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Funded in part by

Utah Division of Indian Affairs

The George S. Deloris Dori Eccles Foundation

and

Private Donors here

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Filmmakers

Black Hawk Productions, LLC

and

Ron Hill Imagery

and

Turtle Island Productions

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Consultants

Historian/Scholar Will Bagley - Executive Director of Indian Affairs Forrest Cuch - Professor/Historian Dr. Floyd O'Neil  - Dr. Daniel McCool PHD Political Science - Historian Robert Carter - Filmmaker Larry Cesspooch Ute Tribe - Venita Taveapont Director of Indian Language Program Ute Tribe - Loya Arrum Ute Tribe - Descendents of Ute Leader Black Hawk - Members of the Ute Tribe - National Forest Service Archeologist Charmain Thompson

 

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Music

 

Nino Reyos

 

Runa Pacha

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 Black Hawk War Researcher/Producer Phillip B Gottfredson

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Historic Photographs by Permission From:

 

University of Utah Marriott Library Special Collections

 

Utah State Historical Society

 

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Decoding The Myths Of

The Black Hawk War of Utah

“Until the lion tells it’s story, the glory will always go to the hunter.”

 

 

 

by Researcher Phillip B Gottfredson

 

There are always two sides to any war. People say, "that's all in the past we just need to get over it." Like their forefathers before them, the descendents of the predominate culture of Utah refuse to acknowledge the genocide of Utah's American Indian peoples. That the Indian people of Utah continue to struggle with the lingering effects of Utah's Black Hawk War. That demoralization and racism have become institutionalized. As recent as 1983 we see the descendents of a once vibrant Ute culture on the steps of Utah's State Capitol pleading for religious freedom and their most fundamental right to a decent life. In Utah the Indian people are to blame, "we have given them every opportunity to succeed...it's their own damn fault."

"The Time has come when Indian people need to stop being victimized. They need to tell their story and demand that it be told accurately." - Forrest S. Cuch Executive Director of Indian Affairs

 

"We took from them almost all of their land--the reservations are just a tiny remnant of traditional tribal homelands. We tried to take from them their hunting rights, their fishing rights, the timber on their land. We tried to take from them their water rights. We tried to take from them their culture, their religion, their identity, and perhaps most importantly we tried to take from them their freedom. And what is so amazing about this whole story is that we failed. We failed after hundreds of years of trying to take everything from American Indians. We failed to do that. They are still here and there's survival; that great saga of survival is one of the great stories of all mankind." - Dr. Daniel McCool University of Utah

"There was a time when our people were happy and content living in the majestic mountains and fertile green valleys of Utah. Then the Mormons came, and our people were killed—the old, the young, the children, women—and many taken to reservations where many more would die."

 

Christian expansionists attempted to reason with the Indian people saying they had the right to take possession of their land because the Indians were heathens, non-Christians, who didn't believe in the bible or Jesus, the Messiah. And this is the basis for the denial of Indian rights in federal Indian law today, based upon the metaphor that the American Indians are the Canaanites or pagans in the promised land. These arcane elements of reason have long been the mentality of Christian supremacy upon which so many millions of dollars have been spent and so many thousands of lives wrecked. - Steven T. Newcomb Indigenous Law Institute

 

"When the Ute failed to assimilate into Mormon culture, the answer was to exterminate them." - Historian Robert Carter

 

They were not given a choice", said University of Utah Political Science Professor Dr. Daniel McCool

 

It was a matter of who would own the land and who would survive. "It was a battle over resources that led to a brutal and bloody conflict between Mormon settlers and the Ute." - Historian Will Bagley

 

In 1850 Mormon apostle George Albert Smith declared that the Indian people "have no right to their land" and he instructed the all-Mormon legislature to "extinguish all titles" and get them out of the way and onto reservations. This set the stage for the infamous Black Hawk War that would follow.

 

What is the Ute Indians’ side of the story? And, why has their history, their account, been deliberately ignored and long omitted from school curricula?

 

When a people are denied access to their own history by educators and institutions as the American Indian have been, when their children are forced to accept solely the victors point of view, when cultural traditions and customs of the American Indian are systematically replaced by western beliefs; when they are denied their right to speak their own language and denied their religious freedom, when they are repeatedly denied equal access to justice and protection under the law, when these things happen they are discriminated against and segregated.

