diary, pp. 52–53, Lee Library.
Battle at Fort Utah
On March 10, 1849, Brigham Young ordered 30 families to colonize Utah Valley, with John S. Higbee president and Dimick B. Huntington and Isaac Higbee counselors. The group of about 150 people headed for Timpanogos territory, and the Timpanogos viewed this as an invasion of their territory and sacred land. As the colonizers entered the valley, they were blocked by a group of Timpanogos led by An-kar-tewets and warned that trespassers would be killed. Huntington raised his hand and swore by the sun god that they would not try to drive the Timpanogos off their lands or take away their rights. The Timpanogos let them enter.
The settlers built a stockade, Fort Utah, arming it with a twelve-pound cannon. They built several log houses, surrounded by a palisade 20 by 40 rods long () with gates at the east and west ends and a middle deck for the cannon. The fort, built on the sacred grounds of the annual fish festival, was very close to the main Timpanogos village on the Provo River. The settlers fenced off pastures, and their cattle ate (or trampled) the seeds and berries which were an important part of the Timpanogos' diet. By fishing with gill nets they took more than they needed, leaving an insufficient amount for the Timpanogos. With their traditional food sources gone, the Timpanogos starved. The settlers also brought measles, endemic to them but an unfamiliar infectious disease to the Timpanogos. Lacking acquired immunity, the natives experienced epidemics with high mortality rates which disrupted their society. They asked the settlers for medicine to fight the new disease.
In August a Timpanogo, Old Bishop, was murdered by Rufus Stoddard, Richard Ivie, and Gerome Zabrisky for his shirt.
By January 1850, the settlers at Fort Utah reported the increasing tension to officials in Salt Lake City and requested a military party to attack the Timpanogos. A militia from Salt Lake City engaged the Timpanogos in battle on February 8 and 11. Eleven Timpanogo warriors surrendered on February 14, but the militia executed them in front of their families and a government surgeon beheaded them after death for research. The militia lost one man and killed 102 Timpanogos.
Walker and Black Hawk Wars
Chief Walkara, also known as Chief Walker, a noted mid-19th-century chief led his people against Mormon settlers in the Walker War. The war included several armed conflicts with settlers and Mormon militiamen.
Chief Black Hawk, leader of the Black Hawk War (1865–1872), was a son of San-Pitch.
Uintah Reservation According to a state of Utah historical website,
In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln signed an executive order establishing the original Uintah Valley Reservation in the eastern part of the Utah territory ... Congress ratified the order in 1864 ... A council of the Ute people was called at Spanish Fork Reservation on 6 June 1865. The aged leader Chief Sowiette (a brother of Chief Walkara, who had died 10 years before) explained that the Ute people did not want to sell their land and go away, asking why the groups couldn't live on the land together. Chief Sanpitch (another brother of Walkara) also spoke against the treaty. However, advised by Brigham Young that these were the best terms they could get, the leaders signed. The treaty provided that the Utes give up their lands in central Utah, including the Corn Creek, Spanish Fork, and San Pete Reservations. Only the Uintah Valley Reservation remained. They were to move into it within one year, and be paid $25,000 a year for ten years, $20,000 for the next twenty years, and $15,000 for the last thirty years. (This was payment of about 62.5 cents per acre for all land in Utah and Sanpete counties.) However, Congress did not ratify the treaty; therefore, the government did not pay the promised annuity. Nevertheless, in succeeding years most of the Utah Ute people were removed to the Uintah Reservation.
By 1872 all the Timpanogos had moved to the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation, but some occasionally returned to fish on Utah Lake into the 1920s.
Population estimates In 1847, at the time of the Mormon pioneers' arrival, the Timpanogo population has been estimated at about 70,000; their numbers had been dwindling because of competing bands of Shoshone raiders since the early 19th century. Many died from smallpox and other infectious diseases introduced by American settlers, and an early-1850s measles epidemic was particularly devastating. Many Native American tribes had their numbers reduced by more than 90 percent as a result of disease introduced by Europeans.
The number of Timpanogos may have been less. "The exact number of all the Indians who lived in Utah Territory is unknown. An 1861 report from J. F. Collins, Utah superintendent of Indian affairs, said that no one had ever 'been able to obtain satisfactory information in regard to their numbers'. Collins estimated ... that there may have been fifteen to twenty thousand Indians (of all tribes) in Utah prior to the arrival of the first Mormon settlers" in 1847.
Indian Superintendent Forney's 1859 annual report to the federal commissioner of Indian affairs provided estimates of tribal numbers: Shoshones or Snakes – 4,500 Bannocks – 500 Uinta Utes – 1,000 Spanish Fork and San Pete Farms – 900 (farms and reservations; those on farms were Timpanogos.) Pahvant (Utes) – 700 Paiutes (South) – 2,200 Paiutes (West) – 6,000 Elk Mountain Utes – 2,000 Honey Lake Washo – 700
This gives a total of 18,500 Native Americans estimated to live in Utah in 1859, listing all tribes and bands by names commonly used at the time.
Historical confusion Three major groups of Ute Indian bands were placed by the federal government in the Uinta Valley Reservation during the 1880s. Afterward, the Utah Indians (or Timpanogos) became conflated with — and were often considered to have merged with — the Ute Indians in historical documents.
Although many historians refer to Sowiette, San-Pitch and their people as Utes, at the time of the Uinta treaty they were known as the Utah Indians or Timpanogos. According to some of their descendants, they became known as the Ute only after moving to the Uintah Reservation and joining other Ute there.