Who Are the Ute?
The Ute (Núuchi, "the People") are a Numic-speaking people who have inhabited the Central Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Utah, and northern New Mexico for over a thousand years. Today numbering approximately 10,000 enrolled members across three tribes—the **Ute Indian Tribe** (Uintah-Ouray, Utah), **Southern Ute Indian Tribe** (Colorado), and **Ute Mountain Ute Tribe** (Colorado/New Mexico)—they gave their name to the state of Utah. The Ute were among the first Native peoples in the Rocky Mountain region to acquire horses from the Spanish, transforming into mounted raiders and traders who dominated the mountain west until American colonization forced them onto reservations.
Mountain Adaptation and Horse Culture
Before horses, the Ute lived in small bands throughout the mountains, hunting deer, elk, and mountain sheep, fishing, and gathering abundant plant foods including pine nuts, berries, and roots. The challenging mountain terrain limited political centralization; each of the twelve Ute bands maintained autonomy under local leaders. The Ute acquired horses around 1680 following the Pueblo Revolt, becoming mounted hunters and raiders within a generation. Horses enabled seasonal buffalo hunting on the eastern plains and transformed Ute warfare, allowing raids deep into Spanish New Mexico and against neighboring tribes. The Ute became middlemen in the regional slave trade, capturing and selling Paiute, Navajo, and Apache captives to Spanish colonists—a dark chapter reflecting the brutal economics of colonial-era Southwest. Their horsemanship and mountain knowledge made them formidable; Spanish attempts to conquer them failed, leading instead to uneasy alliance against Apache and Comanche enemies.
The Bear Dance
The **Bear Dance** (Mamaqui Mawat) is the Ute's most distinctive ceremony, held annually in late spring when bears emerge from hibernation. According to tradition, a hunter learned the dance from a bear who taught him that dancing would bring good fortune. The ceremony lasts several days: singers create a growling sound by rubbing notched sticks (moraches) against resonators, women choose male dance partners, and participants dance in long lines representing bears awakening. The Bear Dance serves multiple functions: celebrating spring's arrival, encouraging courtship and social bonding, honoring the bear as a powerful spiritual ally, and renewing community connections after winter isolation. Unlike many Native ceremonies suppressed during the reservation era, the Bear Dance continued relatively uninterrupted because officials considered it merely "social." Today, all three Ute tribes hold annual Bear Dances, major community gatherings celebrating cultural continuity and inviting participation from other Native peoples.
Loss of the Mountains
The Colorado Gold Rush (1858) and subsequent silver strikes brought devastating American invasion of Ute territory. Treaties in 1863 and 1868 progressively reduced Ute lands; the 1868 treaty reserved the western third of Colorado—still millions of acres. But silver discoveries at Leadville and San Juan triggered demands for further land cessions. The **Meeker Massacre** (1879), when Ute warriors killed Indian Agent Nathan Meeker and soldiers after Meeker plowed up the tribe's horse racetrack and attempted to forcibly convert them to farming, provided the pretext Colorado settlers wanted. Despite Chief Ouray's efforts at diplomacy, the Ute were forced from Colorado except for small reservations in the southwestern corner. The majority were marched to Utah's Uintah Valley—dramatically inferior land. Chief Ouray, who had worked for peace, died in 1880; his widow Chipeta was denied permission to bury him in their Colorado homeland. The state of Utah's name memorializes the people Colorado expelled.
Contemporary Ute Tribes
Today's three Ute tribes have followed different economic paths. The **Southern Ute Indian Tribe** discovered natural gas on their reservation, becoming one of America's wealthiest tribes; their energy company generates hundreds of millions in revenue, funding comprehensive services and per-capita payments to members. The **Ute Mountain Ute Tribe** operates a casino near Cortez and manages Ute Mountain Tribal Park, offering guided tours to Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings on their land. The **Ute Indian Tribe** (Uintah-Ouray) in Utah has substantial oil and gas resources but also significant economic challenges; a landmark **$2.5 billion trust fund settlement** with the federal government in 2019 addressed decades of mismanagement. All three tribes maintain the Bear Dance and Sun Dance, work on language revitalization (fewer than 100 fluent speakers remain), and assert water rights critical to their reservations' futures. From mountain lords to reservation confinement to energy wealth, the Ute experience encapsulates the American West's history of dispossession and Native adaptation.
References
- Simmons, V. M. (2000). The Ute Indians of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. University Press of Colorado.
- Decker, P. R. (2004). "The Utes Must Go!": American Expansion and the Removal of a People. Fulcrum Publishing.
- Jefferson, J., Delaney, R. W., & Thompson, G. C. (1972). The Southern Utes: A Tribal History. Southern Ute Tribe.
- Callaway, D., Janetski, J., & Stewart, O. C. (1986). "Ute." In Handbook of North American Indians: Great Basin (Vol. 11). Smithsonian Institution.