 

Eight years ago I set out on a daunting journey to learn from the Utes’ their story, and to understand the inequalities between the white man and the Native American peoples. I became immersed in their history and culture and often they told me their grim tales of the past. But as profoundly disturbing as their past has been, what emerges is their endearing humanity and profound spirituality that most inspired me. I can only conclude these traditional beliefs are universal and were rooted deep in the hearts and minds by great leaders, such as Black Hawk.

 

 

	Forrest S. Cuch - Executive Director Of Indian Affairs	Will Bagley - Historian/Author

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 Young's victory was perhaps a hollow one for, in order to fulfill his dream, he had to destroy a civilization. He complained it was "cheaper to feed them than to fight them," as he was spending millions in church funds equipping his private army to war against them. Mormon Militia Generals were being paid as much as $300 a month while soldiers were being paid some $16.00 a month to rid the land of it's Indian inhabitants. Then in 1866 the United States government reimbursed Brigham some 1.5 million for military expenses. The truth regarding the history of the war has since been cloaked in brilliantly managed rhetoric to demonize 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 providence. Twenty-six years of Utah's Indian history have since been deliberately ignored, only to disappear like shadows in the pine.

 

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."  Just how many of the some 40,000 Indians did he get rid of? By 1909 the U.S. Census reported that the Indian population had decreased to just 2300. It is true, it was an unfortunate circumstance of epic scale, a genocide fueled by religious fanaticism and racist dogma.

 

The gruesome beheadings of some 40 Ute corpses in 1850, 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

 

In 1853 Ute leader Walkara told interpreter M. S. Martenas, "He (Walkara) said that he had always been opposed to the whites set[t]ling on the Indian lands, particularly that portion which he claims; and on which his band resides and on which they have resided since his childhood, and his parents before him—that the Mormons when they first commenced the settlement of Salt Lake Valley, was friendly, and promised them many comforts, and lasting friendship—that they continued friendly for a short time, until they became strong in numbers, then their conduct and treatment towards the Indians changed—they were not only treated unkindly, but many were much abused and this course has been pursued up to the present—sometimes they have been treated with much severity—they have been driven by this population from place to place—settlements have been made on all their hunting grounds in the valleys, and the graves of their fathers have been torn up by the whites." - STATEMENT, M. S. MARTENAS, INTERPRETER Great Salt Lake City, July 6 1853 Brigham Young Papers, MS 1234, Box 58, Folder 14
LDS Archives - Will Bagley Transcription
 

The names "Black Hawk" and "Antonga"---are they Utes names?

 

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. To the Mexicans he was known as "Antonga", also not a Ute name. 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 fought bitterly. This courageous leader 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."

 

"It was white history that wrote it--that he surrendered. And no, a man like that don't surrender. He'll come to terms with reality. I'm done, we're done, we, we did what we could, we're done. But it gets written differently... And like any of us, I think you get to a point where it's like any war, you get in and you do what you've got to do. And maybe there's a family there, and you killed, killed their kids--you, as a human, that thing we all are, is going to at least make you say I'm sorry." - Larry Cesspooch

 

But Black Hawk's story didn't end there. Just 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 City. He was not reburied until 1996, it took an act of Congress and the humanitarian efforts of Boy Scout, Shane Armstrong and Charmain Thompson, National Forest Service Archeologist. And according to the descendants of Black Hawk no one has had the decency to take responsibility or offer apology for the decades of humiliation they suffered.

 

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.

Few have the courage, and much less the inclination, to challenge the mainstream historic accounts of the Black Hawk War. To come to grips with the biases in which they are written. It is a curious tradition that scholars and writers assume they know and understand Indian history and life-ways of the Native Indian peoples without ever consulting them, or even asking them for guidance and insight from their perspective. In most all of the accounts written the Indian peoples are a mere shadow in the background. When in reality they are as much a part of the history of Utah and the shaping of the United States as were any of their non-Indian counterparts.

Black Hawk, Nooch, was by all accounts a man of integrity. Unlike his nemesis Mormon Prophet Brigham Young, Nooch had the backbone to say he was sorry. A true hero, one that deserves respect and at long last honored for his extraordinary courage and brilliant leadership. He was a product of his culture who instilled in him the most remarkable humility. He was not driven by greed, or personal gain. He saw his people suffer and die from starvation, he witnessed the deaths of his his own family. Still he pursued peace with the same tenacity he fought for survival.

The BLACK HAWK WAR: Utah's Forgotten Tragedy 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.

 

 

 

 

 

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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.

 

 

Photo of Original

Read some excerpts from Peter's book here

 

 

 

 

 

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