Being and Becoming Ute: The Story of an American Indian People

Abstract

Tribal histories often suffer from a tendency to focus on one people in conceptual isolation from closely related neighbors. Ute history has long been plagued by this balkanization, as the Numic-speaking people ranged across a wide swath of the western slope of the Rockies, the Wasatch, and the basin and range provinces in between. Over the centuries, numerous kin-based clans coalesced into historic bands, then further reduced into the three composite Ute tribes that exist today. Historians have treated them as discrete peoples, widely divided by worldview and geography. Sondra Jones's marvelous book is a welcome relief from that approach. At last, we have a history of the Núu-ci, or “The People,” as the Utes call themselves, that examines them holistically and collectively.Being and Becoming Ute is impressive on several levels, not the least of which is its comprehensiveness. Beginning with their emergence from the southwest corner of the Great Basin around AD 800, Jones narrates the many adaptations and transformations of the Ute people to the present day. Interestingly, the description becomes denser as it moves forward in time. Rather than becoming bogged down in the nineteenth century, as many such histories do, Jones's rich chapters engage the cultural, economic, and resource conflicts that have confronted the Uintah and Ouray Utes, Southern Utes, and Ute Mountain Utes in recent decades. The author does not shy away from complex issues, examining, to cite two examples, the jurisdictional issues in the Uintah Basin and the political and environmental battles that accompanied Anima-La Plata reclamation project. These and many other complicated events receive thorough, measured treatment.This is not to suggest that the critical events of the nineteenth century are shortchanged. The narrative becomes quite gripping as Jones relates the disastrous events following the so-called “Meeker Massacre,” the expulsion of the White River Utes, and the forced march of 1,400 Uncompahgres from their homelands to the desolation of the Uintah reserve. The author is similarly unsparing in describing the extermination campaign against the Timpanogos Utes in Utah Valley or the subsequent campaigns of the Utah Territorial Militia against Wakara's Utes and later against Black Hawk's band of cattle thieves. If there is one deficiency, it is Jones's uncritical acceptance of the trope that Mormon leaders and settlers treated the Indians better than did the colonizers in surrounding territories. From a doctrinal perspective, that is undoubtedly true, but as a matter of application, Jones admits that the result was no different. Atrocities committed by the Mormon militia or settlers are blamed on “moral disintegration among hard hit Mormons” (164) and “nervous and poorly trained militias” (166). Conversely, we learn that the non-Indian colonizers of the San Luis Valley and the white residents of Meeker, Colorado, were simply people motivated by racism.To be fair, the author is more concerned with the actions of the Utes than the motivations of those of who oppressed them. The later chapters focus on the pivotal events of the past century and the social and legal changes that impacted Utes on all three reservations. In this regard, Jones masterfully distills key federal policies, such as the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which “finally untied their hands” and allowed the Utes to represent and negotiate for their own people (418). She pays considerable attention to the termination policy and Senator Arthur V. Watkins's campaign to sever the trust relationship with the Utes at Uintah and Ouray, resulting in the disastrous disenrollment of 490 members of the Uintah Band. Jones treads carefully here, and rightfully so, as the event left deep and lasting wounds and produced many distortions of history. This treatment tries too hard to be objective, as Jones does not quite want to admit that the two Colorado Ute bands, the White Rivers and the Uncompahgres, seized the opportunity to evict a large percentage of the Utah Utes from their own reservation. All of this was done using the false dogma of blood quantum, employing a standard of measurement that, if applied to, say, the Southern Utes, might have terminated most of the members. In the end, the focus remains on those who stayed on the rolls and on the many problems of the survivors: not the least of which concern the retention of language, culture, and vitality, as the contemporary Ute tribes find themselves awash in judgment money, energy royalties, and in the case of the two Colorado tribes, gaming revenue. Jones concludes on a hopeful note, believing that the resilience and adaptability that the Utes demonstrated in the past will carry them forward.