Ute

01Summary

Mountain and desert hunters whose lands lay south and west of South Pass. The Mormon Trail ran through Ute country toward the Salt Lake Valley. Relations were friendly at times and hostile at others, and they worsened sharply in the 1850s as Mormon settlement expanded.

02History

The Ute, Núuchiu, 'The People', held a vast territory stretching from the Wasatch Mountains in present-day Utah east through the Colorado Rockies. Twelve loose bands moved with the seasons between mountain summer pastures and desert winter camps: the Uncompahgre, Tabeguache, Capote, Muache, Weeminuche, Yampa, Parianuche, Uintah, Pahvant, San Pitch, Sheberetch, and Timpanogo.

The Mormon Trail (which ran along the Oregon Trail east of South Pass and then turned south at Fort Bridger toward the Salt Lake Valley) crossed Ute country directly. Brigham Young's 1847 settlement of the Salt Lake Valley triggered two decades of conflict over Ute land, water, and food: the Walker War (1853-54), the Tintic War (1856), and the Black Hawk War (1865-72).

The Tabeguache Treaty of 1863, signed at Conejos, Colorado, established the first major U.S.-Ute reservation. The Ute Treaty of 1868, negotiated in Washington, D.C., set aside a reservation of roughly 16 million acres across most of Colorado's Western Slope. It did not last. After gold was found in Ute territory and the Meeker Incident of 1879 gave the government its pretext, the U.S. stripped away most of that land by the early 1880s and forced the Tabeguache, Uncompahgre, and White River Utes onto far smaller reservations in northeastern Utah.

03Notable leaders

• Wákara (Walker)
  Timpanogo Ute chief, c. 1808-1855, who led resistance to Mormon settlement in the Walker War.
• Ouray
  Tabeguache Ute chief, 1833-1880, who negotiated the Treaty of Conejos.

04Today