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Phil Gottfredson | "Treat them kindly, and treat them as Indians, and not as your equals." Brigham Young - 1854 |
The Black Hawk War of Utah Ute Indian History
1847 - 1873 Based on the book...Indian Depredations In Utah The Oldest Firsthand Accounts of the Utah Black Hawk War by Journalist and Author P E T E R G O T T F R E D S O N1846-1934 
The Dark Side of Utah's History by Phillip B Gottfredson The brutal Black Hawk War is the darkest side of Utah's history, a subject very few know or are willing to talk about. In the following pages I present to you the highlights of my years of research from scores of books, journals, historic records, documents, newspapers, and personal interviews of both Native Indians, and non-Indians. I am not a spokesperson for the Ute Tribe, and take full responsibility for the contents of this website. Introduction: My account of the Black Hawk War of Utah is by no means intended as amusement, nor will I make light of the truth. Based in part upon the oldest firsthand accounts from Peter Gottfredson's book titled Indian Depredations in Utah In 1890 journalist Peter Gottfredson  commenced a twenty year project compiling personal eyewitness accounts of the Black Hawk War. Earlier Peter had spent most of his time in the Indian camps during the war, and witnessed firsthand the exploitation that surrounded him and the people he loved. As Peter reflected over the past he asked, "I have often queried; why should those conditions be forgotten, and why has so little interest been taken in keeping memoranda's and records of events and conditions of those early and trying times?" This was an important question 116 years ago, and it is no less important today as the answer to this intriguing question still remains a mystery. (For more information on Peter Gottfredson see: Peter's Autobiography and "My Great-grandfather Peter Gottfredson" by Phillip Gottfredson) Highly respected by noted historians as being a reliable account; to the honor of Peter Gottfredson authors, historians, researchers, journalists, scholars and academia's have cited his work in countless publications, articles, and books for decades; underscoring the importance of his time-honored account. Most recent is historian John Alton Peterson's award winning book titled Utah's Black Hawk War wherein Gottfredson's account is cited numerous times. Copies are to be found in the New York Public Library, other major collections and our on-line bookstore. Being a product of the time the book Indian Depredations in Utah is a testament to the proclivity of early Mormon pioneers, and the extreme circumstances under which the Native Indian were subjected. Another book of importance by Forrest Cuch who is the Executive Director of Indian Affairs and a member of the Ute tribe. It is titled History of Utah's American Indians. It is a study of both the past, and present. "In many ways the Native people of Utah continue to suffer following the Black Hawk War. They continue to suffer," according to Forest Cuch, from limited land-base, scattered and substandard homes sites, intertribal political strife, poverty, poor health, and ineffective educational programs for their children. In 1861 President Lincoln set aside four million acres of land which became known as the Uinta Reservation. Today less than 25% of that land remains intact, the rest was turned back to public domain." The Paiute suffered again late in their history, "when, during the 1950s, after decades of failed policies and programs, the U.S. government under President Eisenhower implemented the Relocation/Termination Programs as the official Indian policy of the Federal Government" and as a result "their reservation lands" where again "taken from them." The Black Hawk War Legacy "Treat them kindly, and treat them as Indians, and not as your equals." Brigham Young - 1854 Today church historians are saying that the massacre at Mountain Meadows Utah was by far the worst human tragedy in Utah's history when a 126 innocent whites were brutally murdered by Mormon's disguised as Indians in 1854. I suppose if we leave out the Bear River massacre where 300 Shoshone were slaughtered, and we ignore that the fact that a Utah Indian population of 30,000 was reduced to just 2400. If we leave out of history the near annihilation and decimation of Utah's Indian people and culture, then I would agree. But we cannot continue to exclude the Indian people from Utah's history! We cannot continue to trivialize their losses. Devastating losses that clearly exceed all others. Doesn't anyone give a damn? As with all other conflicts between various peoples throughout the world, the brutal encounters between Utah's Ute Indians and Mormon settlers occurred as a result of Mormon pioneers intruding into the lives of the Ute, competing for limited food and control of natural resources. Over a period of sixteen years, the Northern and Colorado Ute, Paiute, Goshute and Shoshone were systematically driven into submission and eventually exiled from their home. Settlers made