The Utes () are an Indigenous people of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau in present-day Utah, western Colorado, and northern New Mexico. Historically, their territory also included parts of Wyoming, Nevada, and Arizona.
Their Ute dialect is a Colorado River Numic language, part of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
Historically, the Utes belonged to almost a dozen nomadic bands, who came together for ceremonies and trade. They also traded with neighboring tribes, including Pueblo peoples. The Utes had settled in the Four Corners region by 1500 CE.
The Utes' first contact with Europeans was with the Spanish in the 18th century. The Utes had already acquired horses from neighboring tribes by the late 17th century. They had limited direct contact with the Spanish but participated in regional trade.
Sustained contact with Euro-Americans began in 1847 with the arrival of the Mormons to the American West and the gold rushes of the 1850s. Utes fought to protect their homelands from invaders, and Brigham Young convinced U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to forcibly remove Utes in Utah to an Indian Reservation in 1864. Colorado Utes were forced onto a reservation in 1881.
Today, there are three federally recognized tribes of Ute people: Southern Ute Indian Tribe of the Southern Ute Reservation, Colorado Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Utah Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Colorado
Name The origin of the word Ute is unknown; it is first attested as Yuta in Spanish documents. The Utes' self-designation is Núuchi-u, meaning 'the people'.
Language
Ute people speak the Ute dialect of the Colorado River Numic language, which is closely related to the Shoshone language.
Their language is from the Southern subdivision of the Numic language branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. This language family is found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico, stretching from southeastern California, along the Colorado River to Colorado and extending south the Nahuan languages in central Mexico.
The Numic language group likely originated near the present-day border of Nevada and California, then spread north and east.Catherine Louise Sweeney Fowler. 1972. "Comparative Numic Ethnobiology". University of Pittsburgh. PhD dissertation. By about 1000 CE, hunters and gatherers in the Great Basin spoke Uto-Aztecan. They are the likely ancestors of the Ute, Shoshone, Paiute, and Chemehuevi peoples. Linguists believe that the Southern Numic speakers (Ute and Southern Paiute), left the Numic homeland first and that the Central and then the Western subgroups later migrated east and north.David Leedom Shaul. 2014. A Prehistory of Western North America, The Impact of Uto-Aztecan Languages. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. The Southern Numic-speaking tribes, the Ute, Shoshone, Southern Paiute, and Chemehuevi, all share many cultural, genetic, and linguistic characteristics.
Territory
There were ancestral Utes in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah by 1300, living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.The Post-Pueblo Period: A.D. 1300 to Late 1700s. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. 2011. Retrieved June 16, 2018. The Utes occupied much of the present state of Colorado by the 1600s. The Comanches from the north joined them in eastern Colorado in the early 1700s. In the 19th century, the Arapaho and Cheyenne invaded southward into eastern Colorado.Indians of Colorado. The William E. Hewitt Institute for History and Social Science Education. University of Northern Colorado. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
The Utes came to inhabit a large area including most of Utah, western and central Colorado, and south into the San Juan River watershed of New Mexico. Some Ute bands stayed near their home domains, while others ranged further away seasonally. Hunting grounds extended further into Utah and Colorado, as well as into Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. Winter camps were established along rivers near the present-day cities of Provo and Fort Duchesne in Utah and Pueblo, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs of Colorado.
Colorado
Aside from their home domain, there were sacred places in present-day Colorado. The Tabeguache Ute's name for Pikes Peak is Tavakiev, meaning sun mountain. Living a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, summers were spent in the Pikes Peak area mountains, which was considered by other tribes to be the domain of the Utes. Pikes Peak was a sacred ceremonial area for the band. The mineral springs at Manitou Springs were also sacred and Utes and other tribes came to the area, spent winters there, and "share[d] in the gifts of the waters without worry of conflict."Manitou Springs Historic District Nomination Form . History Colorado. Retrieved May 3, 2013.About. Manitou Springs. Retrieved May 4, 2013. Artifacts found from the nearby Garden of the Gods, such as grinding stones, "suggest the groups would gather together after their hunt to complete the tanning of hides and processing of meat."
The old Ute Pass Trail went eastward from Monument Creek (near Roswell) to Garden of the Gods and Manitou Springs to the Rocky Mountains. From Ute Pass, Utes journeyed eastward to hunt buffalo. They spent winters in mountain valleys where they were protected from the weather. The North and Middle Parks of present-day Colorado were among favored hunting grounds, due to the abundance of game.
Cañon Pintado, or painted canyon, is a prehistoric site with rock art from Fremont people (650 to 1200) and Utes. The Fremont art reflect an interest in agriculture, including corn stalks and use of light at different times of the year to show a planting calendar. Then there are images of figures holding shields, what appear to be battle victims, and spears. These were seen by the Domínguez–Escalante expedition (1776). Utes left images of firearms and horses in the 1800s. The Crook's Brand Site depicts a horse with a brand from George Crook's regiment during the Indian Wars of the 1870s.
Utah Public land surrounding the Bears Ears buttes in southeastern Utah became the Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 in recognition for its ancestral and cultural significance to several Native American tribes, including the Utes. Members of the Ute Mountain Ute and Uintah and Ouray Reservations sit on a five-tribe coalition to help co-manage the monument with the Bureau of Land Management and United States Forest Service.
