Black Hawk Productions Proudly Recognizes November as NATIONAL NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH, 2009 |
The Black Hawk WarUtah's Forgotten TragedyA Documentary Film Dedicated in Honor of the Noochew |
![]() | ![]() | ||
Forrest S. Cuch - Executive Director Of Indian Affairs | Will Bagley - Historian |
A Name Sacred to the Ute Indians
The decimated lives of some 40,000 Native people caused by the Black Hawk War has simply been swept aside. Brigham's victory was perhaps a hollow one for, in order to fulfill his dream, he had to destroy a civilization. The truth regarding the history of the war has since been cloaked in brilliantly managed rhetoric to discredit the Ute Nation in every conceivable way. The victors’ accounts are saturated with ambiguities, omissions, platitudes, and half truths and they lead us to believe the fate of the Indian people was divine destiny. Twenty-six years of Utah's Indian history have since been deliberately ignored, only to disappear like shadows in the pine.
He (Black Hawk) had "remarkable vision and capacity. Given the circumstances under which he operated, he put together an imposing war machine and masterminded a sophisticated strategy that suggest he had a keen grasp of the economic, political, and geographic contexts in which he operated, comparable to Cochise, Sitting Bull and Geronimo." - John Alton Peterson author of Utah's Black Hawk War
The name "Black Hawk" is not a Ute name. It was a name Brigham Young, in jest, called the Ute's leader. So it became that Brigham Young’s supercilious term, 'Black Hawk,' is the name by which he is now most commonly known. He was known to the Utes as Nooch, he was so named in honor of his people the Noochew, a name sacred to the Utes.
Nooch was born into a noble clan of legendary leaders spanning centuries of time. He fought bitterly. This courageous warrior had to confront unimaginable terror as his people were dying from diseases and hunger, their homeland being invaded and plundered by the white-man, he as a young boy witnessed his family and kin murdered by Mormon militia. He faced challenges that were monumental for any leader of any people in any time. He should have given up, but something in his character wouldn't allow him to. Before Nooch died in 1870, deathly ill from a bullet wound he received a year earlier at Gravelly Ford, he traveled 180 miles by horse and visited every Mormon village to apologize for the pain and suffering he and his warriors had caused. He asked for forgiveness and pleaded with the settlers to do the same, and end the bloodshed. "You didn't see that happening on the part of the settlers", said Forrest Cuch, "So it took a greater man to do such a thing. And that's what is overlooked in the victors’ accounts."
But Black Hawk's story didn't end there. Forty-nine years after his death, in 1919, his grave was looted and his remains were first put on public display in the window of a hardware store in Spanish Fork, then later in the LDS church museum on Temple Square in Salt Lake. He was not reburied until 1996, thanks to the humanitarian efforts of Boy Scout, Shane Armstrong and Charmain Thompson, National Forest Service Archeologist.
Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. - Jeremiah 6:15
It is important we understand that the Black Hawk War was not a single incident; there were over 150 bloody confrontations in a 20-year period that began in 1849 when Brigham's private militia, led by Capt. John Scott, premeditated the murders of Black Hawk's family, who were innocent of any wrong doing, at Battle Creek. Mormon depredations continued on into 1873, resulting in the eradication of 90% of the Indian population, estimated to have been between 40,000 and 70,000 when Mormon pioneers arrived in 1847. While fewer than .05% of the Mormon population died as a result of the war during the same period.
By 1909 the U.S. Census reported that the Indian population had decreased to just 2300. Some scholars are quick to point out that the cause of the rapid decline in population was due to disease—that the tragedy was merely an unfortunate circumstance. It is true, it was an unfortunate circumstance of epic scale, a genocide fueled by religious fanaticism and racist dogma. Brigham Young was quoted by the Denver Rocky Mountain Newspaper as saying, "You can get rid of more Indians with a sack of flour, than a keg of powder." What is omitted from the victors’ account is that germ warfare was not an uncommon tactic. And, one of the dark truths about Utah's history is the use of poison by Brigham's privately funded militia.
The gruesome beheadings of some 40 Ute corpses, heads stacked in boxes, and hung by their long hair from the eves of buildings at Fort Utah, has long been ignored, "You didn't see the Indians beheading the Mormons." - Historian Robert Carter
"In those early days it was, at times, imperative that harsh measures should be used. We had to do these things, or be run over by them. It was a question of supremacy between the white man and the Indian." - John Lowry 1894
"We forget that our ancestors, both Indian and non-Indian, lived close together; that our children grew up with each other. And that's what makes this story so difficult to talk about and remember. But, if we are going to understand who we are, then we have to understand and remember the Black Hawk War." -Historian Will Bagley
Virtually no one considers generational traumas, such as war, genocide, oppression, poverty, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, death or loss of parents or siblings, which have not yet been grieved and healed by individuals, families and communities. In Utah the effects of unresolved trauma due to the war are carried into the next generation.
I feel we have a responsibility to compassionately understand their pain and to not sanitize the Black Hawk War. The indigenous people of Utah are, all said and done, those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and we should see who they are and what they are doing. We need to experience their pain...to feel it. We owe it to the native Indians of Utah to feel it. Thousands of lives were lost in the war. Most never knew why, and now we don't even think about the war.
Our documentary film will, for the first time, reveal the truth of one of the darkest chapters in western history. The story will be told respectfully and with compassion from the perspective of the First Peoples of Utah. But our documentary goes beyond the war as we explore its legacy of perpetual demoralization. For Utah's American Indian peoples, the war meant the loss of their inheritance and heritage. It was the end of a sacred time—a time that should be honored, remembered and never forgotten.
- Black Hawk War Researcher Phillip B Gottfredson
The Story of Black Hawk... please click here.
This Is The Book That Started It All
The story of Black Hawk is 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 Ute Indian camps during the war, and witnessed first hand the exploitation that surrounded him and the people he loved.
Peter Gottfredson
working on his manuscript of
Indian Depredations in Utah
Photo by George E. Anderson
Highly respected by noted historians as being a reliable account, to the honor of Peter Gottfredson, authors, historians, researchers, journalists, scholars and academics 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. Original copies of Peter's book are to be found in the New York Public Library, and other major collections. I republished his book in 2002 which can now be purchased at our on-line bookstore.
Being a product of the time, the book Indian Depredations in Utah is a testament to man's inhumanity to man, a window that looks upon a landscape of extreme hardship, brutal violence, desperation, despair; a human condition of immense complexities and consequences resulting in the genocide of the American Indian people of Utah.
Get your copy today here.
Read some excerpts from Peter's book here
BLACK HAWK WAR FORUM We welcome your comments, stories, questions, answers... Please join us in our online discussion forum.
We recommend...
Link to KUED 7
We Shall Remain Documentary
Powered by WebRing. World Website Directory
[Sign My Guestbook] [View My Guestbook]
Powered by E-Guestbooks Server .
,