numerous peace agreements and promises to the Ute, but time after time their promises were never kept. Brave generals, military tactics, stolen cattle, naked savages living in stick huts, Segals devoring crickets, are the trite and stereotypical themes common in the victors accounts. While gruesome details of the Black Hawk War attest to beheadings, Indian skulls being sold to medical institutions for scientific examination go unoticed. There was torture, murders, and as thousands died from disease, hunger, hopelessness and despair; many were buried in mass graves, graves that would later be looted and the contents thereof considered as trophies, or traded for profit. Their corpses and body parts were publicly displayed, hung from corners of buildings for entertainment, and in two separate interviews I was told Utes were placed in cages and taken into the mountains where they were left to die. Stories of frightened children being taken away from their parents and placed in distant Christian boarding house schools, where they were abused, and many died and buried on school grounds in unmarked graves. Others were forced into slavery, while some were brutally murdered. Are these stories fiction? Did these things really happened in Utah? If so, these are the ingredients of a colossal human tragedy. If it didn't happen, then scores of accounts found in church and public archives, personal journals and diaries, and all these many historians and authors over the past hundred years would have had to conspire on the most profuse literary hoax of all time. But it did happen, and it has been ignored and omitted from public awareness and school curriculum. If we do not understand the personal sufferings of the Indian peoples, we cannot understand the implication of the Black Hawk War in Utah, or the impact it has had in shaping the lives of both Indian and non-Indian in Utah. Accommodation history has long been a practice of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. "The Accommodation History advocated by Elders Benson and Packer and actually practiced by some LDS writers is intended to protect the Saints, but actually disillusions them and makes them vulnerable... The tragic reality is that there have been occasions when Church leaders, teachers, and writers have not told the truth they knew about difficulties of the Mormon past, but have offered to the Saints instead a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials..." - D. Michael Quinn 1981 Both Indian and non-Indian who do not recognize names like Black Hawk, Wah-kara, Arropeen, Tabiona, Kanosh, Sanpitch, Tabby, Ouray, Colorow, and events such as the Black Hawk War, Fort Utah battle, Circleville Massacre, or the brutal Bear River Massacre, and what they represent; have no sense of true history the reality of Utah. Because Ute history has been omitted from school curriculum, or sanitized, and trivialized; consequently Utahan's Indian and non-Indian have a distorted sense of where they have come from. It is then natural for the Native people to feel that their tragedy has little or even no importance in the history of Utah. This is demoralizing and the source of resentment, and anger, which contributes to social divisions within society, and for many it undermines hope and prospects for a better future. Human understanding is too narrow to fully comprehend the trail of tears left behind in the aftermath of the Black Hawk War, and those who survived lingered on in a chronic post-trauma state, beyond anger, beyond hate, it was absolute desolation. The demands Mormons imposed upon the Ute were extraordinary. Expectations of the Ute to toss aside their ancient culture and traditions, sign over their land, and embrace an entire new way of living, to standby while their children are forced into boarding house schools, cease from speaking their language, all in a matter of one generation, it's not surprising it proved to be a disaster. Euro-Americans have for centuries forced upon the Indian their views, opinions, cultural and religious beliefs. "The Mormons brought with them a moral code, a new technology, and an economic system. Mormons inability or refusal to accept Indian culture on its own terms is a conflict repeated countless times throughout the west. Coexistence, with each culture intact, was impossible; compromise seemed unattainable, for the cherished ideals of one culture were the unpardonable sins of the other." - The Other 49ers The Black Hawk War of Utah became the most destructive event in the Ute's 600 year history. Their ancient culture had prospered undisturbed for centuries of time. Ute population once exceeded 30,000. Following the Black Hawk War, and by 1909, their population had dramatically decreased to just 2400, in large part due to diseases such as small pox, and measles that spread epidemically from the whites, at times intentionally. T oday, as we begin to see the legacy of the Black Hawk War, we hear the dominate population in Utah make the assumption that "the Indian people have been given every opportunity to succeed, yet they choose to live