The Ute appeared to have hunted and camped in an ancient Ancestral Puebloans and Fremont people campsite in near what is now Arches National Park. At a site near natural springs, which may have held spiritual significance, the Ute left petroglyphs in rock along with rock art by the earlier peoples. Some of the images are estimated to be more than 900 years old. The Utes petroglyphs were made after the Utes acquired horses, because they show men hunting while on horseback.
Historic Ute bands
The Ute were divided into several nomadic and closely associated bands, which today mostly are organized as the Northern, Southern, and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes.
Hunting and gathering groups of extended families were led by older members by the mid-17th century. Activities, like hunting buffalo and trading, may have been organized by band members. Chiefs led bands when structure was required with the introduction of horses to plan for defense, buffalo hunting, and raiding. Bands came together for tribal activities by the 18th century.
Multiple bands of Utes that were classified as Uintahs by the U.S. government when they were relocated to the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. The bands included the San Pitch, Pahvant, Seuvartis, Timpanogos and Cumumba Utes. The Southern Ute Tribes include the Muache, Capote, and the Weeminuche, the latter of which are at Ute Mountain.
# Tribe Ute Name Homestate Homelocale Current name Tribe Grouping Reservation 1 Pahvant Utah West of the Wasatch Range in the Pavant Range towards the Nevada border along the Sevier River in the desert around Sevier Lake and Fish Lake Paiute Northern PaiuteD'Azevedo, Warren L., Volume Editor. Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 11: Great Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1986. . 2 Moanunt Utah Upper Sevier River Valley in central Utah, in the Otter Creek region south of Salina and in the vicinity of Fish Lake Paiute Northern Paiute 3 Sanpits Utah Sanpete Valley and Sevier River Valley and along the San Pitch River San Pitch Northern Uintah and Ouray 4 Timpanogots Timpanogots Núuchi Utah Wasatch Range around Mount Timpanogos, along the southern and eastern shores of Utah Lake of the Utah Valley, and in Heber Valley, Uinta Basin and Sanpete Valley Timpanogots Northern Uintah and Ouray 5 Uintah Uintah Núuchi Utah Utah Lake to the Uintah Basin of the Tavaputs Plateau near the Grand-Colorado River-system Uintah Northern Uintah and Ouray 6 Seuvarits (Sahyehpeech / Sheberetch) Seuvarits Núuchi Utah Moab area Northern Uintah and Ouray 7 Yampa 'Iya-paa Núuchi Colorado Yampa River Valley area White River Utes Northern Uintah and Ouray 8 Parianuche Pariyʉ Núuchi Colorado and Utah Colorado River (previously called the Grand River) in western Colorado and eastern Utah White River Ute Northern Uintah and Ouray 8a Sabuagana (Saguaguana / Akanaquint) Colorado Colorado River in western and central Colorado Northern 9 Tabeguache Tavi'wachi Núuchi Colorado and Utah Gunnison and Uncompahgre River valleys Uncompahgre Northern Uintah and Ouray 10 Weeminuche Wʉgama Núuchi Colorado and Utah In the Abajo Mountains, in the Valley of the San Juan River and its northern tributaries and in the San Juan Mountains including eastern Utah. Weeminuche Ute Mountain Ute Mountain 11 Capote Kapuuta Núuchi Colorado East of the Great Divide, south of the Conejos River, and east of the Rio Grande towards the west site of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, they were also living in the San Luis Valley, along the headwaters of the Rio Grande and along the Animas River Capote Southern Southern 12 Muache Moghwachi Núuchi Colorado Eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains from Denver, Colorado in the north to Las Vegas, New Mexico in the south Muache Southern Southern
This is also a half-Shoshone, half-Ute band of Cumumbas who lived above Great Salt Lake, near what is now Ogden, Utah. There are also other half-Ute bands, some of whom migrated seasonally far from their home domain.
History Relationships with neighboring tribes The Utes traded with Rio Grande River Pueblo people at annual trade fairs or rescates held in at the Taos, Santa Clara, Pecos and other pueblos. The Ute also traded with Navajo, Havasupai, and Hopi people for woven blankets.
The Utes were closely allied with the Jicarilla Apache who shared much of the same territory and intermarried. They also intermarried with Paiute, Bannock and Western Shoshone peoples. There was so much intermarriage with the Paiute, that territorial borders of the Utes and the Southern Paiutes are difficult to ascertain in southeast Utah. Until the Ute acquired horses, any conflict with other tribes was usually defensive. They had generally poor relations with Northern and Eastern Shoshone.
Contact with the Spanish In 1637, the Spanish fought with the Utes, 80 of whom were captured and enslaved. Their lifestyle changed with the acquisition of horses at larger scale by 1680. They became more mobile, more able to trade, and better able to hunt large game. Ute culture changed dramatically in ways that paralleled the Plains Indian cultures of the Great Plains. They also became involved in the horse and slave trades and respected warriors. Horse ownership and warrior skills developed while riding became the primary status symbol within the tribe and horse racing became common. With greater mobility, there was increased need for political leadership.