Welcome to the Black Hawk War Documentary Film Project. This
website offers a plethora of information regarding the war taken from The Gottfredson Files.
This
is a product of many years of research of Brigham's brutal Black
Hawk War of Utah. It is the history of the Ute Indians in
conflict with early Mormon pioneers and the United States
government during the years 1847 to 1873. "The views and opinions
expressed herein are of my own. Respectfully I say, I am not a
spokesman for the Indians of Utah though I attempt to express
their perspective."
-PB Gottfredson This website also serves to
explain introduce the documentary film
From These Silent Ashes. This was the darkest time in not
only Utah's history, also in western expansion.
"It's curious
business, the history of the American Indian. Our ancestors came
here to America seeking freedom. Here the American Indian were
already free and had been for thousands of years. Our ancestors
took from the Indian people their freedom, and they have been
struggling ever since to be free again."
-Phillip
Gottfredson
Mr. Gottfredson
states in his narrative titled "The
Black Hawk War Legacy," "As I continue to learn from the Native people
what it means to be an Indian, I am still shocked and disgusted
by the injustices and discrimination that they face each and
every day not only from the general populace of Utah but the
state and federal government. I am sickened every time I have
heard "we have given the Ute every chance to succeed, yet they
choose to live off the government, and live in poverty." What
kind of choice have they been given? To conform to white man's
beliefs or walk knee deep in the blood of their people? To give
up their land, children, culture, traditions or die?
The
arrogance and attitudes of supremacy toward the Utah Indian
people has prevailed since the Black Hawk War,
and few have had the courage to stand up and say, enough, we're
not going to tolerate these human injustices or knowingly participate in
genocide of the American Indian people. I am astonished that they have had
little or no voice, ignored, shunned, kept out on the fringes of
society and denied access to even most the basic fundamentals of equality
and human rights. That they live in fear of telling their story, their
truth, that there may be retribution for exercising their
freedom of speech."
Brigham
Young said, "If the inhabitants of this Territory, my brethren, had never
condescended to reduce themselves to the practices of the
Indians, to their low, degraded condition, and in some cases
even lower, there never would have been any trouble between us
and our red neighbors. Treat them kindly, and treat them as
Indians, and not as your equals."
The above quote from Mormon prophet Brigham Young was taken from
his own discourses delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake
City, April 6, 1854. Up to this
time 139 Ute had been killed at
the hands of Mormon settlers. The family of Black Hawk had been
murdered, innocent of any wrong doing. Seventy more were killed
at Fort Utah, beheaded, tortured, while heads were hung by their
long hair from the eves of the buildings. Heads that would be
later shipped to Washington for scientific examination. Among those held captive
at the fort was a young boy by the name of Noonch, who had been made to view
the horrid sight for two long agonizing weeks. This
tormented boy would later become known as Chief Black Hawk of
the northern Ute Indian tribe. But the name "Black Hawk" is not
a Ute name, it was what Brigham Young called him.
The 'Walker' War had broke
out, even though Noonch's uncle Chief Wah-kara, (or "Walker"
as the settlers called him), and numerous Ute had been
baptized and made members of the LDS Church, and without any legal
basis for doing so, undoubtedly fueled by
O'Sullivan's 1838 Manifest
Destiny, it was the LDS Church's land grab when Apostle George A. Smith
had instructed the legislature, "Indians have no right to their
land," to "extinguish all titles and prepare for their removal."
Remember these were different times, and looking back on
American history it is easy to see that the Manifest Destiny
concept was ego driven, manipulative, hypocritical, and down
right wrong. But some things, in their minds were, simply put,
necessary evils.
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. Mormon's 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)
Mormons brought the ways of civilization with
them, in their minds. Contrary to their desire for a enlightened
spiritual way of life, the world followed, and they gave way the very kind
of discrimination that they ran from.
"My account of
Brigham's Black Hawk War of Utah is by no means intended as amusement,"
Gottfredson says, "nor will I make light of or trivialized the truth.
For we owe it to the Native people to feel their pain, and not
sanitize the war. These are the people who made the sacrifice,
and we should see who they are and what they are doing."
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.
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 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 Story of Brigham's Black Hawk War... please
click
here.