in poverty, and live off the government..." and indifferently state: "it's their own damn fault." Accusations such as these, and worse, are simply not true and reflect the ignorance of those who are the product of a prejudiced education system. Truthfully it is non-Indians who have profited most on the backs of the Indian. Non-Indians simply do not have a compassionate and clear understanding of the dilemma of the American Indian. If things are going to change then these issues must first be addressed as a matter of first priority. "That's all in the past, why should I care...?" Remember, prejudice has to be taught. Children learn to be prejudice from their schools, family, friends, and community. To simply ignore the Black Hawk War and its legacy is criminal. I paraphrase the words from Martin Luther King Jr., “Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at it's victim in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.” This is the very stuff that causes anger, hate, unfairness, and hence racism. Adding layer upon layer of stress that the American Indian people cope with on a daily basis, contributing to poor health and hopelessness. We must recognize that both the Ute Indian and Mormon settlers were as John A. Peterson states, "Two honorable peoples who were trapped by their own cultures, goals, and interests, as well as by the larger political and national forces of their time." The Black Hawk War was not about race, it was not about religion, race and religion later became the excuse to justify greed, arrogance and domination. It was a human condition, a process where each were putting their lives on the line to defend their freedoms and culture according to the dictates of their own individual beliefs, beliefs that had evolved long before they encountered each other. It was Mormon settlers who invaded Ute land. And it has to be that any discussion of the conflicts between the Ute and the Mormons must always be viewed within this context. It is time that we should stop blaming each other. According to George E. Tinker, "It is time we stop viewing these injustices as simply white or non-white processes and begin viewing them as human processes." It is time that our schools adhere to federal mandates and teach the truth about our history in the spirit of fairness, equality, and explain compassionately the dynamics of the time and it's consequences. Quoting from historian John Alton Peterson, and George E. Tinker an Osage/Cherokee, "Without confronting and owning our past, as white Americans, as Europeans, as American Indians, as African Americans, we cannot hope to overcome the past and generate a constructive, healing process, leading to a world of genuine, mutual respect among peoples, communities, and nations." But that "mutual respect" must begin by seeking to understand the history and human motivations of all these "peoples and communities, and nations" with a spirit of equity, balance, and compassion." To say "that's all in the past, and we should just forget about it," is to say that we should ignore our history and the lessons to be learned. Both Indian and non-Indian should never forget. The assimilation process has as it's objective to erase the past from memory, distort the facts, lay the blame on the victims and exonerate the victors. The process also includes outlawing religious beliefs, deny Natives of their freedom to choose, freedom of speech, and their right to vote, and segregating them from the dominate society. The largest segregated population in the world live on reservations. The mandate of the boarding house schools was to "kill the Indian, and spare the man," and in a single generation assimilate the Indian people into western society but forbidding them to speak their language, observe the traditions of their culture, and forced to conform to western beliefs or suffer dire consequences. Is this not by definition cultural genocide? By ignoring the past, do we not become participants in the process? Granted the Indian peoples have overcome many of these obstacles. But clearly they continue to struggle to overcome the discrimination that prevents their having full rights as American citizens. Many will say that discrimination does not exist, but in fact it does. For many they have inherited the mindset of their forefathers. The seeds of racism were planted a long time ago, and like a noxious weed has become entwined into every aspect of society. Racism has become institutionalized and so appears natural in the social landscape. Those who say, "it's not my problem, I'm just doing my job," those who are aware but ignore human injustices are themselves agents in the on-going cultural genocide of the American Indian people. The following overview of the Black Hawk War in Utah is a brief synopsis of a complex subject which cannot be fully explored in this limited format. For a more definitive explanation we have provided an extensive list of source material available through our online Bookstore. The Black Hawk War... please click here.
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