Ute

01Summary

Mountain and basin hunters, gatherers and traders whose homeland stretched from the Wasatch Mountains of Utah across the Colorado Rockies. The main Oregon Trail passed north of Ute country, but the Mormon Trail ended at its edge in the Salt Lake Valley, and Mormon settlement led to wars in the 1850s and 1860s.

02History

The Ute call themselves Nuche, also written Núuchi-u. In the trail years they lived in about a dozen bands, among them the Timpanogos around Utah Lake, the Uintah, and the Tabeguache (Uncompahgre), Muache, Capote and Weeminuche in Colorado. Bands moved with the seasons between high summer camps and lower winter camps, and after horses reached them they became skilled riders and traders.

When the first Latter-day Saints arrived in 1847, both Shoshone and Ute people used the Salt Lake Valley for hunting and gathering. As Mormon towns spread south into Ute country, settlers took the best farmland, water and game. The Timpanogos leader Wakara, known to settlers as Chief Walker, fought the Walker War against them in 1853 and 1854, and the Black Hawk War of 1865 to 1872 brought years more of raids and killing in central Utah.

In 1864 the U.S. government ordered the Utes of Utah Territory onto the Uinta Valley reservation. In Colorado the Tabeguache leader Ouray signed the treaties of 1863 and 1868, which kept a large reservation in the western part of the territory. Miners pushed in anyway, and after White River Utes killed their agent, Nathan Meeker, and other agency workers in 1879, the United States forced the White River and Uncompahgre Utes out of Colorado to reservations in Utah in 1881.

03Notable leaders

• Wakara (Walkara, Chief Walker)
  Timpanogos Ute leader, c. 1808-1855, a noted horseman and trader who led the Walker War of 1853 and 1854.
• Ouray
  Tabeguache (Uncompahgre) Ute leader, c. 1833-1880, who negotiated with the United States to keep Ute land in Colorado.

04Today